Home Health & Hospice Week

One of the HHA owners in the infamous fraud case centering on Dr. Jacques Roy has received sentencing for last year’s guilty conviction — and it’s steep.

Wilbert James Veasey Jr., owner of Apple of Your Eye Health Care Services Inc. in Dallas, has received a 17-and-a-half-year prison sentence and been ordered to pay $21.1 million in restitution to Medicare and more than half-a-million dollars to Medicaid, the Department of Justice says in a release. Veasey was convicted of Medicare fraud in April 2016 in one of the biggest Medicare fraud schemes to date.

Reminder: Physician Roy owned and operated Medistat Group Associates in the Dallas area.

Medistat primarily provided home health certifications and performed patient home visits, the DOJ said in a February 2012 release. Dr. Roy allegedly certified or directed the home health certification of more than 11,000 patients from more than 500 HHAs over five years. Many of those were for medically unnecessary services and services never provided as part of a massive $375 million fraud scheme. Dr. Roy allegedly instructed Medistat employees to complete 485s by either signing his name by hand or by using his electronic signature on the document, prosecutors charged. Medistat and the HHAs — Apple of Your Eye, Ultimate Care Home Health Services Inc. and Charry Home Care Services Inc. — used patient recruiters for the scheme. (See Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXI, No. 9 for more details of the case.)

Roy was also convicted and awaits sentencing in August, the Dallas Morning News reports. The case led to the Medicare payment suspensions of 78 HHAs to which Dr. Roy referred patients.