Home Health & Hospice Week

A former home health agency owner holds the distinction of being indicted on “the first criminal charges for the intentional misuse of funds intended to provide relief to health care providers and maintain the access to medical care during the pandemic,” the Department of Justice says in a release.

In 2020, Amina Abbas closed the home health agency 1 on 1 Home Health after Medicare issued an overpayment demand for $1.6 million because the HHA had submitted claims for patients who did not qualify for home health services, the DOJ says.

“According to the indictment, 1 on 1, which was never operational during the pandemic, received approximately $37,656.95 designated for the medical treatment and care of COVID-19 patients. Abbas then allegedly misappropriated the funds by issuing checks to her family members for personal use,” according to the DOJ.

“The Department of Justice has led an historic en­forcement initiative to detect and disrupt COVID-19 related fraud schemes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a release issued last month. “The Justice Department’s efforts to combat COVID-19 related fraud schemes have proceeded on numerous fronts” including against fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) program, and the Unemployment Insurance program, according to the release. The DOJ celebrated the “unprec­edented pace and tempo of these efforts” across many agencies.

While the DOJ cites examples of “clear-cut fraud, it may be only a matter of time until the enforcement agencies move into more gray areas regarding the disbursement of CARES Act subsidies,” warn attorneys Scott Taebel, Katherine Kuchan, and Heather Mogden with Hall Render in online analysis. “Once that occurs, the DOJ could once again turn to the [False Claims Act] to aid in those efforts. Recipients of CARES Act subsidies in the health care arena should therefore be prepared for further government scrutiny in the near future regarding entitlement to those funds,” they warn.