Millennium Health has agreed to pay $256 million to settle allegations that the company conducted medically unnecessary testing and provided free items to doctors who made referrals to Millennium.  According to the DOJ press release:

The United States alleged that Millennium caused physicians to order excessive numbers of urine drug tests, in part through the promotion of “custom profiles,” which, instead of being tailored to individual patients, were in effect standing orders that caused physicians to order large number of tests without an individualized assessment of each patient’s needs. This practice violated federal healthcare program rules limiting payment to services that are reasonable and medically necessary for the treatment and diagnosis of an individual patient’s illness or injury. The United States also alleged that Millennium’s provision of free point of care urine drug test cups to physicians—expressly conditioned on the physicians’ agreement to return the urine specimens to Millennium for hundreds of dollars’ worth of additional testing—violated the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute. The Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute generally prohibit laboratories from giving physicians anything of value in exchange for referrals of tests.

Millennium also allegedly routinely performed genetic testing without regard to a patient’s individual need.

The settlement resulted from several whistleblower actions, many in which the government intervened.  The whistleblowers will collectively receive $31.83 million as a reward for bringing the allegations to the attention of the government.

Read the entire press release, “Millennium Health Agrees to Pay $256 Million to Resolve Allegations of Unnecessary Drug and Genetic Testing and Illegal Remuneration to Physicians”