The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), University of Pittsburgh Physicians, and Dr. James Luketich, are facing accusations of health care fraud under the False Claims Act in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania. The United States filed a complaint, based on a two-year investigation into allegations originally brought by a former UPMC physician under the False Claims Act’s whistleblower provisions. It alleges that the defendants knowingly submitted hundreds of materially false claims for payment to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government health benefit programs over the past six years, acting U.S. Attorney Stephen Kaufman said in a statement Thursday. The complaint alleges that Dr. Luketich—the longtime chair of UPMC’s Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery—regularly performs as many as three complex surgical procedures at the same time, fails to participate in all of the “key and critical” portions of his surgeries, and forces his patients to endure hours …