Whistleblowing Attorneys: A Growing Health-Care Provider Threat

Health-care providers looking to avoid Medicare and Medicaid fraud lawsuits may need to worry about a new type of whistleblower: the attorneys they face in unrelated litigation.

Whistleblowers in False Claims Act cases are usually nurses, doctors, medical coding specialists, and other front office staff. In at least two recent cases, however, attorneys who represented clients who sued health-care providers for medical malpractice and other reasons have turned around and brought their own FCA cases based on information uncovered during discovery.

This phenomenon puts providers in a dangerous position in which they must question whether the attorneys they face have ...