Home Health & Hospice Week

A hospice owner indicted two years ago has been found guilty of Medicare fraud in federal court. Philadelphia-based Home Care Hospice Inc. billed Medicare more than $14 million for services that were medically unnecessary or never provided, the Department of Justice says in a release. HCH owner Matthew Kolodesh, aka "Matvei Kolo-dech," diverted $9.6 million from HCH’s operating account for his own personal use, DOJ adds. He used the money for extensive renovations to his house, travel expenses, college tuition for his son, and — a common purchase for Medicare fraudsters — a luxury automobile.

Kolodesh and his co-conspirator paid health care professionals, including doctors, for referring patients to HCH even when those patients were not hospice-eligible, according to prosecutors. To hide the alleged kickbacks, HCH "fraudulently represented that some of those health care professionals were paid for services as medical directors, advisors, or hospice physicians," DOJ says. One such "medical director" was found guilty of taking kickbacks earlier this year (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXII, No. 20).

Kolodesh also directed staff to falsify pa-tient charts, ordered a mass discharge of patients when the hospice hit its cap, and swapped patients to avoid the cap, among other transgressions, prosecutors argued.

And Kolodesh "siphoned substantial sums of cash from the HCH operating account through kickbacks from HCH vendors using a system of phony and inflated invoicing, and a cash kickback scam through sham charitable donations made in the name of the hospice," the release adds.

The government will seek $14 million in restitution and Kolodesh faces up to 370 years in prison at sentencing.