Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: Physician indicted for home care kickback solicitation.

Pinning Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Administration home care fraud on their subordinates didn’t work for a mother and son in Ohio.

In a trial in Ohio federal court last month, attorneys for Delores Knight and Isaac Knight, who owned and managed, respectively, Just Like Familee II and Just Like Familee III in Cleveland Heights, Twinsburg, and Mentor, claimed nurses and home health aides committed fraud to get paid and misled the Knights, reported The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

But the jury appeared to buy the government’s argument that “nothing happened without Ms. Knight knowing what was going on.” The Knights were convicted on fraud and money laundering charges in the $7 million scheme where documentation was forged and services not provided, the Department of Justice says in a release.

The defendants will face sentencing later this year. “We will do our best to get whatever assets they have and make sure they go to prison,” says U.S. Attorney Carole S. Rendon in the release. That includes forfeiture of Delores Knight’s luxury home in Macedonia.

Knight’s daughter, Theresa Adams, was also charged in the case (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXIII, No. 34). But she died shortly after indictment, the Dealer says. The feds are seeking forfeiture of a home she owned in Twinsburg.

In other Medicare fraud news:

In Texas: The feds are showing their increased willingness to go after shady docs with a case in McAllen federal court. Dr. Jose de Jesus Martinez has been indicted for soliciting and obtaining cash in exchange for referrals of Medicare beneficiaries to prospective home health agencies, the DOJ says in a release.

In Illinois: The owner of now-closed hospice chain Passages Inc. is asking for a light prison sentence. Seth Gillman pled guilty to a $9.5 million Medicare fraud scheme centered on General Inpatient services last February (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXV, No. 9). Among other reasons he should receive the shortest sentence allowed by law, Gillman said in court earlier this month, is the good care Passages patients received while he engaged in financial shenanigans, reports Law360. The government is pushing for 10 years.