Home Health & Hospice Week

The owner of a licensed home health agency is facing four-and-a-half years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud last summer.

In Oklahoma: Ashely Nicole Brown, the owner of an unlicensed home health company in Broken Arrow, pleaded guilty to exploitation of an elderly couple, identity theft, and jumping bail, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office says in a release. Brown used the elderly victims’ personal information, credit and debit cards without their permission to make nearly $40,000 in purchases for herself and her company, and to pay off personal debts and debts of her family members and company, the AG says. She also jumped bail by fleeing from the courtroom. Brown was sentenced to 10 years (seven in prison and three under probation) and a year for jumping bail.

In California: Akop Atoyan, former owner of Sacramento-area home health and hospice agencies ANG Health Care Inc., Excel Home Healthcare Inc., and Excel Hospice Inc. has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for Medicare fraud. Atoyan and his wife Liana Karapetyan paid and directed others to pay kickbacks to multiple individuals for beneficiary referrals, the DOJ notes in a release. The kickback recipients included a registered nurse who worked for a hospital; the director of social services at a skilled nursing and assisted living facility and her husband; and another SNF director of social services (see more details in HHHW by AAPC, Vol. XXX, No. 27). Karapetyan has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, while the SNF/ALF social services director and her husband have been sentenced to one month in prison and two years’ probation, respectively, the DOJ notes.

In Pennsylvania: The principals in a high-profile Medicaid fraud case in Pittsburgh received hefty sentences last fall. Between January 2011 and April 2017, Moriarty Consultants Inc. (MCI), Coordination Care Inc. (CCI), and another agency collectively received more than $87 million in Medicaid payments based on claims submitted for home health services. During that time, Arlinda Moriarty “admitted orchestrating a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud Medicaid for the purpose of obtaining millions of dollars in illegal Medicaid payments through the submission of fraudulent claims for services that were never provided to the consumers identified on the claims, or for which there was insufficient or fabricated documentation to support the claims,” the DOJ says. Moriarty owned MCI, her sister Daynelle Dickens owned CCI, and their uncle Tony Brown was an employee of MCI. They admitted to fraudulent activities including fabricating timesheets, paying kickbacks to consumers in exchange for their participation in the scheme (including Brown’s son-in-law), submitting bulk claims for so-called “unused hours,” and forging documentation when audited. In addition to nearly $10 million in restitution, Moriarty has been sentenced to seven years in prison, Dickens two years in prison, and Brown three months of home detention while on three years’ probation.