Leaders of Dallas’s Forest Park Medical Center face criminal charges after federal prosecutors said they paid roughly $40 million worth of bribes and kickbacks to health-care professionals who agreed to send patients to the high-end hospital, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. A federal grand jury indicted Forest Park Medical executives of paying surgeons, primary-care doctors, chiropractors and others for patient referrals. Prosecutors say the bribes also included sporting event tickets, custom cowboy boots, free carwashes and deals on medical office building space, according to the newly unsealed 44-page document filed in U.S. District Court in Dallas. Prosecutors said the bribes brought business into Forest Park Medical Center, enabling it to bill medical insurers and government-administered health care programs like Medicare for more than $500 million between the facility’s 2009 opening and 2013, according to the indictment. After years of declining revenue, the hospital shut down in October 2015. It was sold out of bankruptcy to another hospital operator earlier this year. Read more. (Subscription required.)
For a further analysis of commercial fraud, make sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case.
