Tag Archives: Unnecessary Services

20 charged in $146M healthcare fraud scheme in Brooklyn

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https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/antifraud/healthcare-fraud-scheme-164-million-brooklyn?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RZNE9HVmhObVZoTW1ReSIsInQiOiJJOVIwamhJUzZScW1XQVhjb09IakYzbWNrWVZcL1gzYlwvMm15RWllNnlxYlJkbzNoT09CblgwMWYrcVdXS2N4Q2tyeHBKa2hQeXBtRDNwQktDK0NSQ3NSOUpzRUV4VG91RjF1Z0lIdjZIK0NCaTY3UURTUHV2VnFxZzRHRjZlalJhIn0%3D&mrkid=959610&utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

Money, handcuffs and a stethoscope

Twenty people—four of whom are doctors—are facing charges related to a massive fraud scheme that bilked Medicare, Medicaid and other managed care organizations out of $146 million.

Prosecutors from the Brooklyn District Attorneys Office said the defendants ran an enterprise in which recruiters offered cash to low-income and homeless patients to get them to undergo a series of medically unnecessary tests at participating clinics.

They then allegedly billed publicly funded insurance programs for performing those tests and laundered the fraudulently obtained funds through the bank accounts of a series of shell companies in far-flung countries such as Taiwan and Lithuania.

Once that money reached the defendants, prosecutors said, they used it to buy expensive real estate—such as a $3.25 million apartment in downtown Brooklyn, New York—and fund shopping sprees at high-end stores like Hermes and Bulgari.

“This massive scheme, which provided no patient care at all, wasted millions of taxpayer dollars dedicated to Medicaid and Medicare,” Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in the announcement.

The investigation began following a referral from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. To uncover the alleged scheme, investigators employed undercover detectives, intercepted communications and conducted surveillance and financial analyses.

The defendants are facing charges including enterprise corruption, healthcare fraud, grand larceny and money laundering. Prosecutors said 35-year-old Kristina Mirbabayeva, of Brooklyn, was the ringleader of the scheme, and 53-year-old New Jersey resident Kevin Custis, M.D., was her business partner.

Another one of the doctors charged, 61-year-old Robert Vaccarino, was also employed as a New York Police Department surgeon, according to The Wall Street Journal. The police department said Tuesday that Vaccarino had been suspended.

At a news conference this week, representatives from the Brooklyn District Attorneys Office said the scheme was the biggest healthcare case in the office’s history, the article added.

In other antifraud news:

Prosecutors insist Florida eye doctor stole $136M from Medicaid

The attorney for Salomon Melgen, M.D., a Florida eye doctor who has been convicted of a $100 million Medicare fraud, argued at a sentencing hearing on Thursday that the government has only proven Melgen stole about $64,000.

Attorney Josh Sheptow said Melgen—who was charged separately with bribing New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez—injected patients with then-experimental drugs that are now approved, the Associated Press reported. Sheptow suggested Melgen may have falsified billing statements to get around the fact that Medicare doesn’t pay for experimental treatments—so since the treatments were actually legitimate, the government didn’t lose money on paying for them.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Chase argued that the judge should accept the government’s estimate that Melgen stole $136 million, noting that even if he stole half as much, he would be eligible for a life sentence. Prosecutors are asking for a 30-year sentence.

 

Seven Ways Patients Can Protect Themselves From Outrageous Medical Bills

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https://www.propublica.org/article/seven-ways-patients-can-protect-themselves-from-outrageous-medical-bills

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Experts in reducing charges for medical services say patients need to push for detailed answers up front about the true costs of their care.

A doctor offers a surgical add-on that leads to a $1,877 bill for a young girl’s ear piercing. A patient protests unnecessary scans to identify and treat her breast cysts. A study shows intensive-care-level treatment is overused.

ProPublica has been documenting the myriad ways the health system wastes money on unnecessary services, often shifting the costs to consumers. But there are ways patients can protect themselves.

We consulted the bill-wrangling professionals at Medliminal, one of a number of companies that negotiate to reduce their clients’ charges for a share of the savings. After years of jousting with hospitals, medical providers and insurers, their key advice for patients and their families is to be assertive and proactive.

Here are seven steps patients can take to protect themselves:

  1. Make sure the proposed test or treatment is necessary. Ask what might happen if you didn’t get the service right now.
  2. Ask the price before the test or treatment. (Prices may not be negotiable if they’re set by an insurance company contract.)
  3. Write on your financial agreement that you agree to pay for all treatment provided by providers who are in-network, which means they have set rates with your insurance company. (The medical providers may not accept the altered form.)
  4. If possible, get the billing codes the medical provider will use to charge you and contact your insurance provider to make sure that each code is covered.
  5. If you are having a procedure see if you can get the National Provider Identifier and/or Tax ID number of the surgeons, anesthesiologists and their assistants. Contact your insurance company to see if the providers are in-network, which results in the negotiated rates.
  6. Demand an itemized bill, and then look at each specific charge. Medical bills are often riddled with errors.
  7. Ask if the provider has a financial assistance policy, which could result in a sliding scale discount. Many people qualify, and discounts can range from 20 to 70 percent.

New healthcare fraud trends managed care organizations need to watch

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http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/managed-healthcare-executive/news/new-healthcare-fraud-trends-managed-care-organizations-need-watch?GUID=A13E56ED-9529-4BD1-98E9-318F5373C18F&rememberme=1&ts=17112017

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Even traditional fraud schemes can be difficult to detect, and new methods will only make things more difficult for security teams watching healthcare dollars, says Shimon R. Richmond, special agent in charge at the Miami Regional Office in the Office of Investigations for the Office of the Attorney General.

Richmond gave a presentation on healthcare fraud trends on November 16 at the annual National Healthcare Anti-Fraud Association conference in Orlando, and says hypervigilance is key because obvious red flags are rare.

Where fraud is most prevalent

Richmond says these methods are often based in home health care, personal services, community-based services, and hospice care.

“We see a lot of unnecessary services and billing for services not provided. In the personal care services arena there are a lot of incestuous relationships in terms of who’s providing the care, who’s receiving the care, and who’s billing,” Richmond says. “One really kind of significant theme is pervasive and that’s the overwhelming influence of kickbacks in every area of fraud that we’re seeing.”

Kickbacks can be difficult to detect because this type of fraud often occurs outside of medical systems, he says. Data analytics systems can help, particularly if a system can recognize spikes in billing patterns or from certain providers.

“That’s a red flag. There are those anomalies that we can identify in a proactive manner. But the outside financial arrangements are really something that law enforcement is really only able to get into once we delve into an investigation,” Richmond says.

New fraud trends  

Emerging fraud trends are another challenge when counteracting fraud. It’s difficult to get in front of a new problem that hasn’t been seen before, and the game is always changing, Richmond says.

Recently, Richmond says he has seen an uptick in inappropriate prescriptions for  SUBSYS (fentanyl sublingual spray), which is meant to be prescribed to treat breakthrough pain in cancer patients.

“We’ve seen a huge issue lately where it is being marketed and prescribed to noncancer patients,” Richmond says. “Huge amounts of this drug are being prescribed, but the prescriber is not an oncologist.”

Pharmacies can also be involved in fraudulent activities by searching patient insurance plans to find high-cost prescriptions that can be filled and paid for. The pharmacies then target those consumers to push medications they don’t need, or bill for prescriptions that are never filled.

“A lot of times it’s a bait-and-switch type situation where they’ll do some kind of advertising for a knee brace or some other kind of thing just to get patients to call a number,” Richmond says. Once patients call, they are told the product they were interested in is not available but are offered a more expensive substitute. “There are a lot of marketing companies out there that are acting as lead generators where they are essentially selling to patients the idea of trying out these pains creams or scar creams.”

Hospitals and provider groups in financial distress are also becoming involved in fraud schemes, setting up in-house labs or working with outside labs to generate claims, often for fraudulent genetic testing or urine/drug screens. They may bill for unneeded tests with a kickback, or collect samples that never get tested but are still billed, he says.

Cyber threats and identity theft also continue to be a problem, Richmond says, with a huge spike in the area of telemedicine.

New fraudsters enter the arena

“We are seeing bulk cash transfers, weapons caches, and drug organizations migrating in as they develop their technological abilities and acumen in how to exploit electronic health records,” Richmond says. “This is kind of an evolving threat, and unfortunately, so much of the information is obtainable either online or through an employee that compromises the organization and practice.”

Security teams have to focus on trending information from data on encounters and billing practices, and analyze patterns just to try and keep up.

“I can’t emphasize enough the value of the investments in the analytics and proactive monitoring. That is crucial. Being in the law enforcement arena, a lot of our proactive efforts involve a combination of those analytics and looking for those outliers, or those parts that don’t make sense,” Richmond says. “At the end of the day, it’s all about hypervigilance.