New on the job at a health care company, a Fulton County woman came to believe that her employer was getting patient referrals by providing kickbacks to doctors and their staffs.
Now, that employer, Atlanta-based American Health Imaging, and its founder and former CEO, Scott W. Arant, have agreed to pay $5.25 million to settle allegations brought by Tanya Benjamin in a whistleblower lawsuit.
Benjamin brought the suit almost 10 years ago under the federal False Claims Act, which allows private parties to sue individuals or companies defrauding government programs and share in any funds recovered. The Department of Justice later intervened on some of the claims in her lawsuit, taking over the litigation. The Inspector General’s Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and lawyers from the Georgia Attorney General’s Office also took part in the investigation.
In announcing the settlement Monday, government prosecutors said that from 2011 to Sept. 15, 2019, the radiological company relied on a variety of inducements to get patient referrals. Among the financial incentives, the government said, were tickets to SEC games, fishing trips, meals, concert tickets, gas cards, alcohol, outings to nail salons and free scans for referring physicians and others.
What’s more, the company had agreements with physicians that paid them above-market rates to interpret the diagnostic scans of patients they had referred to the company.