Pinellas eye care practice to pay $600K in kickback scheme settlement

Pinellas Eye Care P.A., doing business as Gulfcoast Eye Care, has agreed to pay $615,000 to resolve alleged federal violations of the False Claims Act and a related Florida statute stemming from its billing for certain kinds of ultrasounds through a kickback arrangement with a third party. 

An ophthalmology practice with offices in Pinellas Park, Palm Harbor and St. Petersburg, Gulfcoast Eye has also agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigations of other participants in the alleged scheme. The case is a civil settlement filed under the qui tam or whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act, which permits private parties to file suit on behalf of the United States for false claims and share in a portion of the government’s recovery. The whistleblower in this case, according to a statement, will receive $116,850 in connection with the settlement.

The settlement resolves allegations Gulfcoast Eye knowingly submitted, and caused the submission of, false claims to Medicare and Medicaid for medically unnecessary trans-cranial doppler ultrasounds, or TCDs. Gulfcoast Eye and a third-party provider of TCD services performed TCDs on thousands of patients and billed Medicare and Medicaid hundreds of dollars per test, the DoJ alleges.