The Ninth Circuit Expected to Rule that Doctors Can Be Wrong in the Winter v. Gardens False Claims Act Case
On September 13, 2019, the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in the False Claims Act Case of Winter v. Gardens (18-55020). The government, as an amicus in the case, carried the bulk of the argument on behalf of the plaintiff side even though the government had declined to intervene in the case. Having watched the oral argument, health care companies in the western states should expect the Court to reverse the district court and hold that doctors, when admitting patients to a hospital, can potentially falsify the records in order to justify the medical necessity of the admissions to an acute care hospital. The district court had dismissed the nurse-relator’s complaint because the district court believed, as a matter of law, that the opinions of two admitting physicians could not legally be refuted by the nurse’s opinion regarding the admissibility of those patients transferring from a nursing home.
