The 2017 Department Of Justice False Claims Act Recovery Statistics:

In a year when the Department of Justice recovers $2.5 billion from the healthcare industry in False Claim Act judgements and settlements, can there really be a silver lining?

Every December, the Department of Justice (DOJ) releases its annual False Claims Act (FCA) recovery statistics for the preceding fiscal year. The recovery statistics, as they have for the past several years, indicate the DOJ considers the healthcare industry to be the number one target for FCA enforcement activity. Of the $3.7 billion in judgments and settlements recovered by the DOJ in 2017, $2.5 billion of that came from the healthcare industry. That is a tremendous number and indicates that the DOJ's enforcement priority continues to be healthcare—as it has been for the last several years. In 2016, the DOJ recovered $2.6 billion from the healthcare industry. And in 2015, the DOJ recovered $2.2 billion from the healthcare industry. Healthcare has been a focus of DOJ's FCA enforcement strategy for several years—and it shows no signs of changing any time soon.

There is, however, some silver lining to the government's focus on healthcare. Government initiated actions (i.e., those filed by the government, not a relator) have been less successful in 2017 than in 2016. This is a trend that has continued from last year's statistics, in which government-initiated actions were less successful in 2016 than in 2015. Given that government-initiated settlements and judgments are down to $32.5 million as of 2017, it is unclear how much lower these numbers can go. Perhaps the theme of next year's blog post will be "how low can we go?" Only time will tell.

The following article, "DOJ Releases its 2017 False Claims Act Recovery Statistics," by Matthew Turetzky, Esq., was previously posted on December 26, 2017, on the Sheppard Mullin False Claims Act Defense Blog.

DOJ Releases its 2017 False Claims Act Recovery Statistics

On December 21, 2017, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released its annual False Claims Act (FCA) recovery statistics for fiscal year (FY) 2017. The press release measures the DOJ's total haul at $3.7 billion. Although this is a significant piece of news in its own right, we analyze these statistics each year for any potential trends. (See our post on the 2016 statistics, here, and our full analysis of the 2016 statistics in Robert T. Rhoad's West Year-In-Review conference brief, available here.) And this year, like the years before it, the trendlines...