Category Archives: Criminal Medicaid Fraud
A New Associate Joins Practus’ Health Care Team: Ryan Hargrave!!
Attorney Ryan Hargrave joined the Practus Health Care Litigation team on June 1, 2022. Ryan comes from a career of litigation in the State of North Carolina. He began his career in 2016 as a Prosecutor for the State of North Carolina, Guilford County. There he gained valuable experience from which he used as he moved to defending clients. He served as the Lead Trial Attorney at Triad Legal Group before joining Graystar Legal as the Senior Associate Attorney.
Ryan obtained his undergraduate degree at Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC., where he received a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Biology. Ryan has always had a keen interest in health care which has followed him throughout his career. He is locally known as the “Drug Lawyer” for his focus in the defense of drug-related crimes. He has a reputable proficiency in Cannabis Law, Criminal Law, and Civil Law across State and Federal Courts. Ryan has extensive trial experience that he brings to the Health Care Litigation team at Practus.
Ryan lives in North Carolina with his family, spending his time working out, making financial investments, and beginning his non-profit business, “Colored Money”. His non-profit will focus on teaching young boys and girls the value of money as a vehicle to achieve wealth, making smart investments, and how to achieve financial freedom. He is a big Georgia football fan and even has an English Bulldog that could serve as the team’s mascot.
Note from me:
I expect Ryan to dovetail and expand my Medicare and Medicaid regulatory compliance practice because his litigation experience will directly help me in litigation natters, but, also, his criminal litigation experience will also allow us to represent more White Collar Crime clients, including Medicare and Medicaid fraud accusations, False Claims Act, Stark, and Anti-Kickback alleged violations.
We are happy that he is here!
The Grey Area Between Civil and Criminal Fraud
This segment is rated ‘F’ for fraud. It is not for the meek of heart. How many of you have read a newspaper or seen the news about Medicare and Medicaid provider fraudsters? There is a grey area between civil and criminal prosecutions of fraud. Some innocent providers get caught in the wide, fraud net because counsel doesn’t understand the idiosyncrasies of Medicare regulations.
Health care fraud GENERALLY exists as one of the following:
- Billing for services not rendered;
- Billing for a non-covered service as a covered service;
- Misrepresenting the DOS
- Misrepresenting location of service;
- Misrepresenting provider of service
- Waiving deductibles and/or co-payments
- Incorrect reporting of diagnoses or procedures;
- Overutilization of services;
- Kickbacks/referrals for money
- False or unnecessary issuance of prescription drugs
To err is human. Or so Alexander Pope says. I am here to attest that many of those accused providers are innocent and victims of unspecialized criminal attorneys.
One plastic surgeon knows this only too well. Quick anecdote:
Doctor was audited for removing lesions from the eye area and accused of billing for removing cancerous lesions even when the biopsies came back benign. Yet Medicare instructs physicians to NOT go back and change a CPT code after the fact. The physician is supposed to make an educated guess as to whether the lesion removed is benign or malignant. There are no crystal balls so he makes an educated determination.
Since plastic surgery is highly specialized and the physician is highly educated. Deference should be given to the physician regardless.
This plastic surgeon was accused of upcoding and billing for services not rendered. He performed biopsies around the eye of possible, cancerous lesions. Once removed, he would send the samples to lab. Meanwhile, before knowing whether the samples were cancerous, because he believed them to be cancerous, billed for removal of cancerous lesion to Medicare. Correct coding for skin procedures is not impossible.
In a Local Coverage Determination (“LCD”), beginning 2008, Medicare instructed physicians to not go back and change codes depending on the pathology. “If a benign skin lesion excision was performed, report the applicable CPT code, even if final pathology demonstrates a malignant or carcinoma diagnosis for the lesion removed. The final pathology does not change the CPT code of the procedure performed.” See LCD: Removal of Benign Skin Lesions, 2008. This plastic surgeon relied on CMS’ Medicare regulations and policies, including the Medicare Provider Manual and LCD 2008, which are published by the government and on which Dr. relied.
Doctor hired two criminal attorneys who did not specialize in Medicare. Doctor gets charged, and attorneys convince him to plead guilty claiming that he cannot fight the government. And that the government will seize his property if he doesn’t settle.
He pled guilty to a crime that he did not do. He paid millions in restitution, was under house arrest for 15 months, the Medical Board revoked his medical license, and he lost his career.
The lesson here is always fight the government. But choose wisely with whom you fight.
Medicaid Fraud Control Units Performed Poorly During the Pandemic: Expect MFCU Oversight to Increase
OIG just published its annual survey of how well or poor MFCUs across the country performed in 2020, during the ongoing COVID pandemic. Each State has its own Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (“MFCU”) to prosecute criminal and civil fraud in its respective State. I promise you, you do not want MFCU to be calling or subpoena-ing you unexpectedly. The MFCUs reported that the pandemic created significant challenges for staff, operations, and court proceedings, which led to lower case outcomes in FY 2020. But during this past “lower than expected” recovery year, the MFCUs still recovered over $1 billion from health care providers. It was a 48% drop.
As MFCUs initially moved to a telework environment, some staff reported experiencing challenges conducting work because of limitations with computer equipment and network infrastructure. Field work was also limited. To help protect staff and members of the public from the pandemic, MFCUs reported curtailing some in-person field work, such as interviews of witnesses and suspects. These activities were further limited because of an initial lack of personal protective equipment that was needed in order to conduct similar activities in nursing homes and other facilities. Basically, COVID made for a bad recovery year by the MFCUs. Courts were closed for a while as well, slowing the prosecutorial process.
The report further demonstrated how lucrative the MFCU agencies are, despite the pandemic. For every $1 dollar spent on the administration of a MFCU, the MFCUs rake in $3.36. In 2020, the MFCUs excluded 928 individuals or entities. There were 786 civil settlements and judgments; the vast majority of judgments were pharmaceutical manufacturers. Convictions decreased drastically from 1,564 in 2019 to 1,017 convictions in 2020. Interestingly, looking at the types of providers convicted or penalized, the vast majority were personal care services attendants and agencies. Five times higher than the next highest provider type – nurses: LPN, RNs, NPs, and PAs.
And the award goes to Maine’s MFCU – The Maine MFCU received the Inspector General’s Award for Excellence in Fighting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse for its high number of case outcomes across a mix of case types.
OIG also established the desired performance indicators for 2021. OIG expects the MFCUs to maintain an indictment rate of 19% and a conviction rate of 89.1%.
The OIG Report Foreshadows 2021 MFCU Actions:
- Hospice: Expect audits. $0 was recovered in 2020.
- Fraud convictions increased for cardiologists and emergency medicine. Expect these areas to be more highly scrutinized, especially given all the COVID exceptions and rule amendments last year.
- Expect a MFCU rally. The pandemic may not be over, but with increased vaccines and after a down year, MFCUs will be bulls in the upcoming year as opposed to last year’s forced, lamb-like actions due to the pandemic.
While Medicare is strictly a federal program, Medicaid is funded with federal and State tax dollars. Therefore, each State’s regulations germane to Medicaid can vary. Medicaid fraud can be prosecuted as a federal or a State crime.
New Revisions to the Justice Manual -The New World of Health Care Fraud and Abuse in 2019
So many memos, so little time. Federal prosecutors receive guidance on how to prosecute. Maybe “guidance” is too loose a term. There is a manual to follow, and memos are just guidance until the memos are incorporated into what is known as the Justice Manual. Memos are not as binding as the Justice Manual, but memos are persuasive. For the last 22 years, the Justice Manual has not been revised to reflect the many, many memos that have been drafted to direct prosecutors on how to proceed. Until recently…
Justice Manual Revised
The Justice Manual, which is the manual that instructs federal prosecutors how to proceed in cases of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, has been revised for the first time since 1997. The Justice Manual provides internal Department of Justice (DOJ) rules.
The DOJ has new policies for detecting Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse. Some of these policies are just addendums to old policies. Or formal acceptance to old memos. Remember the Yates Memo? The Yates Memo directed prosecutors to indict executives, individually, of fraudulent companies instead of just going after the company.
The Yates Memo has now been codified into the Justice Manual.
Then came the Granston Memo – In a January 10, 2018, memo (the “Granston Memo”), the DOJ directed its prosecutors to more seriously consider dismissing meritless False Claims Act (“FCA”) cases brought by whistleblowers. It lists 7 (non-exhaustive) criteria for determining whether the DOJ should dismiss a qui tam lawsuit. The reasoning behind the Granston Memo is that whistleblower lawsuits have risen over 600 cases per year, but the government’s involvement has not mirrored the raise. This may indicate that many of the whistleblower lawsuits are frivolous and filed for the purpose of financial gain, even if the money is not warranted. Remember qui tam relators (people who bring lawsuits against those who mishandle tax dollars, are rewarded monetarily for their efforts…and, usually, the reward is not a de minimus amount. In turn, people are incentivized to identify fraud and abuse against the government. At least, according to the Granston Memo, the financial incentive works too well and frivolous lawsuits are too prevalent.
The Granston Memo has also been codified into the Justice Manual.
Talk about an oxymoron…the Yates Memo instructs prosecutors to pursue claims against more people, especially those in the executive positions for acts of the company. The Granston Memo instructs prosecutors to more readily dismiss frivolous FCA allegations. “You’re a wigwam. You’re a teepee. Calm down, you’re just two tents (too tense).” – a horrible joke that my husband often quips. But this horrible quote is apropos to describe the mixed messages from DOJ regarding Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse.
The Brand Memo, yet another memo that we saw come out of CMS, instructs prosecutors not to use noncompliance as subject to future DOJ enforcement actions. In other words, agency guidance does not cannot create binding legal requirements. Going forward, the DOJ will not enforce recommendations found in agency guidance documents in civil actions. Relatedly, DOJ will not use noncompliance with agency guidance to “presumptively or conclusively” establish violations of applicable law or regulations in affirmative civil enforcement cases.
The Brand Memo was not incorporated into the Justice Manual. It also was not repudiated.
Medicare/caid Audit Targets Broadened
Going forward, traditional health care providers will not be the only targets – Medicare Advantage plan, EHR companies, and private equity owners – will all be audited and reviewed for fraud and abuse. Expect more audits with wider nets to catch non-provider targets to increase now that the Yates Memo was codified into the Justice Manual.
Anti-Kickback Statute, Stark Law, and HIPAA Narrowed
The Stark Law (42 U.S.C. 1395nn) and the Anti-Kickback Statute (42 U.S.C. §1320a‑7b(b)) exist to minimize unneeded or over-utilization of health-care services payable by the federal government. Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback regulations criminalize, impose civil monetary penalties, or impose other legal sanctions (such as termination from Medicare) against health care providers and other individuals who violate these laws. These laws are esoteric (which is one reason that I have a job) and require careful navigation by specialized legal counsel. Accidental missteps, even minute documentation errors, can lead to harsh and expensive results.
In a health care world in which collaboration among providers is being pushed and recommended, the Anti-Kickback, Stark, and HIPAA laws are antiquated and fail to recognize the current world. Existing federal health-care fraud and abuse laws create a “silo effect” that requires mapping and separating financial interests of health-care providers in order to ensure that patient referrals cannot be tainted by self-interest. Under Stark, a strict liability law, physicians cannot make a referral for the provision of “designated health services” to an entity with which they have a financial relationship (unless one of approximately 30 exceptions applies). In other words, for example, a hospital cannot refer patients to the home health care company that the hospital owns.
Going forward – and this has not happened yet – regulators and the Department will begin to claw back some of the more strict requirements of the Stark, Anti-Kickback, and HIPAA regulations to decrease the “silo effect” and allow providers to collaborate more on an individual’s whole health method. I had an example of this changing of the tide recently with my broken leg debacle. See blog. After an emergency surgery on my leg by an orthopedic surgeon because of a contracted infection in my wound, my primary care physician (PCP) called to check on me. My PCP had nothing to do with my leg surgery, or, to my knowledge, was never informed of it. But because of new technology that allows patient’s records to be accessed by multiple providers in various health care systems or practices, my PCP was informed of my surgery and added it to my chart. This never could have happened 20 years ago. But this sharing of medical records with other providers could have serious HIPAA implications if some restrictions of HIPAA are not removed.
In sum, if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading the Justice Manual in a while, now would be an appropriate time to do so since it has been revised for the first time in 22 years. This blog does not enumerate all the revisions to the Justice Manual. So it is important that you are familiar with the changes…or know someone who is.
Silence Can Be Deadly: Can You Be Held Responsible for Medicare/caid Billings Errors That You Never Knew Existed?
You submit a claim for medically necessary services for a Medicaid recipient. Let’s say you provide behavioral health care services and prescribe medication for people who suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar. One member of your staff (a PA) prescribes Abilify to a child – perfectly acceptable treatment for schizophrenia. The child suffers a seizure and dies. It is discovered, unbeknownst to you, as the owner of the agency, that the staff member prescribing the medication was not appropriately supervised. You are shocked. You are dismayed. You are terrified.
Sure enough, someone tattles on you and a qui tam lawsuit is filed against your agency.
A qui tam (kwee tam) lawsuit is Latin for “who as well,” a lawsuit brought by a private citizen (popularly called a “whistleblower”) against a person or company who is believed to have violated the law in the performance of a contract with the government or in violation of a government regulation, when there is a statute which provides for a penalty for such violations. The whistleblower in qui tam lawsuits can be awarded a lot of money, which is why whistleblowers bring the lawsuits.
In other words, a qui tam lawsuit filed against you is bad…very bad.
You are looking at six figures, easily, in attorneys’ fees, years of litigation, endless sleepless nights, and a high dose of Prozac. All because one of your staff was not properly licensed and could not prescribe medication without supervision. And you had no idea…
Wait…what? Isn’t “intent” or, legally, “scienter” a requirement to prove fraud?? You mean that I could be prosecuted for fraud when I had zero intent to commit fraud, plus, I didn’t even know it was occurring?
This is what happened to Universal Health Services, Inc.’s subsidiary that provided behavioral health care services in Massachusetts. Universal Health Serv. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 136 S.Ct. 1989 (2016).
The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that each time a billing party submits a claim, it implicitly communicates that it conformed to the relevant program requirements, such that it was entitled to receive payment. Every claim implicitly promised compliance of every law!
Imagine the slippery slope with this decision – a multi-state company with offices across the nation bills millions to Medicare and Medicaid monthly. Executive management is in Rhode Island. An office in Tampa fails to check the criminal background of its employees for a period of a year, but in all other ways complies with the regulations and renders medically necessary services that entire year. According to the 1st Circuit opinion, the company could be liable for fraud and the false claims act, resulting in millions of dollars of penalties.
Did it matter to the judge in this case that the company was large? What if it were a small company with one office and four staff?
Juxtapose the 7th Circuit which held only express (or affirmative) falsehoods can render a claim “false” or “fraudulent.” In other words, you can only be held liable for fraud if you purposely or affirmatively acted.
The Supreme Court (last year) held that the implied false certification theory can, at least in some circumstances, provide a basis for liability.
The thinking is that a half truth is a lie. Which is correct…but is it fraud? A classic example of an actionable half-truth in contract law is the seller who reveals that there may be two new roads near a property he is selling, but fails to disclose that a third potential road might bisect the property.
The False Claims Act imposes civil liability on “any person who . . . knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval.” §3729(a)(1)(A). Here’s the prob-lem-o: Congress never defined what is “false.”
Here is what the Supreme Court had to say about the unlicensed social worker:
“So too here, by submitting claims for payment using payment codes that corresponded to specific counseling services, Universal Health represented that it had provided individual therapy, family therapy, preventive medication counseling, and other types of treatment. Moreover, Arbour staff members allegedly made further representations in submitting Medicaid reimbursement claims by using National Provider Identification numbers corresponding to specific job titles. And these representations were clearly misleading in context. Anyone informed that a social worker at a Massachusetts mental health clinic provided a teenage patient with individual counseling services would probably—but wrongly—conclude that the clinic had complied with core Massachusetts Medicaid requirements (1) that a counselor “treating children [is] required to have specialized training and experience in children’s services,” 130 Code Mass. Regs. §429.422, and also (2) that, at a minimum, the social worker possesses the prescribed qualifications for the job, §429.424(C). By using payment and other codes that conveyed this information without disclosing Arbour’s many violations of basic staff and licensing requirements for mental health facilities, Universal Health’s claims constituted misrepresentations.””
In English, this means that: With the act of submitting a Medicaid claim, you are promising that you have followed all rules, including the licensure status required for rendering that service.
The Court held that:
The issue is whether a defendant should face False Claims Act liability only if it fails to disclose the violation of a contractual, statutory, or regulatory provision that the Government expressly designated a condition of payment. The Court concluded that the FCA does not impose this limit on liability. But it also held that not every undisclosed violation of an express condition of payment automatically triggers liability. It matters whether the omission was material.
The Supreme Court determined that not all statutory or regulatory violations are material, disagreeing with the government and the 1st Circuit.
But the Court never made a decision regarding Universal Health Services, Inc. Instead, it vacated the 1st Circuit and remanded the case for reconsideration of whether respondents have sufficiently pleaded a False Claims Act violation. But in doing so, the Court gave guidance as to its opinion. It wrote: “This case centers on allegations of fraud, not medical malpractice.”
What that one sentence tells me is that the Supreme Court does not want to create liability for any and every regulatory omission/mistake on a Medicaid claim. Mistakes happen. People are human. Apparently, even the Supreme Court knows that…
Warning: Medicare/caid Billing Confusion May Lead to Jail Time
All health care providers are under serious scrutiny, that is, if they take Medicaid. In Atlanta, GA, a dentist, Dr. Oluwatoyin Solarin was sentenced to a year and six months for filing false claims worth nearly $1 million. She pled guilty, and, I would assume, she had an attorney who recommended that she plead guilty. But were her claims actually false? Did she hire a criminal attorney or a Medicaid attorney? Because the answers could be the difference between being behind bars and freedom.
Dr. Solarin was accused of billing for and receiving payments for dental claims while she was not at the office. U.S. Attorney John Horn stated that “Solarin cheated the Medicaid program by submitting fraudulent claims, even billing the government for procedures she allegedly performed at the same time she was out of the country.”
I receive phone calls all the time from people who are under investigation for Medicare/caid fraud. What spurred on this particular blog was a phone call from (let’s call him) Dr. Jake, a dentist. He, similar to Dr. Solarin, was under investigation for Medicaid fraud by the federal government. By the time Dr. Jake called me, his investigation was well on its way, and his Medicaid reimbursements had been suspended due to credible allegations of fraud for almost a year. He was accused of billing for and receiving payments for dental services while he was on vacation…or sick…or otherwise indisposed. He hired one of the top criminal attorneys, who advised him to take a plea deal for a suspended jail sentence and monetary recompense.
But, wait, he says to me. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should I have to admit to a felony charge and be punished for doing nothing wrong?
I said, let me guess, Jake. You were the rendering dentist – as in, your NPI number was on the billed claim – but you hired a temporary dentist to stand in your place while you were on vacation, sick, or otherwise indisposed?
How did you know? Jake asks.
Because I understand Medicaid billing.
When my car breaks down, I go to a mechanic, not a podiatrist. The same is true for health care providers undergoing investigation for Medicare/caid fraud – you need a Medicare/caid expert. A criminal attorney,most likely, will not understand the Medicare/caid policy on locum tenens. Or the legal limitations of Medicaid suspensions and the administrative route to get the suspension lifted. Or the good cause exception to suspensions.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating that, when under criminal, health care fraud investigation, you should not hire a criminal attorney. Absolutely, you will want a criminal attorney. But you will also want a Medicare/caid attorney.
What is Locum tenens? It is a Latin phrase that means temporary substitute. Physicians and dentists hire locum tenens when they go on vacation or if they fall ill. It is similar to a substitute teacher. Some days I would love to hire a locum tenens for me. When a doctor or dentist hires a temporary substitute, usually that substitute is paid by the hour or by the services rendered. If the payor is Medicare or Medicaid, the substitute is not expected to submit the billing and wait to be reimbursed. The substitute is paid for the day(s) work, and the practice/physician/dentist bills Medicare/caid, which is reimbursed. For billing purposes, this could create a claim with the rendering NPI number as Dr. Jake, while Dr. Sub Sally actually rendered the service, because Dr. Jake was in the Bahamas. It would almost look like Dr. Jake were billing for services billing the government for procedures he allegedly performed at the same time he was out of the country.
Going back to Dr. Jake…had Dr. Jake hired a Medicare/caid attorney a year ago, when his suspension was first implemented, he may have be getting reimbursed by Medicaid this whole past year – just by asking for a good cause exception or by filing an injunction lifting the suspension. His Medicaid/care attorney could have enlightened the investigators on locum tenens, and, perhaps, the charges would have been dropped, once the billing was understood.
Going back to Dr. Solarin who pled guilty to accusations of billing for services while out of the country…what if it were just a locum tenens problem?
Medicare Fraud: Do MCOs Have Accountability Too?
Dr. Isaac Kojo Anakwah Thompson, a Florida primary care physician, was sentenced in July 2016 to 4 years in prison and a subsequent two years of supervised release. Dr. Thompson pled guilty to health care fraud. He was further ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $2,114,332.33. Ouch!! What did he do?
According to the Department of Justice, Dr. Thompson falsely reported that 387 of his clients suffered from ankylosing spondylitis when they did not.
Question: How does faking a patient’s disease make a physician money???
Answer: Hierarchal condition category (HCC) coding. Wait, what?
Basically, Medicare Advantage assigns HCC coding to each patient depending on the severity of their illnesses. Higher HCC scores equals substantially higher monthly capitation payments from Medicare to the managed care organization (MCO). In turn, the MCO will pay physicians more who have more extremely sick patients (higher HCC codes).
Ankylosing spondylitis is a form of arthritis that causes inflammation and damage at the joints; eventually, the inflamed spinal joints can become fused, or joined together so they can’t move independently. It’s a rare disease, affecting 1 in 1000 people. And, importantly, it sports a high HCC code.
In this case, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found it odd that, between 2006-2010, Dr. Thompson diagnosed 387 Medicare Advantage beneficiaries with ankylosing spondylitis and treated them with such rare disease. To which, I say, if you’re going to defraud the Medicare system, choose common, fabricated diseases (kidding – it’s called sarcasm – I always have to add a disclaimer for people with no humor).
According to the Department of Justice, none or very few of Dr. Thompson’s 387 consumers actually had ankylosing spondylitis.
My issue is as follows: Doesn’t the managed care organization (MCO) share in some of the punishment? Shouldn’t the MCO have to repay the financial benefit it reaped from Dr. Thompson?? Shouldn’t the MCO have a duty to report such oddities?
Let me explain:
In Florida, Humana acted as the MCO. Every dollar that Dr. Thompson received was funneled through Humana. Humana would pay Dr. Thompson a monthly capitation fee from Medicare Advantage based on his patient’s hierarchal condition category (HCC) coding. Increasing even just one patient’s HCC code means more bucks for Dr. Thompson. Remember, according to the DOJ, he increased 387 patients’ HCC codes.
Dr. Thompson reported these diagnoses to Humana, which in turn reported them to Medicare. Consequently, Medicare paid approximately $2.1 million in excess capitation fees to Humana, approximately 80% of which went to Dr. Thompson.
In this case, it is reasonable to expect that Humana had knowledge that Dr. Thompson reported abnormally high HCCs for his patients. For comparison, ankylosing spondylitis has an HCC score of 0.364, which is more than an aortic aneurysm and three times as high as diabetes. Plus, look at the amount of money that the MCO paid Dr. Thompson. Surely, it appeared irregular.
What, if anything, is the MCO’s duty to report physicians with an abnormally high number of high HCC codes? If you have knowledge of someone committing a crime and you do nothing, isn’t that called aiding and abetting?
With the publication of the Yates memo, I expect to see CMS holding MCOs and other state agencies accountable for the actions of its providers. Not to say that the MCOs should actively, independently investigate Medicare/caid fraud, but to notify the Human Services Department (HSD) if abnormalities exist, especially if as blatant as one doctor with 387 patients suffering from ankylosing spondylitis.
CMS Ramps Up Medicare Audits: A Pig and Pony Show?
Monday, February 22, 2016, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it plans to increase onsite visits and monitoring of health care providers. One of the top priorities for CMS is to verify that provider enrollment and address are correct…
Because, as you know, providers with correct addresses on file are less likely to commit Medicare fraud. Medicare Fraud 101 – Give CMS the wrong address. Really? (While I applaud their valiant effort, the fraud that I have witnessed has not been a health care provider using a fake address to provide fake services…that is too Ponzi, too shallow in thought…too easily detected. Oh no, the fraud I have encountered were providers with actual practices with correct addresses, but embellishing on the amount of services provided to an actual Medicare enrollee to cushion their pockets. This is much more difficult to detect.
But CMS has its reasons for sniffing out fake addresses. CMS’ address hunt-down comes on the heels of a report from June 2015 out of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which determined that approximately 22% of Medicare provider addresses are “potentially ineligible.” Additionally, last March (2015) CMS decreased the amount of audits conducted by Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs), which are one of the entities that investigate Medicare provider eligibility.
Whenever the GAO finds potential errors, CMS usually puts on the whole dog and pony show…or, maybe, for a change, a pig and pony show…
With all these political talks about donkeys and elephants, I would like to take a moment and blog about a pig. Some of you know that I own a pet pig. She is 4 1/2 years old and about 30 pounds. See below.
Isn’t she cute?! Some of you will remember my last blog about Oink was “Our Medicaid Budget: Are We Just Putting Lipstick on a Pig?”
The reason I bring up Oink is that she is the smartest, most animated animal I have ever encountered. She is also the best “sniffer-outer” I have ever encountered. Her keen sense of smell is well beyond any human’s sense of smell. If you liken Oink to CMS and Medicare fraud to a Skittle, the Skittle would have no chance.
These upcoming and increased number of audits is CMS’ way of sniffing out fraud. However, CMS’ sense of smell is not up to snuff like Oink’s sense of smell.
Searching for erroneous addresses in order to detect fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA) will, inevitably, be over-inclusive. Meaning, many of the erroneous addresses will not be committing Medicare fraud. Some erroneous addresses exist because providers simply moved to another location and either failed to inform CMS or CMS’ database was not updated with the new address. Other erroneous addresses exist because health care providers went out of business and never informed CMS. A new company leases the property and it appears to CMS that fraudulent billing was occurring a couple years ago out of, for example, what is now a Jimmy John’s.
Searching for erroneous addresses in order to detect FWA will, inevitably, be under-inclusive. Meaning, that many providers committing Medicare fraud do so with accurate office addresses.
My contention is that if you want to find FWA, you need to dig deeper than an incorrect address. Sniffing out Medicare fraud is a bit more in depth than finding improper addresses. That would be like tossing handfuls of Skittles on the ground and expecting Oink to only find the green ones.
In fiscal year 2014, Medicare paid $554 billion for health care and related services. CMS estimates that $60 billion (about 10 percent) of that total was paid improperly (not only because of incorrect addresses).
CMS is responsible for developing provider and supplier enrollment procedures to help safeguard the program from FWA. CMS contracts with Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) and the National Supplier Clearinghouse (NSCs) to manage the enrollment process. MACs are responsible for verifying provider and supplier application information in Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) before the providers and suppliers are permitted to enroll into Medicare. CMS currently contracts with 12 MACs, each of which is responsible for its own geographic region, known as a “jurisdiction.
As you can see, we live in Jurisdiction 11. These MACs act as the “sniffer-outers” for CMS.
According to the GAO June 2015 report, about 23,400 (22 percent) of the 105,234 addresses that GAO initially identified as a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (CMRA), vacant, or invalid address are potentially ineligible for Medicare providers and suppliers. “About 300 of the addresses were CMRAs, 3,200 were vacant properties, and 19,900 were invalid. Of the 23,400 potentially ineligible addresses, [GAO] estimates that, from 2005 to 2013, about 17,900 had no claims associated with the address, 2,900 were associated with providers that had claims that were less than $500,000, and 2,600 were associated with providers that had claims that were $500,000 or more per address.”
In other words, out of 105,234 addresses, only 2,600 actively billed Medicare for over $500,000 from 2005 through 2013 (8 years). Had CMS narrowed the scope and looked at practices that billed over $500,000 since 2010, I fancy the the number would have been much lower, because, as discussed above, many of these providers either moved or went out-of-business.
Now, 2,600 is not a nominal number. I am in no way undermining CMS’ efforts to determine the accuracy of providers’ addresses; I am not insinuating that these efforts are unnecessary or a complete waste of time. I think verification of health care providers’ addresses is an important aspect of detecting FWA. Instead, I believe that, as discussed above, verifying providers’ addresses is a poor, under and over-inclusive attempt at searching for FWA. Because, as I stated at the beginning of this blog, the people who are intentionally trying to defraud the system, are not going to intentionally give an erroneous address. It is just too easy for the government to discover the error. No, the people who are intentionally defrauding the state will have a legitimate office.
For example, in my opinion, it is unlikely that anyone intentionally trying to defraud the system will inform the government that they provide health care services from the following places:
Again, if I liken CMS’ search for FWA by detecting inaccurate addresses to Oink, it would be like tossing a handful of Skittles on the ground and expecting Oink to only find the green ones.
If CMS audits are to Oink as fraud is to Skittles, then I think there is a less intrusive, less inclusive way to detect FWA rather than throwing out packets of Skittles for Oink. All that does is make Oink eat too much.
If you are one of the Medicare providers that get caught into CMS’ widely thrown net, be sure to know your rights! Know the appeal steps!
Tightrope Walking: Correcting Errors in Health Care Documents After the Fact
People screw up. We are human; hence the term, “human error.”
But how to handle said mistakes in health care records after the fact, which could be the target in a Medicare/caid audit?
This is a very important, yet extremely “fine-lined” topic. Imagine a tightrope walker. If you fall off one way, you fall to the abyss of accusations of fraud. You fall off the other way and you fall into the ocean of the False Claims Act. Fixing document errors post date of service (DOS) is a fine line with catastrophic consequences on both sides.
In NC, our administrative code provides guidance.
“SECTION .1400 – SERVICE RECORDS
10A NCAC 13J .1401 REQUIREMENT
(a) The agency shall develop and implement written policies governing content and handling of client records.
(b) The agency shall maintain a client record for each client. Each page of the client record shall have the client’s name. All entries in the record shall reflect the actual date of entry. When agency staff make additional, late, or out of sequence entries into the client record, the documentation shall include the following applicable notations: addendum, late entry, or entry out of sequence, and the date of the entry. A system for maintaining originals and copies shall be described in the agency policies and procedures.
(c) The agency shall assure that originals of client records are kept confidential and secure on the licensed premises unless in accordance with Rule .0905 of this Subchapter, or subpoenaed by a court of legal jurisdiction, or to conduct an evaluation as required in Rule .1004 of this Subchapter.
(d) If a record is removed to conduct an evaluation, the record shall be returned to the agency premises within five working days. The agency shall maintain a sign out log that includes to whom the record was released, client’s name and date removed. Only authorized staff or other persons authorized by law may remove the record for these purposes.
(e) A copy of the client record for each client must be readily available to the appropriate health professional(s) providing services or managing the delivery of such services.
(f) Client records shall be retained for a period of not less than five years from the date of the most recent discharge of the client, unless the client is a minor in which case the record must be retained until three years after the client’s 18th birthday. When an agency ceases operation, the Department shall be notified in writing where the records will be stored for the required retention period.”
What NOT to do:
- Erase notations and write the revision
- Add a check mark that was not previously there
- Forge a staff’s initials
- Back date the revision
When it comes to alteration of medical records for Medicare/caid patients after the DOS, you are walking on a tightrope. Catastrophe is below, not a net. So tiptoe carefully.
Call an attorney with specific questions.
