Matthew Krueger Quoted on DOJ’s Updated Guidance on Voluntary Self-Disclosure

Foley & Lardner LLP partner Matthew Krueger examined the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) updated guidance for health care organizations self-disclosing potential criminal matters in the Report on Medicare Compliance article, “DOJ: Self-Disclose Criminal Matters to DOJ, Not OIG; FCA Pilot Debuts.”

Krueger emphasized that deciding whether to self-disclose potential criminal conduct is “a significant, serious decision to make.”

On takeaways for compliance programs, he highlighted that “they must be designed to detect and address potential wrongdoing fast enough to give the company the chance to beat a path to DOJ’s door before a whistleblower.”

Krueger further noted, “The overall corporate enforcement policy (CEP) changes we have seen in the past 18 months have been sincere and meaningful efforts to simplify the process and make clearer what the potential benefits are.” He added, “They’re trying to encourage voluntary self-disclosure.”

Krueger described the new guidance as “a smaller part of that bigger project,” cautioning that, without tangible CEP rewards, it “still leaves a lot of very tricky judgment calls for companies about whether to disclose and to what agency.”