It closed the LifeChem and NMC Medical Products units under the agreement and transferred their functions to the company's Spectra laboratories unit and the German parent's own products lines. The company, which had about $3.6 billion in 1999 revenues, has sold the home care unit. Pearlstein, first assistant United States attorney in Boston, said Fresenius had cooperated with the investigators. Grace & Company in 1996 for $4.4 billion. Lipps said, when it bought National Medical Care from W.
They have not been sentenced.įresenius ''inherited'' the investigation, Mr. David Charles Weber, a former vice president in medical products, pleaded guilty to kickback charges in December 1998. Telgheder, a former executive of the medical products and lab units, pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud charges last June. Glenn Shaw, former president Louis Verde, a former manager of the products unit, and Eileen B. Three former Fresenius officials have been indicted in federal district court in Boston in the investigation. In one case, it said, weight loss resulting from the amputation of a patient's leg was misattributed. The government complaint said the home care unit falsely attributed patients' weight loss to kidney-related problems. The three units were accused of conspiring to defraud government payers by charging for disputed intravenous feeding of dialysis patients, charging for blood tests deemed unnecessary and violating anti-kickback laws by providing payments, discounts, yacht trips and bear-hunting excursions in Alaska to attract potential customers for the LifeChem blood-testing business. In the settlement, the company agreed to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy charges involving three units: LifeChem Inc.
Fresenius is still in discussions about payments with its commercial insurance companies, he said. The charges involved disputed payments by government programs, not the quality of patient care.īen Lipps, an American who is chief executive of Fresenius, said the company was pleased to turn the page on the disputes with the Justice Department, Medicare and state Medicaid programs and the Inspector General's office. The biggest previous settlements included $379 million from National Medical Enterprises, a hospital chain $325 million from a laboratory unit of SmithKline Beecham, and $255 million from First American Health Care, a laboratory business based in Georgia.įresenius, based in Bad Homburg, Germany, provides blood cleansing services for more than 60,000 Americans with kidney problems. The campaign has returned more than $2 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund since 1995, said June Gibbs Brown, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. Government officials said both the civil settlement of $385 million and the $101 million in criminal fines were the largest in a five-year antifraud campaign involving blood-testing laboratories and other heath care companies. Fresenius Medical Care A.G., the nation's largest provider of kidney dialysis services, said yesterday that it would pay $486 million to settle federal civil and criminal fraud charges involving Medicare and other government programs.
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