Home Health & Hospice Week

More individuals are going to jail for Miami-area home health agency fraud. Owners and patient recruiters at ABC Home Health Care and Florida Home Health Care Providers received their sentences in federal court Sept. 27 after admitting to Medicare fraud related to furnishing unnecessary services or not furnishing services at all, reports the South Miami Business News.

Owners Alejandro Hernandez Quiros and Vicenta Tellechea received sentences of six-and-ahalf years and five-and-a-half years in prison, respectively, the newspaper says. They also each received three years supervised release.

Recruiter Carlos Castaneda, who admitted to paying kickbacks and bribes, received three years and three months in prison, plus three years supervised release. Javier Zambrana received probation for acting as a straw owner of ABC, in place of his parents. His parents were convicted last November and face sentencing this month, the News says.

Eight people were indicted in the $15 million fraud scheme last year (see Eli's Home Care Week, Vol. XVIII, No. 24, p. 189). And last month a Miami federal jury found Antonio Ochoa, a patient recruiter and home health aide for both agencies, guilty for his role in the scheme. "Ochoa solicited and received tens of thousands of dollars in checks and cash payments as kickbacks and bribes in exchange for referring Medicare beneficiaries to ABC and Florida Home Health," says the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida in a release. Ochoa got about $1,300 per beneficiary in the Medicare scheme, prosecutors say.