A 2021 legal battle between UnitedHealthcare and TeamHealth was dismissed after the parties reached a settlement, per court documents.
The two parties first notified the courts that they were on the doorstep of a settlement in mid-August, and the case was voluntarily dismissed on Thursday, according to a filing. While the settlement is listed as confidential, the filing notes that each side will cover its own attorneys' fees and costs.
UHC filed the lawsuit against TeamHealth, a prominent physician staffing firm, in October 2021, alleging that the company upcoded claims for services for about $100 million in fraud. Given its size, UnitedHealth argued that TeamHealth had significant clout to drive up medical costs.
The insurer argued in the suit that as TeamHealth manages the billing and coding for the physician groups it contracts with; it is the entity responsible for submitting the false claims and pocketing the profits.
At the time, TeamHealth CEO Leif Murphy said that the courts "have repeatedly dismissed these claims in other jurisdictions." Instead, he countered, UnitedHealthcare filed the lawsuit as a distraction from separate litigation from a Nevada Team affiliate in which a jury ordered the insurer to pay $60 million in damages as part of the case.
In that case, federal courts determined that UnitedHealthcare significantly underpaid emergency physicians.
The companies spent several years in the early 2020s embroiled in multiple legal spats, with the 2021 case dismissed last week being one of multiple co-existing legal challenges. Around the same time, UHC was engaged in tight negotiations with another staffing firm, Envision Healthcare, that led it to ultimately cut the company from its provider network in January 2021.
UnitedHealthcare and TeamHealth had not responded to a request for comment on the settlement at the time of publication.