A nursing home whistleblower $300 million lawsuit will go forward in Florida.

The operators of 53 Florida nursing homes are being sued in a False Claims Act lawsuit. Former employee and nursing home whistleblower Angela Ruckh filed a lawsuit against La Vie Health Care Centers in 2011.

The company is now known as Consulate Health Care.

Ruckh said she saw years of corporate scheming meant to “bill Medicare and Medicaid” by upcoding therapies.

Ruckh supplied depositions from other employees and testimony from five expert witnesses. She also brought forth four million documents.

The companies filed for summary judgment, saying the evidence against them is not there. They also questioned the integrity of her witnesses, and the validity of Ruckh’s allegations because she worked at only two of the 53 locations.

Judge Steven D. Merryday, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, said he found some of Ruckh’s presentations of coding misconduct to be “equivocal,” but he did find one expert’s testimony to support her claims.

That expert said 128 of 320 reviewed Medicare claims had inflated RUG levels.

Nursing Home Whistleblower Case

Judge Merryday denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment because he believed the case should still be decided by a jury.

“Assuming admissibility, the testimony offers some pertinent evidence of a scheme – certainly not conclusive, perhaps not even persuasive… but at least somewhat more than no evidence,” the judge said in his written statement.

Whistleblower Protection Laws On Employees’ Side

Any employee who tells authorities about illegal activity at a place of employment is protected from being fired, demoted or otherwise unfairly treated.

OSHA administers anti-retaliation statutes that help people win back a lost job, back pay, lawyers’ fees and compensatory damages. However, these cases can take two or three years and $10,000 to $20,000 to get off the ground.

The most notable law that helps whistleblowers in this type of situation is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act enacted in 2002. The act extends protection to employees who blow the whistle on fraud, such as misrepresented financial earnings, that negatively affects a public company’s shareholders.

In the nursing home whistleblower case, the employee is protected because the reported alleged illegal actions involved enhanced Medicare claims to affect financial gain.

Keeping the lid on illegal activity is never a good idea, but it can be most stressful when it involves an employee’s workplace. It’s good to know there are many whistleblower laws that not only protect, but also reward, the employee who comes forward.

The Nursing Home Whistleblower case is U.S. ex rel. Ruckh v. CMC II LLC et al., Case No. 8:11-cv-01303, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.