ST. LOUIS – After a federal judge allowed a physician plaintiff alleging fraudulent billing to proceed with a breach of contract claim, the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice.
"While plaintiff greatly appreciates the court's willingness to allow her to adequately assert her claims in an amended complaint, plaintiff does not wish to do so at this time," Dr. Joule Stevenson wrote in her March 17 notice of voluntary dismissal. "Plaintiff is still in the process of exhausting her administrative remedies and wishes to bring all her claims together."
Stevenson sued the defendant Mercy Clinic East Communities in March 2019. The defendant then filed a motion to strike and a motion to dismiss the physician plaintiff's breach of contract claim but U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White of the Eastern District of Missouri saw fit to allow the plaintiff physician's breach of contract claim to proceed while granting Mercy Clinic's motion to dismiss the physician's False Claim Act action.
Justice Ronnie White
| Court website
"In plaintiff's response to defendant's motion to dismiss, plaintiff provides substantially more facts in support of her breach of contract claim," wrote White in his March 2 memorandum and opinion. "She also offers facts seeming to allege violations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 1514A, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101."
The plaintiff named insurance companies such as Medicaid, Medicare, Anthem and Cigna in her lawsuit and further alleged that her Verizon telephone was hacked and another telephone number was added to an existing account.
“I discovered charges that were billed to insurance companies differently than how I coded the office visits,” Stevenson wrote in her April 2019 complaint. “The charges were either up-coded to claim more money than the services I provided or the charges were down-coded to claim for less money than the services I provided.”
Stevenson's complaint further requested that the court order a federal investigation of her false medical claims allegations.
"I was harassed by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department by being nearly run off the road numerous times as I traveled on my way home from work and ran various errands on the highway," wrote Stevenson in the lawsuit.
White's opinion included the caveat that Stevenson could proceed with a breach of contract claim against Mercy Clinic East Communities provided that she file an amended complaint.