• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Harvard, Beth Israel Deaconess pay $2.4 million to settle NIH false claims

Compliance Monitor, June 23, 2004

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Compliance Monitor!

In connection with four federal grants, Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center agreed June 17 to pay $2.4 million to settle allegations that false claims were made to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The settlement is in addition to more than $850,000 Harvard agreed to pay in August 2002 in connection with the same allegations. That takes the total payment by the two institutions to more than $3.25 million.

According to allegations outlined in a press release from the U.S. attorney general in Boston, Harvard and Beth Israel improperly charged various salary and equipment expenses to four federal grants awarded to Harvard by the National Institute on Aging, part of NIH, to support research on aging. The charges allegedly took place between 1994 and 1999.

The government alleges that Harvard billed a total of $5.5 million under the NIH grants, and of that amount $1.9 million was improperly billed.

Under an informal agreement between Harvard and Beth Israel, Beth Israel physician scientists performed work under the grants and submitted invoices to Harvard requesting reimbursement for the work and expenses, the press release said. Harvard paid Beth Israel and then charged the expenses to the NIH grants.

To read more, click here.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Compliance Monitor!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive