Lawrence Memorial Hospital

In a new court filing, Lawrence Memorial Hospital employees deny a former nurse’s claims that the hospital falsified records to increase Medicare and Medicaid payments.

In May 2015 Megen Duffy, a former emergency room nurse at LMH, filed a whistleblower lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.

The lawsuit claims that LMH’s Emergency Department falsified the arrival times of patients with chest pains to conceal the amount of time they spent in the waiting room, at registration or in triage. The false records, which allegedly began as early as 2007, were meant to maximize the amount of reimbursement money from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the suit claims.

Megen Duffy

Andrew Ramirez, an attorney representing LMH, declined to comment on the case. Robert Collins, an attorney representing Duffy, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment on the case.

Deposed in September, Duffy reiterated her claims, specifying that LMH Emergency Department Director Joan Harvey and Emergency Department Educator Elaine Swisher discussed how to commit fraud with the most efficiency.

Duffy said in the deposition that she could not recall seeing anyone else discussing the conspiracy to falsify records, though she claimed to suspect the involvement of two other employees.

This month both Harvey and Swisher were deposed and denied Duffy’s claims.

When asked, Harvey said in her deposition that she never ordered anybody to falsify medical records.

“That’s unethical,” she said. “That’s something I would remember.”

Harvey also denied threatening anyone who refused to falsify records with termination.

Swisher denied Duffy’s claims as well.

Another Emergency Department employee, Betty Laymon, was deposed in September and denied that she was ever directed to falsify records or threatened with termination if she objected to filing a false report.

Only excerpts from the depositions are publicly available and attorneys for both Duffy and LMH did not release the full copies of the documents when asked, citing privacy issues.

Duffy worked for LMH from 2009 until she was fired in 2013. Her lawsuit claims she was falsely fired for sending a threatening text to another employee when in reality she was fired because she objected to falsifying arrival times.

Duffy’s lawsuit is asking that the LMH pay $11,000 for each false claim. It is unclear how many false claims there may be.

The lawsuit is also asking that LMH pay back any profits earned through false claims and for her legal costs to be covered alongside any other relief the court might deem to be “just and equitable.”

Due to a program established by the Affordable Care Act, Medicare offers hospitals financial incentives based on their quality of care, Duffy’s lawsuit claims; because patient arrival times were falsely documented other data was offset as a result, putting patients at risk.

Last October attorneys for LMH filed an answer to the lawsuit denying Duffy’s claims and submitting a countersuit.

The countersuit claims that Duffy breached her termination settlement contract — for which she was paid $9,000 — and committed fraud by filing her lawsuit against LMH.

Duffy has denied the countersuit’s claims.

The case is scheduled for a pretrial conference in June 2017. It is unclear when the trial itself, which is expected to last 10 days, will take place.