Late last month, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated portions of a former executive’s False Claims Act (“FCA”) whistleblower action against Health Management Associates Inc. (“HMA”), alleging that the company engaged in an illegal to generate referrals of Medicare and Medicaid patients to its facilitates.
In its ruling, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of plaintiff-relator Michael Mastej’s claims relating to events in 2008 and 2009. It only reversed the Middle District of Florida’s dismissal of Mastej’s allegations concerning events in 2007. The district court had dismissed his claims for failure to satisfy the heightened pleading standards of Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.