A $450,000 settlement has been reached to settle allegations that a Connecticut nurse and her medical office violated the False Claims Act by causing pharmacies to bill Medicaid for drugs that were never used.
The settlement was announced Wednesday involving Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Dayna L. Giordano and her medical office, according to Attorney General William Tong’s Office.
According to Tong, Giordano was a licensed Advanced Practice Registered Nurse enrolled in the Connecticut Medical Assistance Program, which includes the Connecticut Medicaid program. She treated patients at her own medical office in Branford.
Tong said Giordano would treat patients with opioid or alcohol use disorders by prescribing and administering monthly injections of the long-acting, extended-release drugs Sublocade, Vivitrol and Abilify Maintena.
Between June 2019 and August 2023, Giordano caused several specialty drug pharmacies to submit claims to Medicaid for the injectable drugs, according to Tong. The pharmacies delivered the drugs directly to Giordano’s office, however, she was found to have never administered numerous doses, Tong said. This led to financial losses to Medicaid.
“Although Giordano did not seek or receive payment for these drugs, she knowingly failed to administer the drug injections due to improper medication inventory tracking and substandard record-keeping causing the specialty pharmacies to bill DSS for drugs that were never administered to the intended patients,” Tong’s office said in a statement.
To resolve their liability under the Connecticut False Claims Act, Giordano and her medical office agreed to pay $455,598.
“Dayna Giordano’s poor record-keeping wasted taxpayer dollars and unused medications,” Tong said in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with our state and federal partners to aggressively protect the integrity of our public healthcare programs.”