A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against Hope Cancer Institute and its owner, Dr. Raj Sadasivan. They are accused of submitting claims to Medicare, Medicaid and the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program for drugs and services that were not provided to beneficiaries.
Filed in March 2012, the government alleges that, between 2007 and 2011, Sadasivan and Hope Cancer Institute submitted claims to federal health benefit programs for the chemotherapy drugs Rituxan, Avastin and Taxotere that were not provided to federal health care beneficiaries. Sadasivan allegedly instructed the employees of Hope Cancer Institute to bill for a predetermined amount of cancer drugs at certain dosage levels, when lower dosages of these drugs were actually provided to beneficiaries. As a result of these instructions, Hope Cancer Institute submitted inflated claims to federal health care programs for drugs that were not actually provided to patients.