Archive

May 18, 2018

Three Florida hospice providers-Health and Palliative Services of the Treasure Coast, Inc., The Hospice of Martin and St. Lucie, Inc., and Hospice of the Treasure Coast, Inc.-will pay $2.5 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations that between 2005 and 2011, they billed Medicare for hospice services provided to patients who were not eligible for all or part of their hospice care under Medicare requirements. Two whistleblowers who initiated the suit, John Simons, M.D. and Lewis Cook, M.D, will receive more than $467,000 from the recovery for their role in bringing the fraud to light. USAO SDFL

May 17, 2018

New Orleans physician Jobie Crear was sentenced to 8 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $810,000 to Medicare for his role in an illegal kickback conspiracy in which he paid recruiters to bring Medicare patients to a nursing and home health services company he operated. USAO EDLA

May 16, 2018

Stephanie L. Patterson was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay more than $81,000 for falsely claiming payments from the State of Illinois Medicaid Home Services Program for hundreds of hours of home health services not performed. USAO SDIL

April 20, 2018

Vladimir Frado was sentenced to 97 months in prison and pay roughly $4 million in restitution for his role in a $10 million health care fraud scheme involving a now-defunct home health clinic and two sham physical rehabilitation clinics located in Miami. DOJ

March 29, 2018

Juan Yrorita, the assistant director of nursing at Detroit area home health agency Annointed Care Services, was sentenced to 36 months in prison and pay and forfeit roughly $50 million for his role in a scheme involving approximately $1.6 million in fraudulent Medicare claims for home health services that were procured through the payment of kickbacks, and that were medically unnecessary and not provided. DOJ

February 28, 2018

Rafael Arias, the owner of numerous Miami-area home health agencies, was sentenced to 240 months in prison and pay $66.4 million in restitution for his role in a $66 million conspiracy to defraud the Medicare program. As part of his guilty plea, Arias admitted recruiting nominee owners to falsely and fraudulently represent themselves as the agencies’ owners to hide his identity and ownership interest. Arias and his co-conspirators paid illegal bribes and kickbacks to patient recruiters to refer patients to these agencies, and submitted false and fraudulent home health care claims to Medicare for beneficiaries who, in many cases, did not qualify or for whom the services were never provided. DOJ

February 8, 2018

Privately owned for-profit hospice company Horizons Hospice, LLC and its owner agreed to pay roughly $1.2 million to settle claims they violated the False Claims Act for billing Medicare and Medicaid for hospice services for patients who were ineligible for hospice. The allegations originated in two whistleblower lawsuits filed under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act.  DOJ (WDPA)

January 31, 2018

Brooklyn-based home health care company Home Family Care, Inc. and its co-owner and president agreed to pay roughly $6.4 million to settle claims they violated the False Claims Act by billing Medicaid for home health care services the company did not provide to Medicaid recipients. The allegations originated in a whistleblower lawsuit filed under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act. DOJ (EDPA)

January 31, 2018

New York announced that Home Family Care, Inc. ("Home Family") of Brooklyn, NY and its President, Alexander Kiselev, will pay $6.415 million to resolve allegations that they violated the federal and New York False Claims Acts by falsely billing the New York State Medicaid program for home health care services that were not provided or that were provided by unqualified staff. The settlement resolves allegations in a complaint filed by the State of New York and the United States that Home Family routinely permitted its aides to circumvent verification procedures purportedly put in place by Home Family to ensure that its aides were providing scheduled services to Medicaid recipients who depended upon them. As alleged in the complaint, even after Home Family put in place an electronic attendance verification system which purportedly required aides to call a central number to "clock in" and "clock out" of their shifts before their services could be billed, Home Family aides routinely ignored this requirement and failed to clock in or out of their shifts – yet were still paid for them. NY

January 4, 2018

Kim Ricard was sentenced to 51 months in prison and to pay roughly $2 million in restitution for her involvement in a $2 million home health kickback scheme carried out through a New Orleans area home health agency. DOJ