The federal government this month has responded to a slew of violations by home healthcare and durable medical equipment (DME) providers across the United States.
On March 20, the US Attorney General reported that DME company owner Andrew Chmiel had been sentenced for his involvement in a Medicare fraud scheme amounting to more than $100 million. Chmiel operated at least 10 DME companies across the US, which had billed Medicare for more than $200 million over nine years. The investigation was a joint effort by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Earlier, on March 15, Maryland’s attorney general announced that the owners and operators of Adam Medical Equipment, a DME provider, pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud totaling more than $550,000 by billing for equipment that was not medically necessary and often failing to deliver the items to their intended beneficiaries.
The agencies of HHS, IRS and FBI have been particularly active lately in combating DME fraud. Earlier this month, HHS-OIG issued a consumer alert directing Medicare enrollees to watch out for a scam related to urinary catheters — the first formal acknowledgment of what could be the largest Medicare fraud scheme in history. The fraud involved roughly $3 billion of fraudulent billing for urinary catheters.
On the home care provider front, last week, the Department of Labor recovered more than $140,000 in back wages and damages for employees of Twin City Home Care Services and Divine Services, two home care providers based in Louisiana. The 118 affected workers had been paid straight time wages for overtime hours worked, according to the department.
Legal experts have recently raised alarms of increasing labor law scrutiny on home care providers. In January, Polsinelli attorneys offered strategies for home care agencies involved in Labor Department investigations. Certain developments, including new worker classification rules and a proposed hike to the employees’ overtime threshold, may yield more violations in the future, they noted.
