A panel of the Ninth Circuit recently issued a 2-1 opinion reversing, in part, a district court’s dismissal of a False Claims Act case premised on a radiology facility’s use of non-medical grade computer monitors for diagnostic readings.
In reviving the case, the majority concluded that the relator sufficiently pled a false certification theory of fraud from which the court drew a “strong inference” that the radiology facility’s use of the computer monitors did not meet Medicare’s “reasonable and necessary” requirement because the allegedly technologically inferior monitors the radiologists used undermined the efficacy of their diagnostic readings.
The decision is notable because the majority relied on tenuous inferences to establish falsity, as detailed by the dissent, and a watered-down materiality analysis to establish materiality.
