A former head of hospital operator Health Management Associates Inc was named a defendant in a lawsuit that claimed there were kickbacks at the company, Bloomberg reported. The complaint was part of a growing federal whistleblower investigation into the kickback allegations.

Former hospital executives together with the US Justice Department claimed alleged Gary Newsome, HMA's ex-CEO was personally and directly involved in pressuring the Naples, Florida-based hospital's emergency room staff to boost admissions. The complaint which was filed in South Carolina was unsealed on January 6.

Citing complaints that were unsealed since December, the report said the government has gotten involved in nine whistleblower cases that were filed in at least five states. The cases claimed that doctors were paid by HMA to refer patients to its hospitals and illegally increase emergency room admissions.

Janet Goldstein, an attorney for Jacqueline Meyer and Michael Cowling, the whistleblowers who named Newsome in their complaint, said the government's decision to intervene in the case attests to the quality of the evidence. She added that the lawsuit of Meyer and Cowling is the only complaint that named Newsome. They alleged that the practice was a violation of anti-kickback laws that governed the firm's Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Newsome retired in May to serve as President for a Uruguay mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the report said.

Meyer served as a former client administrator for EmCare Inc while Cowling was a former chief executive of a Mooresville, North Carolina HMA hospital. They filed the lawsuit in July 2011, alleging that Newsome and HMA was part of a nationwide systematic practice of putting pressure on physicians to boost profit by ramping up inpatient admissions.

EmCare is a company owned by Canadian buyout company Onex Corp. A provider of emergency room physician services, EmCare is charged in the lawsuit as a "willing and equally corrupt partner" of the practice.