The United States Attorney’s Office has reached an agreement with Paul S. Koch, M.D., the former owner of a chain of Rhode Island ophthalmology practices that bear his name, to resolve civil allegations that Koch paid kickbacks to optometrists who referred patients to him and his practice for cataract surgeries. The agreement, under which Dr. Koch will pay $1,166,072, resolves claims brought as part of a qui tam complaint filed in federal court in the District of Rhode Island by two whistleblowers.
The government alleged that, during the roughly five-year period between January 1, 2013, through December 31, 2017, Dr. Koch, Koch Eye Associates and Claris Vision, paid financial kickbacks to referring optometrists whose patients elected to receive laser-assisted cataract surgery, for which patients paid up to $2,900 out-of-pocket per eye. The government alleges that these payments to the referring optometrists were illegal under the anti-kickback statute, a federal law that, among other things, prohibits financial payments to induce medical referrals that are reimbursed by federal healthcare payors, like the Medicare program. In this case, the government alleged that the kickbacks resulted in the submission of false claims to Medicare under the federal False Claims Act.
