Home Health & Hospice Week

Physician could face 10 years in prison for false CMNs. The pressure is building in a Texas wheelchair investigation, with three guilty pleas and five defendants set to stand trial.

Back in February, the feds and other law enforcement personnel from 14 different agencies arrested seven wheelchair suppliers, a physician, and three others in an investigation termed "Operation Roll Over" (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIII, No. 6).

Prosecutors alleged that recruiters would approach Medicare beneficiaries and offer them free scooters in exchange for their Medicare information. Then the physician, Lloyd McGriff of Dallas, would fill out a certificate of medical necessity for medically unnecessary power wheelchairs. The home medical equipment owners then would bill for pricey power wheelchairs but furnish only scooters or no equipment at all, charged Texas U.S. Attorney Jane J. Boyle.

Two of the wheelchair suppliers have pled guilty to health care fraud and money laundering, Boyle now says. The remaining five wheelchair business owners are set for trial.

McGriff pled guilty on April 13 to one count of health care fraud and could face 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and mandatory restitution, Boyle says. McGriff's sentencing is set for July 23.

McGriff admitted to receiving money or kickbacks from May 2002 through May 2003 for wheelchair prescriptions and CMNs. That included $200 per CMN from Ignatius Chuka "Chuck" Ogba, owner and operator of Universal Health Services Inc. in Dallas. McGriff would fill out the false paperwork after a perfunctory office visit with the beneficiaries the recruiters found.

Ogba's trial is set to begin in U.S. District Court in Dallas May 3, Boyle says.

The Department of Health and Human Services attributes more than $5.9 million in fraud to McGriff, and more than $15 million to the wheelchair schemes targeted by Operation Roll Over.