Settlement expected to be announced

11:48 AM PDT on Friday, April 30, 2004

Associated Press

SEATTLE - - The University of Washington agreed to pay $35 million dollars Friday to settle claims it systematically overbilled Medicaid and Medicare and that it destroyed documents to hide the practice, the Justice Department said.

The federal government will get more than $25 million under the settlement and Washington state $2 million, while Mark Erickson, the whistleblower who brought the fraud to light, will receive $7.25 million, according to Erickson's lawyer.

The fraud settlement - the largest against a teaching hospital since the University of Pennsylvania agreed to pay $30 million in 1995 - ends a five-year investigation that won guilty pleas from two prominent doctors. Restitution paid by those two doctors is included in the $35 million total.

Erickson was a compliance officer for UW Physicians and Children's University Medical Group, which handle billings for doctors at UW centers and clinics, when he filed his lawsuit in 1999.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle and the University of Washington scheduled news conferences Friday to discuss the matter.

The lawsuit, which has been under seal for almost five years, details how the university changed its policies to allow doctors to bill the government for more expensive services than they had performed, said a statement released Friday by the Washington, D.C., law firm of Phillips & Cohen, which represented Erickson.

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