Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS allows "rampant criminality" in Medicare, district attorney in Texas says. The repercussions of Medicare fraud cases covered in the mainstream press are snowballing. Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a physician, has sent letters to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Acting Admini-strator Marilyn Tavenner, requesting they provide statistics on their fraud-fighting activities in Texas. Boustany, chair of the Ways and Means Subcom-mittee on Oversight, wants details about "outlier providers" who have "unusual billing patterns," the letters say. In the letters, Boustany suggests HHS, OIG and CMS are not cracking down on these outlier billers like they should be. After a March 2011 subcommittee hearing on the problem, "recent reports out of Texas suggest outlier providers continue to operate with impunity," Boustany criticizes. The letter lists high Medicare payment levels to Houston-area home health agencies as [...]