Home Health & Hospice Week

Latest Medicare fraud cases center around marketing.

The record-breaking national health care fraud takedown doesn’t mean the feds were laying off other fraud and abuse cases in the weeks leading up to the major bust.

In Florida: A former employee of Advanced Homecare Inc. in Jacksonville will get a cool $200,000 for filing a qui tam lawsuit against the home health agency. Advanced agreed to settle fraud charges for nearly $1.3 million, and more than $200,000 of that will go to Marsha Yandell, the Department of Justice says in a release.

Advanced Homecare created a set of “neurocare protocols” under which the company accepted ineligible home health referrals from two neurologists, the DOJ says. Advanced “recklessly allowed its employees to aggressively market its home health services to this neurology practice and … those marketing employees gained direct access to the practice’s patient files, completed referral forms, and used the doctors’ signature stamps to sign orders, in order to circumvent the physician certification re-quirement,” the feds allege.

In Miami: A Plus Home Healthcare Inc. owner Tracy Nemerofsky has agreed to be excluded from participation in all Federal health care programs for five years, the HHS Office of Inspector General says on its website. Nemerofsky directed A Plus to pay eight different physicians’ spouses as employees, in exchange for the physicians’ Medicare referrals. Nemerofsky settled charges related to the allegations last year for $1.65 million (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXIII, No. 33).

In Dallas: Ultimate Care Home Health Services co-owner and nurse Pat Akamnonu pled guilty to her role in a $375 million Medicare fraud scheme, according to press reports. Pat and her husband Cyprian Akamnonu owned the largest agency that worked with the infamous fraudster, physician Jacques Roy. Cyprian Akamnonu pled guilty to fraud in 2012, was ordered to pay about $25 million in restitution, and is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXII, No. 32).

Pat Akamnonu’s sentencing date hasn’t been set yet, according to the Dallas News. Three codefendants in the case are awaiting trial dates being set, while another pled guilty and is scheduled for sentencing in September.