The Visiting Nurse Service of New York, one of the largest non-profit home health care agencies in America, said Thursday it will pay $57 million to settle a federal whistleblower lawsuit over allegations of fraud and patient endangerment.
The suit, brought under federal and state False Claims Acts by a senior leader who worked at the agency for 16 years, alleged that the corporation collected Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements and falsified time sheets for services that were only partially rendered or not provided at all.
The settlement, which did not have to go in front of a judge and has been approved by the federal government, does not admit liability for the non-profit. “For more than five years, we have been forced to defend ourselves against a lawsuit based on allegations that are simply untrue: we did not bill for visits we didn’t deliver, nor did we cause harm to our patients,” Kerry Parker, general counsel and chief risk officer for the organization said in a statement. “By resolving these claims through the present, we can put this distraction behind us and move forward.”