A long-running legal dispute between a Mobile cardiologist and his former medical group has come to a close, with attorneys announcing Thursday that the two sides had reached a settlement in a retaliation lawsuit tied to a broader Medicare and Medicaid fraud case.
U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose dismissed the case shortly after the settlement was announced, though the dismissal is contingent on the parties filing final settlement paperwork within 30 days. Attorneys representing both the physician, Dr. Christian Heesch, and the defendant, Diagnostic Physicians Group, declined to discuss specifics of the agreement. As is common in these types of settlements, confidentiality provisions are expected to keep the financial terms private. The case had been scheduled to go to trial this month before the settlement was reached.
The dispute traces back to 2011, when Heesch filed suit under a federal whistleblower statute that allows private citizens to bring fraud claims on behalf of the government in exchange for a share of any money recovered. Heesch alleged that Diagnostic Physicians Group had improperly compensated physicians based on the volume of tests they ordered through Infirmary Health Inc., an arrangement he argued ran afoul of federal anti-kickback rules.
The federal government later joined the case, pursuing claims under the False Claims Act as well as the Stark Law, which restricts physician referrals tied to financial relationships. Infirmary Health, along with two affiliated clinics and Diagnostic Physicians Group, agreed in July to pay $24.5 million to resolve those fraud allegations. As the whistleblower who brought the case forward, Heesch was entitled to roughly $4.41 million of that settlement.
What remained unresolved after that July settlement was Heesch’s separate retaliation claim. He argued that after eight years working as a cardiologist for the group, he was terminated in 2011 in direct response to his internal questions and document requests about how doctors were being compensated. Diagnostic Physicians Group has consistently denied any wrongdoing throughout the litigation, maintaining that its actions were proper.
The resolution of the retaliation claim effectively closes out the last piece of a case that has drawn scrutiny to compensation practices among physician groups affiliated with local hospital systems. Whistleblower cases like this one are often held up as examples of how internal employees can trigger scrutiny of billing and referral practices well before regulators become involved. With the retaliation claim now settled, the broader legal saga that began with Heesch’s 2011 complaint appears to be fully resolved, more than three years after it was first filed in federal court.