HCR Update form Mark Sanna: This month, the Justice Department said it had joined eight separate whistle-blower lawsuits against Health Management Associates, a for-profit hospital chain in six states. The lawsuits describe a wide-ranging strategy that is said to have relied on a mix of sophisticated software systems, financial incentives and threats in an attempt to inflate the company’s payments from Medicare and Medicaid by admitting patients like an infant whose temperature was a normal 98.7 degrees for a “fever".