US, ex rel. Escobar v. Universal Health Services, Inc

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1423
UNITED STATES, ex rel. JULIO ESCOBAR; CARMEN CORREA,
administratrix of the Estate of Yarushka Rivera,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS,
Plaintiff, Amicus Curiae,
v.
UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES, INC.,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Douglas P. Woodlock, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Stahl and Barron, Circuit Judges.
Michael Tabb, with whom Thomas M. Greene, Elizabeth Cho,
Greene LLP, were on brief for appellants.
Mark T. Stancil, with whom Donald Burke, Robbins, Russell,
Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber LLP, and Mark W. Pearlstein,
Evan D. Panich, Laura McLane, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, were on
brief for appellee.
Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts, with whom
Robert Patten and Jeffrey Walker, Assistant Attorneys General,
were on brief for amicus curiae Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Charles S. Scarborough, Attorney, Appellate Staff, with whom
Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General,
Carmen M. Ortiz, United States Attorney, and Michael S. Raab,
Attorney, Appellate Staff, were on brief for amicus curiae United
States of America.
Jennifer M. Verkamp, Morgan Verkamp LLC, and Jacklyn N. DeMar,
on brief for amicus curiae Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund.
Jeremy W. Meisinger, Thomas R. Barker, Kristyn M. DeFilipp,
and Foley Hoag, LLP, on brief for amicus curiae National
Association of Psychiatric Health Systems.
Lawrence M. Kraus, Lawrence W. Vernaglia, Jason L. Drori, and
Foley & Lardner LLP, on brief for amicus curiae Massachusetts
Hospital Association.
John P. Elwood, Craig D. Margolis, Jeremy C. Marwell, Tirzah
S. Lollar, Christian D. Sheehan, Vinson & Elkins LLP, Kathryn
Comerford Todd, Steven P. Lehotsky, and U.S. Chamber Litigation
Center, on brief for amicus curiae Chamber of Commerce of the
United States of America.
November 22, 2016
STAHL, Circuit Judge. Yarushka Rivera died of a seizure
in 2009 after receiving mental health treatment at Arbour
Counseling Services in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a facility owned
and operated by Defendant-Appellee Universal Health Services
("UHS"). UHS submitted reimbursement claims for these services to
MassHealth, the state's Medicaid agency.
Following Yarushka's death, her mother and stepfather
learned that Arbour had employed unlicensed and unsupervised
personnel, in violation of state regulations -- many of whom were
involved in treating their daughter during the years leading up to
her death. Relators subsequently brought a qui tam action against
UHS under the False Claims Act (FCA), alleging that Arbour had
employed unlicensed and unsupervised personnel, in violation of
state regulations, and that UHS had fraudulently submitted
reimbursement claims to the Commonwealth, despite knowing that
they were in violation of relevant state regulations dealing with
mental health and counseling facilities. This is a theory of FCA
liability known as the "implied false certification theory."
The district court granted defendant's motion to
dismiss, concluding that the regulatory violations were conditions
for participation in the state Medicaid program, but were not
conditions of payment as required for a claim to be actionable
under the FCA. We reversed, holding that the regulatory violations
in question were, in fact, conditions for payment and that the
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Relators' complaint had "properly pleaded that the condition of
payment at issue was a material one," given the ubiquity of the
licensing and supervision requirements throughout the MassHealth
regulations governing the state's Medicaid program with respect to
mental health services. United States and Commonwealth of Mass.
ex rel. Escobar v. Universal Health Servs., Inc., 780 F.3d 504,
514 (1st Cir. 2015) ("Escobar I").
UHS sought review in the Supreme Court, the Court granted
certiorari, and ruled that the implied false certification theory
can be a basis for FCA liability. However, the Supreme Court
vacated our judgment and remanded the case for further
consideration of whether Relators' complaint sufficiently alleged
that the regulatory violations in question were material to the
government's payment decision, a requirement for an actionable FCA
claim. Universal Health Servs., Inc. v. United States and
Commonwealth of Mass. ex rel. Escobar, 136 S. Ct. 1989, 2004 (2016)
("Escobar II").
Applying the Supreme Court's guidance on the question of
whether UHS's misrepresentations were material, we again find that
Relators' complaint sufficiently states a claim under the FCA. We
therefore REVERSE the district court's grant of UHS' Motion to
Dismiss and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
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I. Facts and Background1
Having previously had occasion to discuss the underlying
facts that gave rise to this litigation, see Escobar I, 780 F.3d
at 508-510, we briefly recount the most salient facts before
proceeding to an analysis of the materiality of the
misrepresentations alleged in Relators' Second Amended Complaint.2
A. The False Claims Act Generally
The False Claims Act, 31 U.S. § 3729 et seq., was enacted
in 1863 to address the "massive frauds perpetrated by large
contractors during the Civil War," United States v. Bornstein, 423
U.S. 303, 309 (1976), which hampered the United States' war effort.
The Act imposes civil penalties on "any person who ... knowingly
presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim
1 This case arises from Defendant-Appellee UHS's Motion to
Dismiss Relators' Second Amended Complaint. Following our ruling
in Escobar I, but prior to the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari,
the District Court allowed the filing of a Third and Fourth Amended
Complaint. These rulings were proper, as the mere act of filing
a petition for certiorari does not deprive the district court of
jurisdiction over the case. See United States v. Sears, 411 F.3d
1240, 1241-42 (11th Cir. 2005); see also 28 U.S.C. § 2101(f)
(noting that the trial court or the Supreme Court may issue a stay
pending disposition of a petition for certiorari). However, since
our original ruling in this case and the Supreme Court opinion in
Escobar II were both based on the factual allegations in the Second
Amended Complaint, this Court and the parties all agree that it is
that complaint that is the operative pleading at this stage.
2 Because this appeal follows the granting of a motion to
dismiss, we recite the relevant facts as they appear in Relators'
Second Amended Complaint. See Hochendoner v. Genzyme Corp., 823
F.3d 724, 728 (1st Cir. 2016).
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for payment or approval" to the government. 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a).
The Act contains qui tam provisions authorizing private
individuals to sue on behalf of the United States to recover monies
that were obtained from the government by fraudulent
misrepresentations. 31 U.S.C. § 3730. To be actionable, a false
claim must be material to the government's decision to pay the
claim. See, e.g., Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2001; see also United
States ex rel. Loughren v. Unum Grp., 613 F.3d 300, 307 (1st Cir.
2010). The Act itself defines "material" to mean "having a natural
tendency to influence, or be capable of influencing, the payment
or receipt of money or property." § 3729(b)(4).
B. Regulatory Framework3
This case arose in the context of reimbursement claims
submitted to MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid program. The
applicable Massachusetts Code of Regulations at issue in this case,
and operative at the time of the events in question, required
dependent satellite programs to employ at least two full-time
equivalent professional staff members from separate nonphysician
3
The regulations at issue were in effect from 2008 to 2014,
but have since been amended, with minor revisions. References to
the state regulations and billing codes included herein are
therefore to the then-operative provisions, a copy of which are
attached to MassHealth Transmittal Letter MHC-39 and accessible at
http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/masshealth/transletters-2009/mhc-
39.pdf.
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core disciplines.4 130 Mass. Code Regs. § 429.422(D). The
satellite program's staff must meet the qualifications for core
disciplines as outlined in 130 Mass. Code Regs. § 429.424. For
example, § 429.424 requires that staff psychiatrists must be either
board certified or applying for such certification, or be licensed
physicians in their second year of an accredited psychiatric
residency. Id. § 429.424(A)(1)-(2). Staff psychologists must
have completed a recognized doctoral program or be enrolled in
such a program. Id. § 429.424(B). Social workers must be either
licensed or applying for such a license, and all social workers
(other than the chief social worker in a particular facility) must
be under the "direct and continuous supervision of an independent
clinical social worker." Id. § 429.424(C). While mental health
4 We note that the record does not firmly establish whether
Arbour, the facility where Yarushka received treatment, was a
"dependent" or "autonomous" satellite facility for purposes of the
MassHealth regulations. Compare 130 Mass. Code Regs. § 429.422(D)
(laying out staff composition requirements for dependent
facilities) with id. § 429.422(F) (imposing more stringent
staffing requirements for autonomous facilities, including more
full-time personnel and greater emphasis on licensing, rather than
supervision). In their Second Amended Complaint, as the district
court noted, Relators "do not allege that the Arbour location in
Lawrence is an autonomous satellite program," U.S. ex rel. Escobar
v. Universal Health Servs., Inc., No. CIV.A. 11-11170-DPW, 2014 WL
1271757, at *8 (D. Mass. Mar. 26, 2014). Relators, for their part,
argued before the district court and in their briefing to this
Court during our first encounter with the case that without the
benefit of discovery, they were unable to verify whether Arbour
fit the definition of a "dependent" or "autonomous" facility. We
therefore assume, without deciding, that the applicable
regulations are those governing dependent satellite facilities.
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counselors are not required to be licensed, they "must be under
the direct and continuous supervision of a fully qualified
professional staff member." Id. § 429.424(E)(1).
If the satellite program's staff do not meet the
qualifications for core disciplines as described in 130 Mass. Code
Regs. § 429.424, the staff must receive supervision from qualified
core staff professionals of the same discipline at the parent
center. Id. § 429.422. There are also supervision requirements
for less experienced personnel at satellite programs, with the
regulations providing that "[e]ach staff member must receive
supervision appropriate to the person's skills and level of
professional development[.] Supervision must occur within the
context of a formalized relationship providing for frequent and
regularly scheduled personal contact with the supervisor." Id. §
429.422(D) (incorporating supervision requirements of §
429.438(E)).
When submitting claims to MassHealth, UHS used numerical
codes corresponding to the particular types of services rendered,
in this case individual therapy, family therapy, and group therapy.
The definition of each of these types of services, for billing
purposes, in Section 601 of MassHealth's then-operative Mental
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Health Center Manual requires that they be performed "by [a]
professional staff member as defined in 130 CMR 429.424."5
C. Facts Pertinent to Relators' Claim against UHS
Relators allege that unbeknownst to Yarushka Rivera's
family in the years leading up to her death, UHS's Arbour facility
was in flagrant non-compliance with these regulations. According
to the allegations in Relators' Second Amended Complaint, of the
five specific individuals who treated Yarushka – Maria Pereyra,
Diana Casado, Anna Fuchu, Maribel Ortiz and Anna Cabacoff – only
one of them (Cabacoff) had the proper license or was under the
proper supervision to deliver treatment to Yarushka. Neither
Pereyra nor Casado, the counselors assigned to Yarusha, had a
professional license and at no time during their treatment of
Yarushka were they supervised by anyone that did. Fuchu, despite
being held out to Yarushka's parents as an experienced "doctor"
and representing herself as a psychologist with a Ph.D, in fact
only had received her psychological instruction from an
5
The now-operative provisions no longer include an explicit
requirement for each billing code that the therapy be provided "by
[a] professional staff member as defined in 130 CMR 429.424," but
instead provide that "MassHealth pays for the services represented
by the codes listed in Subchapter 6 in effect at the time of
service, subject to all conditions and limitations in MassHealth
regulations at 130 CMR 429.000 and 450.000." A copy of the now-
operative regulations are attached to MassHealth Transmittal
Letter MHC-48, and can be accessed at
http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/masshealth/servicecodes/sub6-
mhc.pdf.
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unaccredited internet college and had her application for
licensure rejected by the Board of Licensure of the Commonwealth
several years before the treatment giving rise to this lawsuit.
Ortiz was referred to Relators as a psychiatrist, when
in fact she was a nurse, without a license to practice psychiatry.
Ortiz prescribed Trileptal to Yarushka, a medication to which
Yarushka had an adverse reaction. This medication was prescribed
despite the fact that Ortiz could prescribe medications only if
properly supervised by a board certified psychiatrist (she was
not). Yarushka ultimately suffered a seizure, her second while
receiving treatment at Arbour, and died. Throughout this course
of treatment, UHS regularly sought and received reimbursement for
these mental health services from MassHealth.
Finally, UHS's staff members at Arbour, like any health
care practitioner who bills under Medicaid, received National
Provider Identification ("NPI") numbers which identify the
practitioner's level of expertise and whether the practitioner is,
in fact, licensed. One of UHS's unlicensed counselors, Maria
Pereyra, had a fraudulently-obtained NPI, having misrepresented
her background and education. Relators uncovered information that
an additional 22 UHS employees had obtained false NPI numbers that
misrepresented their status as licensed social workers or licensed
mental health counselors.
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Following Yarushka's death, Relators learned that most
of the individuals who had provided care for their daughter were
not properly licensed or supervised. With this knowledge, they
then filed complaints with several state agencies, including the
Disabled Persons Protection Committee ("DPPC"), Division of
Professional Licensure ("DPL"), and the Department of Public
Health ("DPH"). These complaints eventually culminated in the DPH
conducting on-the-ground inspections at Arbour during the spring
of 2012, during which time they learned that Arbour was using
unlicensed and unsupervised personnel. DPH issued a report in
July of 2012 detailing its findings.
D. Procedural Background
On July 1, 2011, while the DPH investigation against
Arbour was still pending, Relators brought suit against UHS in the
United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts,
arguing that by submitting claims for reimbursement to MassHealth,
UHS had impliedly certified that its services were in conformity
with the applicable licensing and supervision requirements, and
that its failure to disclose or correct the violations made these
reimbursement claims fraudulent under the FCA. Relators' Second
Amended Complaint was filed in February of 2013. The district
court dismissed the complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(6), holding that Relators had failed to state a
claim because the regulations in question were preconditions for
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participation in the state's Medicaid program, rather than
preconditions to reimbursement -- and that only the latter could
be used to establish the falsity of a claim under the FCA.
We reversed in relevant part and remanded, finding that
a violation is material to payment if "the defendant, in submitting
a claim for reimbursement, knowingly misrepresented compliance
with a material precondition of payment." Escobar I, 780 F.3d at
512. We found that "[c]ompliance with the regulations at issue
pertaining to staff supervision and core staffing at satellite
centers is a condition of payment by MassHealth," and noted that
at the core of Relators' complaint was the allegation "[t]hat
supervision at Arbour was either grossly inadequate or entirely
lacking" and that Relators' daughter "died after receiving
treatment that was out of compliance with over a dozen
regulations." Id. at 517. We therefore found that the Second
Amended Complaint had adequately stated a claim under the FCA.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a
disagreement among U.S. Courts of Appeals over the validity and
scope of the implied certification theory. The Court upheld the
validity of the implied certification theory, holding that
"[w]hen, as here, a defendant makes representations in submitting
a claim but omits its violations of statutory, regulatory, or
contractual requirements, those omissions can be a basis for
liability if they render the defendant's representations
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misleading with respect to the goods or services provided."
Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 1999. In order for False Claims Liability
to attach, these misleading omissions must be material to the
government's decision to pay the claim. Whether the regulatory,
statutory or contractual requirement in question is a
precondiction for payment was not necessarily dispositive of
whether the requirement is material to the decision to pay, the
Court concluded. Id. at 2001. Rather, "[w]hat matters is ...
whether the defendant knowingly violated a requirement that the
defendant knows is material to the Government's payment decision."
Id. at 1996. The Supreme Court "remand[ed] the case for
reconsideration of whether [Relators] have sufficiently pleaded a
False Claims Act violation." Id. at 2004.
E. The Materiality Test
The language that the Supreme Court used in Escobar II
makes clear that courts are to conduct a holistic approach to
determining materiality in connection with a payment decision,
with no one factor being necessarily dispositive. As the Court
observed, "materiality cannot rest 'on a single fact or occurrence
as always determinative.'" Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2001 (quoting
Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U.S. 27, 39 (2011)).
Because the materiality requirement in the Act descends from
"common-law antecedents," id. at 2002 (quoting Kungys v. United
States, 485 U.S. 759, 769 (1988)), under both the FCA and under
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the common law, materiality "look[s] to the effect on the likely
or actual behavior of the recipient of the alleged
misrepresentation." Id. at 2002-03 (citing Williston on Contracts
§ 69:12 (4th ed. 2003) and the Restatement (Second) of Torts, §
538). Materiality is more likely to be found where the information
at issue goes "to the very essence of the bargain," Escobar II,
136 S. Ct. at 2003, n. 5 (quoting Junius Constr. Co. v. Cohen, 257
N.Y. 393, 400 (1931) (Cardozo, C.J.))
"The materiality standard is demanding," as the False
Claims Act is not "'an all-purpose antifraud statute' or a vehicle
for punishing garden-variety breaches of contract or regulatory
violations." Id. at 2003 (internal citation omitted).
Materiality "cannot be found where noncompliance is minor or
insubstantial." Id. Nor is it sufficient for a finding of
materiality that the Government would have the option to decline
to pay if it knew of the defendant's noncompliance." Id.
The Court then laid out several specific factors that
might contribute to determining materiality:
[p]roof of materiality can include, but is not
necessarily limited to, evidence that the defendant
knows that the Government consistently refuses to pay
claims in the mine run of cases based on noncompliance
with the particular statutory, regulatory, or
contractual requirement. Conversely, if the Government
pays a particular claim in full despite its actual
knowledge that certain requirements were violated, that
is very strong evidence that those requirements are not
material. Or, if the Government regularly pays a
particular type of claim in full despite actual
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knowledge that certain requirements were violated, and
has signaled no change in position, that is strong
evidence that the requirements are not material.
Id. at 2003-04. In a case decided after (and citing) Escobar II,
this Court concluded that in assessing materiality in connection
with a different section of the False Claims Act, the fundamental
inquiry is "whether a piece of information is sufficiently
important to influence the behavior of the recipient." United
States ex rel. Winkelman et al. v. CVS Caremark Corp., 827 F.3d
201, 211 (1st Cir. 2016). These standards of materiality guide
this Court's analysis in Relators' case on remand.
II. Analysis
Applying the holistic approach to determining
materiality laid out by the Supreme Court, we have little
difficulty in concluding that Relators have sufficiently alleged
that UHS's misrepresentations were material. We reach this
conclusion for three reasons. First, Relators have alleged in
their Second Amended Complaint that regulatory compliance was a
condition of payment -- itself a "relevant" though "not
dispositive" factor in determining materiality. Escobar II, 136
S. Ct. at 2001. Second, the centrality of the licensing and
supervision requirements in the MassHealth regulatory program,
which go to the "very essence of the bargain," id. at 2003, n. 5,
of MassHealth’s contractual relationships with various healthcare
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providers under the Medicaid program, is strong evidence that a
failure to comply with the regulations would be “sufficiently
important to influence the behavior” of the government in deciding
whether to pay the claims. Winkelman, 827 F.3d at 211. And third,
while the Supreme Court observed that "if the Government pays a
particular claim in full despite its actual knowledge that certain
requirements were violated, that is very strong evidence that those
requirements are not material," Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2003-
04, the Court did not state that such knowledge is dispositive.
In any case, the factual allegations contained in Relators' Second
Amended Complaint are limited to reimbursement claims filed by UHS
during the course of their daughter's treatment and prior to the
filing of the litigation in July of 2011, and there is no evidence
in the record that MassHealth paid those claims to UHS despite
knowing of the violations.
A. The Regulatory Requirements
Looking "to the effect on the likely or actual behavior
of the recipient of the alleged misrepresentation," id. at 2002,
we first note that the government conditioned MassHealth's
payments on compliance with the licensing and professionalism
regulations. See 130 Mass Code Reg. § 429.441(A). While not
automatically "dispositive," such a designation is "relevant to
... the materiality inquiry." Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2001.
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Additionally, in this case, regulatory compliance is not
merely a condition of payment; rather, MassHealth's decision to
have a series of regulations in place to ensure that clinical
mental health counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists are of
sufficient professional caliber to treat patients strongly
counsels in favor of a finding that compliance with these
regulations is central to the state's Medicaid program and thus
material to the government's payment decision. In describing
Relators' Second Amended Complaint, the Supreme Court noted that
the Relators "have alleged that Universal Health misrepresented
its compliance with mental health facility requirements that are
so central to the provision of mental health counseling that the
Medicaid program would not have paid these claims had it known of
these violations." Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2004. The Supreme
Court concluded that "[a]nyone informed that a social worker at a
Massachusetts mental health clinic provided a teenage patient with
individual counseling services would probably——but wrongly——
conclude that the clinic had complied with core Massachusetts
Medicaid requirements," Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2000, and we
suggested a similar conclusion in our first encounter with this
case. See Escobar I, 780 F. 3d at 514 ("The express and absolute
language of the regulation in question, in conjunction with the
repeated references to supervision throughout the regulatory
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scheme, 'constitute dispositive evidence of materiality.'")
(internal citations omitted).
We reaffirm our previous conclusion on this score.
MassHealth has made it clear in its regulations that it expects
that individuals in the business of providing mental health
services in the Commonwealth have adequate training and
professional credentials. Compliance, or lack thereof, with these
regulations seem to us the textbook example of representations
that would "likely ... induce a reasonable person to manifest his
assent," Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2003 (citing Restatement
(Second) of Contracts, § 162(2)), in determining whether to pay
for the healthcare services. Indeed, we struggle to think of a
misrepresentation-by-omission that would give rise to a breach
more material to the government's decision to pay.
While we recognize that the FCA is not "a vehicle for
punishing garden-variety breaches of contract or regulatory
violations," Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2003, UHS's alleged
misrepresentations were not garden-variety breaches. At the core
of the MassHealth regulatory program in this area of medicine is
the expectation that mental health services are to be performed by
licensed professionals, not charlatans. To use the Civil War-era
example cited at oral argument in Escobar II, UHS's violations in
the instant case are as central to the bargain as the United States
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ordering and paying for a shipment of guns, only to later discover
that the guns were incapable of firing. Id. at 2001.
B. The Government's Actions
The defendant’s primary argument on remand is that the
government continued to pay the claims at issue despite knowledge
that UHS was not in compliance with the applicable regulations in
the manner alleged. Citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in the
present dispute, they argue that, while not dispositive, such
payment practices constitute “strong evidence” of non-materiality.
Id. at 2004. We find defendant’s argument to be unconvincing for
two reasons.
First, reviewing the factual allegations in the Second
Amended Complaint and accepting them as true, as we must for
purposes of evaluating a 12(b)(6) motion, we see no evidence that
MassHealth continued to pay claims despite actual knowledge of the
violations. Relators' Second Amended Complaint only cites
reimbursements paid up to "the filing of this litigation" on July
1, 2011. It would appear that DPH did not conclusively discover
the extent of the violations until March of 2012, well after the
commencement of the litigation. Even assuming, on the most
generous reading of the Second Amended Complaint for UHS, that
various state regulators had some notice of complaints against
Arbour in late 2009 and 2010, mere awareness of allegations
concerning noncompliance with regulations is different from
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knowledge of actual noncompliance. Additionally, there is no
evidence in the complaint that MassHealth, the entity paying
Medicaid claims, had actual knowledge of any of these allegations
(much less their veracity) as it paid UHS's claims. Because we
find no evidence that MassHealth had actual knowledge of the
violations at the time it paid the claims at issue, we need not
decide whether actual knowledge of the violations would in fact be
sufficiently strong evidence that the violations were not material
to the government's payment decision so as to support a motion to
dismiss in this case.
Second, the specific claims identified by Relators only
pertain to Yarushka's treatment, which ended with her death in
October 2009. Their allegations plausibly make out a claim that
those payments, for the unlicensed and unsupervised treatment
their daughter received, were fraudulent. We see no reason to
require Relators at the Motion to Dismiss phase to learn, and then
to allege, the government's payment practices for claims unrelated
to services rendered to the deceased family member in order to
establish the government's views on the materiality of the
violation. Indeed, given applicable federal and state privacy
regulations in the healthcare industry, it is highly questionable
whether Relators could have even accessed such information.
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III. Conclusion
While it may be the case that MassHealth continued to
pay claims to UHS despite becoming aware that they were not in
compliance with the pertinent regulations at the Arbour facility,
and this information may come to light during discovery, at this
time Relators have stated a claim under the FCA sufficient to
survive a Motion to Dismiss. Applying the Supreme Court's holistic
approach to determining materiality, we conclude that UHS's
alleged misrepresentations were material when looking "to the
effect on the likely or actual behavior of the recipient of the
alleged misrepresentation." Escobar II, 136 S. Ct. at 2002.
We therefore REVERSE the district court's grant of UHS's
Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint and REMAND to the
district court for further proceedings.
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