Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1390520
43 HEALTHCARE NEWS Pain physician sues to halt $5.9M refund to feds in overpayment case By Laura Dyrda A St. Louis-based pain management physician is suing to keep the federal government from collecting millions in refunds after it allegedly overpaid his practice $14,418. Gurpreet Padda, MD, filed a lawsuit April 27 to block the federal government from collecting a multimillion- dollar payment after CoventBridge Group found CMS overpaid his practice. "The difference in clinical opinion serves as the basis for the defendants' overpayment demand, which relies on a flawed and invalid statistical methodol- ogy to inflate $14,418.93 in alleged overpayments to an extrapolated alleged overpayment of more than $5,964,295, a 39,934% increase," the lawsuit states. Dr. Padda, owner of Interventional Center for Pain Management, has a pending administrative appeal, but it can take four or more years for appeals to be resolved. Being required to make the payment in the meantime would force him to close his practice, he states in the lawsuit. The lawsuit asks a federal judge to halt payment de- mands until his appeal is heard. n 9 physician billionaires in the US By Laura Dyrda Nine physicians appeared on the Forbes 35th annual list of the richest people in the world for 2021. Forbes calculated net worth by using stock prices and exchange rates as of March 5. Three of the nine physicians made the list of billionaires for the first time. The billionaire physicians are listed below, and newcomers' names are bolded. 1. Thomas Frist Jr., MD, founder of Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare: $15.7 billion 2. Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, inventor of cancer drug Abrax- ane: $7.5 billion 3. Phillip Frost, MD, inventor and founder of Opko Health: $2.5 billion 4. Leonard Schleifer, MD, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Re- generon: $1.8 billion 5. Gary Michelson, MD, retired orthopedic and spinal sur- geon with more than 340 U.S. patents: $1.7 billion 6. Robert Langer, MD, scientist and professor at Massachu- setts Institute of Technology in Cambridge: $1.6 billion 7. James Leininger, MD, founder of Kinetic Concepts: $1.5 billion 8. August Troendle, MD, president and CEO of Medpace: $1.5 billion 9. Keith Dunleavy, MD, founder of Inovalon: $1.4 billion n Billion-dollar healthcare deals: 5 announced in 2021 By Laura Dyrda H ealthcare transactions have been on fire this year, with at least five billion- dollar deals made or in the works. Here are the deals, ranked by value: 1. Microso said April 12 that it plans to buy Nuance Communications, a company known for its voice-recognition technology, to ex- pand its healthcare offerings in a transaction valued at $19.7 billion. e boards of both companies have approved the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year. 2. Optum revealed plans in January to pur- chase Change Healthcare, a Nashville, Tenn.- based data analytics firm, for $13 billion. e transaction is expected to close in the second half of the year, and Change Healthcare CEO Neil de Crescenzo will become CEO of OptumInsight. 3. Walgreens Boots Alliance said it would sell most of its Alliance Healthcare phar- macy unit to AmerisourceBergen for $6.5 billion in January. AmerisourceBergen is a drug wholesale company. e transaction is expected to close by the end of the 2021 fiscal year. 4. Roche, a Swiss drugmaker, acquired Gen- Mark Diagnostics for $1.8 billion, the com- pany revealed March 15. GenMark, a Carls- bad, Calif.-based company, makes molecular tests that can be used to identify pathogens, including those causing COVID-19, from a single sample. 5. Private equity firm Hellman & Fried- man purchased Cardinal Health's Cordis medical device business, for about $1 billion. Cardinal bought the business from Johnson & Johnson for $2 billion in 2015. e trans- action is expected to close in the first half of Cardinal's 2022 fiscal year. n