Press Releases
02/05/2021
Healthcare Company And Lab Pay $845k To Resolve Federal And State False Claims Act Allegation
(Hartford, CT) – Attorney General William Tong and John H. Durham, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, today announced that Cordant Health Solutions entered into a civil settlement with the federal and state governments and have paid $845,108 to resolve allegations that they violated the federal and state False Claims Acts.Cordant Health Solutions, which is based in Denver, Colorado, provides healthcare testing and monitoring services nationwide, including laboratory services for urine drug testing. Cordant’s subsidiary, Secon of New England, is a laboratory located in Worcester, Massachusetts and Secon’s client, Crossroads, Inc., was a behavioral health residential treatment center located in New Haven, Connecticut. Many of the residents of Crossroads were enrolled in the Connecticut Medicaid program.
In 2015, Crossroads implemented a policy requiring its residents to submit to regular urine drug testing, largely for residential monitoring purposes. Crossroads ordered presumptive (screening) urine drug tests and definitive (confirmatory) urine drug tests for each resident weekly. In many cases, Crossroads ordered identical, duplicative tests for its residents more than two times a week, and as often as three, four, or five times a week. These urine drug tests were performed by Cordant and were billed to Connecticut Medicaid.
The government alleges that Cordant knew or should have known that the tests that Crossroads ordered for its residents more than two times a week were not medically necessary. The United States and the State of Connecticut contend that Cordant failed to report and return overpayments for the claims Connecticut Medicaid paid Cordant for performing these medically unnecessary urine drug tests.
“For two years, Cordant repeatedly billed Connecticut Medicaid for these medically unnecessary urine tests, violating public trust and taking advantage of our public healthcare programs,” Attorney General Tong said. “My office stands ready to take strong action, with our federal and state partners, against anyone who misuses our state’s Medicaid program to the detriment of both taxpayers and patients.”
To resolve the allegations under the federal and state False Claims Acts, Cordant has paid $845,108 to the federal and state governments for overpayments occurring between October 6, 2015, and February 8, 2017.
Attorney General Tong thanked the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General/Office of Investigations, the Office of the United States Attorney, the Connecticut Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, and the DSS Office of Quality Assurance for their coordination in this matter.
Anyone with knowledge of suspected fraud or abuse in the public healthcare system is asked to contact the Attorney General’s Antitrust and Government Program Fraud Department at 860-808-5040 or by email at ag.fraud@ct.gov; the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit at 860-258-5986 or by email at conndcj@ct.gov; or the Department of Social Services fraud reporting hotline at 1-800-842-2155, online at www.ct.gov/dss/reportingfraud, or by email to providerfraud.dss@ct.gov.
Assistant Attorney General Gregory K. O’Connell, Forensic Fraud Examiner Kevin Jeffko, and Jeremy Pearlman, Chief of the Antitrust and Government Program Fraud Department, assisted the Attorney General with this matter.
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Media Contact:
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