Upper Allegheny Health System (UAHS), a health care system which operates dental clinics in Southern New York and Pennsylvania, is to pay $2.7 million dollars to resolve federal and state False Claims Act (FCA) allegations, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on May 26. The FCA case against UAHS was brought about by a whistleblower who should be eligible for a sizable monetary award under the FCA’s reward provisions.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney MaryEllen Kresse, between 2010 and 2015, UAHS “submitted false claims to Medicaid for dental services that were performed using handpieces which had not been appropriately sterilized.” Health care providers are legally required to heat sterilize dental handpieces between each patient use. However, UAHS allegedly did not purchase enough handpieces to allow for such sterilization and instead “directed personnel to use CaviWipes to ‘clean’ handpieces between patients.”