Home Health & Hospice Week

A recent exclusion is another sign to take a Corporate Integrity Agreement with the HHS Office of Inspector General seriously — or avoid one altogether.

Background: In 2017, Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Charter Home Health agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle whistleblower lawsuit charges that it, through its officers Wandell Rogers and Allison Williams, paid kickbacks for patient referrals from 2006 to 2012 (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXVI, No. 31). It also entered into a CIA with the OIG.

Now, the OIG says Charter, Rogers, and Williams breached the agreement and are excluded for five years from participation in Medicare and other federal programs.

What happened: “On March 10, 2020, OIG issued a letter demanding stipulated penalties of $280,500 based on Charter Home Health’s failure to submit their second Annual Report,” the agency says in a new post on its website. Charter Home Health failed to pay the penalties, cure the breach, or request a hearing by an HHS Administrative Law Judge, so the OIG issued a notice of material breach and intent to exclude in May 2020. Charter Home Health did not request a hearing, so the OIG then excluded it and the execs effective Aug. 12.