A federal appeals court has ruled that a fired physician cannot resurrect his False Claims Act lawsuit accusing his former employer — Baptist Health Montgomery, Prattville Baptist and Team Health — of billing the government for overprescribed opioids, according to court documents accessed by Becker’s.
What happened?
- Jeffery Milner, MD, claimed in his lawsuit that, while working at the hospital in Prattville, Ala., from 2014 to 2017, physicians were pressured to overprescribe opioids, which led to fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billing.
- Dr. Milner alleged that ER doctors who didn’t comply with these opioid-related practices faced retaliation, and he was explicitly told to “keep the drug addicts and administration happy.”
- He further alleged that he was fired in December 2017 for raising concerns about these practices.
- His 2019 retaliation lawsuit under the False Claims Act was dismissed with prejudice for failure to state a claim and lack of plausible connection between his firing and protected whistleblower activity.
- Dr. Milner filed a separate qui tam case in 2020. The government declined to intervene, and, in 2023, the court dismissed it on res judicata grounds, ruling the case was barred because it involved the same claims and parties as the earlier case.
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