George B. Breen, Chair of the firm's National Health Care and Life Sciences Practice Steering Committee, was quoted in an article titled "Update to Fraud and Abuse Reporting Offers Greater Incentives for Whistleblowers."

Following is an excerpt:

If LTC providers weren't already focused on their compliance programs, a new proposed rule from CMS will certainly grab their attention.

On April 24, CMS released a proposed rule that would increase the rewards for people who provide information that leads to a recovery of funds from entities that have engaged in Medicare fraud and abuse. The proposed rule provides significantly more incentive for whistleblowers to help CMS detect new fraud schemes and drop fraudulent providers from the Medicare system.

If the IRS whistleblower program is an accurate model, facilities can certainly expect to see more audits as more whistleblowers step forward, says George Breen, a partner with Epstein Becker Green in Washington, D.C., who specializes in healthcare and life sciences litigation.

"There will certainly be more reports. Whether there will be more recovery remains to be seen, but I certainly think there will be more reporting and I imagine that this aspect of the proposed rule is one that will be included in the final rule," he says.

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