Home Health & Hospice Week

Wheelchairs at the center of fraud case. Authorities are continuing their crackdown on fraudulent wheelchair suppliers.
 
James M. Frantz, who formerly operated Medi-Care Orthopedic & Hospital Equipment based in Findlay, OH, pled guilty to Medicare fraud and other charges in Ohio federal court Nov. 9.
 
Prosecutors accused Frantz of fraudulently billing Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers for $58,000 worth of durable medical equipment from 1996 to 2003, reports The Toledo Blade. Frantz billed for wheelchairs he never delivered, or delivered used wheelchairs instead of the new ones billed for, says Assistant U.S. attorney Seth D. Uram. He also allegedly billed for non-covered wheelchair accessories.
 
And Frantz pled guilty to tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud, the Blade says. Prosecutors charge that he used company funds to pay for personal expenses like a boat, country club dues, condo repairs and credit card payments.
 
Frantz will face sentencing in January, the newspaper notes. Medi-Care, with branches in Toledo, Oregon, Bowling Green, Findlay, Fremont and San-dusky, has since been purchased by a new owner.   Because Medicare has stopped paying virtually all power wheelchair claims from the Harris County, TX area, The Scooter Store is pulling out of the region, the New Braunfels, TX-based company says. Medicare hasn't paid 98 percent of the claims the Scooter Store has submitted for beneficiaries in the Houston area since Operation Wheeler Dealer took effect a year ago.
 
Medicare has paid The Scooter Store for only eight of 500 wheelchairs it has delivered in the area in that time period, the company says in a release. Denied and unpaid Harris County claims have cost the company $2.5 million, it says. In other geographic regions, Medicare is paying about 95 percent of claims the company has submitted.
 
Medicare has paid 83 percent of claims for power wheelchairs this year, but only 5 percent in Harris County, the Houston Chronicle reports.
 
The company believes few if any wheelchair dealers are left serving the area since Operation Wheeler Dealer brought payment to a halt.   A Washington state man who shot an Apria nurse to death has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, reports the Associated Press. Prosecutors say Jason Ray Taylor, 24, shot Apria Healthcare Group Inc. nurse Victoria Mardis, 49, in a "thrill kill." The fatal shooting occurred in Redmond, WA in July 2002, when Mardis pulled over to pick up some paperwork that had blown off the top of her car.   The threat of a face-to-face exam requirement for physicians prescribing DME continues to hang over suppliers' heads. Although the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pushed off the regulation in the final physician fee schedule published in the Nov. 15 Federal Register, CMS is working on the reg "right now as we [...]