Home Health & Hospice Week

A Mother’s Touch In-Home Care owner Doriann Morgan, office manager Thalisa Walton, and business manager Barbara Jackson admitted that from 2018 to 2021, they submitted fraudulent claims for personal care services purportedly provided by Jackson to a woman who did not live in Missouri and received no services, the DOJ notes. They also submitted claims for times when their own social media posts showed them doing something else.

And in a separate civil settlement, Morgan, Walton, and Jackson agreed to pay $910,000 to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by billing Missouri Medicaid using false timesheets and payroll records for in-home services that were never provided. This settlement resolves qui tam claims brought by whistleblower Michele Bickley, the DOJ reveals. Bickley will receive $90,090 of the proceeds from the settlement.

Morgan, Walton, and Jackson are scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 26.

“Working proudly with the Missouri Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and our other law enforcement partners, our agency will continue to investigate those who threaten the integrity of federal and state health care programs and the people served by them,” HHS Office of Inspector General Special Agent in Charge Linda Hanley says in the release.

Other recent fraud cases include:

In Michigan: Physician James Aronovitz and Michigan Ear Care have agreed to pay over $2 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by charging Medicare and Medicaid for services purportedly provided by Aronovitz, but actually rendered by physician assistants whom Aronovitz did not properly supervise, the DOJ says in a release. Some of those PA services occurred in home health settings without Aronovitz providing the required supervision, it adds.

In Illinois: Chicago health care company Apollo Health Inc. and its owner Brian J. Weinstein have agreed to pay $1 million to resolve charges that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting claims to Medicare for home health and hospice care plan oversight services that were not actually performed, the DOJ says in a release. Weinstein directed Apollo’s billers to submit to Medicare 12,592 claims for CPO services on behalf of 25 different providers, when he knew the providers had not provided CPO services to Medicare patients, and that CPO services were not documented in the patients’ medical records, according to the consent judgement and settlement agreement in the case. Relators Javar Jones and Louis Curet are entitled to 20 percent of the settlement, according to the agreement.