An Alabama federal jury continues its deliberations over an AseraCare hospice whistleblower lawsuit.

AseraCare is one of the country’s largest for-profit hospice providers. The whistleblower lawsuit is targeting AseraCare for allegedly fraudulently billing Medicare over $7 million for 121 individual patients who were not on the verge of dying.

Deliberations have run for several days so far. If the jury does find that AseraCare’s claims for these 121 patients were fraudulent, the required Medicare reimbursement, as well as fines and other penalties, may equal more than $200 million.

Medicare hospice benefits are only supposed to be provided to patients who have been diagnosed as terminally ill and are expected to live for a maximum of six months. The 121 patients involved in the whistleblower lawsuit were a portion of the thousands of patients who were in AseraCare hospice for longer than a year.

U.S. District Court Judge Karon Bowdre divided the trial into two separate phases. This separation is called bifurcation, and AseraCare attorneys supported the decision, while U.S. Department of Justice lawyers opposed it.

The hefty $200 million reimbursement, federal prosecutors have said, would be sought during the trial’s second, upcoming phase. This second phase would also look at the whistleblower lawsuit’s allegations that AseraCare pressured nurses and doctors to sign up patients and keep them under hospice care funded by Medicare.

In the first phase, jurors looked at each of the 121 patients’ medical records in order to determine whether or not they were actually qualified to claim Medicare reimbursement for hospice benefits. Both sides brought medical experts to testify about whether or not the patients should have qualified for these benefits.

The second phase will take place if the jury finds that AseraCare filed false Medicare claims for any of the whistleblower lawsuit’s 121 patients. The second phase will include testimony about alleged corrupt corporate practices inside of AseraCare designed to put patients in the hospice program.

Whistleblowers within the company allege that AseraCare has put pressure on nurses and doctors to put patients into the hospice system.

According to Mary Inman, a whistleblower lawsuit specialist, bifurcation of the trial is an unorthodox approach to such a situation. The judge’s decision to bifurcate the trial has “stacked the deck” against the Department of Justice, according to Inman.

The split in the trial separates two important aspects of the case, which forced the jury to see each aspect out of the larger context, and may deny them the ability to make an unaffected decision.

Whistleblower Lawsuit

AseraCare owns and operates about 60 separate hospice facilities across 19 total states. 10,000 patients are admitted each year. The AseraCare whistleblower lawsuit was sparked when workers at the AseraCare facility in Alabama, as well as two other states, stepped forward with their information as whistleblowers.

These whistleblowers filed False Claims Act lawsuits, and stand to gain a significant portion of the $200 million from the lawsuit, if won.

If you believe you have witnessed Medicare, Medicaid, or another kind of health care fraud by your employer, you may be able to file a whistleblower lawsuit (also known as a qui tam lawsuit) against your company on behalf of the government.