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Home Health & Hospice Week

Fraud & Abuse:

2 Home Care-Related Defendants Plead Guilty After Record-Breaking Fraud Bust

Published on Thu May 10, 2012

Industry must combat fraud rep. The feds just charged 107 individuals nationwide with Medicare fraud in a record-breaking fraud bust, and they're already seeing results. Detroit-area residents Zahir Yousafzai and Dr. Dwight Smith pled guilty May 7 for their roles in a $13.8 million home care fraud and money laundering scheme, the Department of Justice says in a release. Four home health agencies that Yousaf-zai owned or helped operate, First Care Home Health Care, Moonlite Home Care Inc., Physicians Choice Home Health Care, and Quantum Home Care Inc., billed Medicare for services that were never provided, the feds say. Yousafzai admitted to paying doctors, nurses, and other clinicians to create fictitious patient files and paying kickbacks to patient recruiters, the DOJ says. As a physical therapy assistant, he also falsified documentation himself. Smith referred patients to home care whom he had not actually examined when the patients were not homebound, [...]
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