Home Health & Hospice Week

New indictment casts doubt on furnishing employee incentives.What you call a good marketing strategy, the feds might call kickbacks. So suggests a new indictment against a Chicago-area home health agency, nurses, and marketers.Prosecutors have indicted nurse co-owners of Goodwill Home Healthcare Inc. in Lincolnwood, Ill., Marilyn Maravilla and Junjee L. Arroyo, plus nurse Ferdinand Echavia and marketers Jean Hol-loway and Rakeshkumar Shah. Goodwill, Maravilla, and Arroyo paid $400,000 in kickbacks in 2009 and 2010 for new patient referrals and existing patient recerts and disguised them as bonuses, according to a release from the Department of Justice.Kickback payments generally ranged from $400 to $700 for each new episode, and $100 to $300 for each re-certification, the indictment says. "By offering kickbacks, Maravilla, Arroyo, and others sought to increase Goodwill's patient census and to enrich themselves and Goodwill," the release says.Details: "In January 2009, Maravilla and Arroyo allegedly created and circulated to [...]