Category: Daily News

Federal authorities are ramping up efforts to crack down on healthcare fraud, announcing plans to prosecute top executives at hospitals and other organizations involved with fraud – and target other fraudsters as well.

Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general for the criminal division at the Department of Justice, said in a recent presentation: “We are stepping up our prosecutions of corporations involved in healthcare fraud. Corporate healthcare fraud cases are a natural fit for us in light of our healthcare fraud expertise and our prosecutions of corporate cases in the financial fraud and foreign bribery arenas. We have numerous ongoing corporate healthcare fraud investigations, and we are determined to bring more.”

Healthcare attorney Peter Zeindenberg, a partner in the Washington officer of the law firm Arent Fox, says that the Justice Department’s warning is aimed at top executives at hospitals and other healthcare organizations where fraudulent activities, ranging from false Medicare billing to illegal kick-backs, are taking place.

For the most part, fraud-related cases against healthcare organizations have often ended up with restitution or settlements, not criminal prosecutions of executives that involve prison time, he says. “Companies have been able to resolve these cases by entering into non-prosecution or deferred prosecution agreements and leave individual executives untouched,” he says. In large part due to public pushback on corporate executives too often getting passes, the Justice Department is sending out signals that it “wants to serve up executives on a silver platter,” for misconduct that includes healthcare fraud, Zeidenberg says. But the attorney says he’s “somewhat dubious” that will actually happen.
OIG Crack Down

In addition to the Justice Department’s efforts, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General is also stepping up its fraud crackdown activities. OIG often gets involved in criminal cases against owners of small medical companies or clinics – or individual physicians – where false billing and identity fraud is alleged, says Scott Lampert, assistant special agent in charge of the HHS OIG’s New York Regional Office, Office of Investigations. “Cases involving identity theft are a growing problem,” he tells Information Security Media Group. “Medical ID numbers are an ATM card to fraudsters.”

One of the largest “and most blatant” such cases to date was the prosecution and conviction of the owner of a Long Island, N.Y., medical supply company who posed as a clinician when visiting nursing homes. Helene Michel entered nursing homes pretending she was a clinician and stole information from patient charts, submitting more than $7 million in fraudulent Medicare billing using those records, Lampert says. In April 2013, Michel was convicted on charges of healthcare fraud and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information. She was sentenced to 12 years federal prison time and ordered to pay more than $4.4 million in restitution. Her husband and co-conspirator, Etienne Allonce, for the second year in a row tops the HHS OIG’s “most wanted” fugitive list. Joseph Giambalvo, special agent with the HHS OIG’s New York regional office, tells ISMG that Allonce is believed to be in Haiti. “We have an arrest warrant out for him,” he says. The fraud case involving Allonce and Michel “is one of the largest medical identity theft cases we’ve had, and the first prosecution in the Northeast of a HIPAA case for the misuse of personal health information for profit,” Lampert says.

Physical therapy after total hip (THR) or total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is standard care for all patients. Now, a new study, appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), also found that physical therapy before joint replacement surgery, or “prehabilitation,” can diminish the need for postoperative care by nearly 30 percent, saving an average of $1,215 per patient in skilled nursing facility, home health agency or other postoperative care.

Approximately 50 million U.S. adults have physician-diagnosed arthritis. As the condition progresses, arthritis patients often require THR and/or TKR to maintain mobility and life quality. The number of THRs is expected to grow by 174 percent (572,000 patients) between 2005 and 2030, and TKRs by 673 percent (3.48 million). In recent years, the length of hospital stay following surgeries has decreased from an average of 9.1 days in 1990 to 3.7 days in 2008, while the cost of post-acute care, primarily in skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies, has “skyrocketed.”

Health-care costs following acute hospital care have been identified as a major contributor to regional variation in Medicare spending. This study investigated the associations of preoperative physical therapy and post-acute care resource use and its effect on the total cost of care during primary hip or knee arthroplasty. Utilizing Medicare claims data, researchers were able to identify both preoperative physical therapy and postoperative care usage patterns for 4,733 THR and TKR patients. Postoperative, or “post-acute” care, was defined as the use of a skilled nursing facility, home health agency or inpatient rehabilitation center within 90 days after hospital discharge. Home health agency services included skilled nursing care, home health aides, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and medical social services.

Approximately 77 percent of patients utilized care services following surgery. After adjusting for demographic characteristics and comorbidities (other conditions), patients receiving preoperative physical therapy showed a 29 percent reduction in postoperative care use. In addition:

1) 54.2 percent of the preoperative physical therapy group required postoperative care services, compared to 79.7 percent of the patients who did not have preoperative therapy.
2) The decline in postoperative care services resulted in an adjusted cost reduction of $1,215 per patient, due largely to lower costs for skilled nursing facility and home health agency care.
3) Preoperative physical therapy cost an average of $100 per patient, and was generally limited to one or two sessions.

“This study demonstrated an important opportunity to pre-empt postoperative outcome variances by implementing preoperative physical therapy along with management of comorbidities before and during surgery,” said orthopaedic surgeon Ray Wasielewski, MD, co-author of the study.

A national medical billing company has agreed to pay $1.95 million for allegedly defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid systems. Thus it seems that culpability can now be placed on non-medical administrative perpetrators that are involved in nothing more than the paperwork end of a medical practice.

The United States Attorney’s Office announced that it has reached a settlement with Medical Business Service, Inc. (MBS), which agreed to pay $1.95 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by fraudulently changing diagnosis codes on claims to Medicare and Medicaid, in order to get the rejected claims paid on behalf of radiologists. MBS was located in Florida, with an office in Duluth, Ga.

The civil settlement resolves the United States’ investigation into MBS’s billing practices. The United States alleges that MBS improperly coded and billed claims by radiologists that were submitted to the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medicare and Medicaid issue guidance stating that they will not pay for certain procedures given to patients with specific diagnoses. Medicare and Medicaid will reject claims for payment that combine those procedures and diagnoses. MBS allegedly changed the diagnosis codes on previously rejected claims to avoid those restrictions in order to have the claims paid. The settlement covers a three year period, 2008-2010, during which the conduct allegedly occurred.

“Billing companies provide a key check-point to combat medical billing fraud. Consequently, they will be examined with the same scrutiny as healthcare providers,” said United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates.

“The health care providers who contracted with MBS placed their trust in the company to correctly process claims and not submit fraudulent information to the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” said Derrick L. Jackson, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General in Atlanta. “The lack of compliance and oversight by MBS placed all these providers at risk. Billing services such as MBS have no less of a duty to ensure truthful information on claims than do the providers who use these services.”

This civil settlement resolves a lawsuit filed by Katlisa N. Vaughn under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act, which allow private citizens to bring civil actions on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery obtained. The case, pending in the Northern District of Georgia, is filed under United States of America, State of Florida, State of Georgia, State of New York, State of Tennessee, and State of Texas ex rel. Katlisa N. Vaughn v. Medical Business Service, Inc., Civ. No. 1:10-CV-2953. The Federal government will receive $1.917 million from the settlement, while Florida, Georgia, New York, and Texas will split the remainder of the settlement. Ms. Vaughn will receive a share of the settlement payment that resolves the qui tam suit that she filed. The claims settled in the civil settlement are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.

This resolution is part of the government’s emphasis on combating health care fraud under the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) initiative, which was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, in May 2009. The partnership between the two departments has focused efforts to reduce and prevent Medicare and Medicaid financial fraud through enhanced cooperation. One of the most powerful tools in that effort is the False Claims Act, which the Justice Department has used to recover more than $14 billion since January 2009 in cases involving fraud against federal health care programs. The Justice Department’s total recoveries in False Claims Act cases since January 2009 are over $20 billion.

The Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) has issued a notice of public hearing to revise various provisions of the Official Medical Fee Schedule (OMFS). The public hearing has been scheduled for 10 a.m., November 14, 2014, in the Auditorium of the Elihu Harris Building, 1515 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 94612. Members of the public may also submit written comment on the regulations until 5 p.m. that day. The proposed amendments are as follows:

1) Amend the fee schedules provisions in Article 5.3 and section 9790 in Article 5.5, to reiterate the applicable dates of fee schedule provisions. The Division has become aware of the misapplication of the effective dates of various fee schedule provisions.
2) Amend the inpatient hospital fee schedule provisions that address the operating disproportionate share hospital (DSH) adjustments. The proposed amendments are necessary as a result of changes made by Medicare to their operating DSH adjustment methodology.
3) Amend the inpatient hospital fee schedule provisions that address the outlier payments for eligible transfer cases. The Division has become aware of the need to clarify that hospitals transferring an inpatient to another hospital or post-acute care provider are eligible to receive an outlier payment for qualifying cases. The proposed amendments provide the methodology for determining whether a case is eligible for an outlier payment, and if so, how the payment amount would be calculated. The proposed methodology conforms to Medicare’s payment methodology.
4) Minor amendments that are required to conform to the proposed changes, to update, or to clarify various sections of the Official Medical Fee Schedule.

The notice, initial statement of reasons, and text of the regulations can be found on the proposed regulations webpage.

The Insurance Journal reports that California’s Department of Industrial Relations Director is taking a bit of umbrage with a study released last week that showed the state was ranked as the most expensive in the nation for workers’ compensation. Despite major workers’ comp reforms signed into law in 2012 California topped the 2014 Oregon Workers’ Compensation Premium Rate Ranking Summary, a list of average premiums paid by employers that the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services puts out every two years. Premium rates in the report ranged from a low of 88 cents in North Dakota to $3.48 in California. Premiums paid were 61 cents lower in Connecticut, the next state with a wide margin behind California. Oregon ranked 43rd, reportedly its best performance since the report was first put out in 1988.

The report was seized on by the Workers’ Compensation Action Network as an example of how tough it is to be an employer in California. “Try as we might to reform California’s workers’ compensation system, employers here continue to bear the heaviest cost burden in the nation – by a wide margin,” WCAN spokesman Jerry Azevedo said the day the report was issued.

But on Monday DIR Director Christine Baker called out some issues she had with the study. “It’s good for Oregon, but it isn’t fair to California,” Baker said. A detailed reply to the study put out by DIR notes the Oregon study has “inconsistencies and methodologies that skew the ranking.” Baker said the report compares different occupational classes, and it fails to include adjustments resulting from the application of deductible plans or the return of policyholder dividends. “It is such a completely different distribution,” she said, adding that the industrial mix and the size of California’s employment ranks are not comparable to other states in the study. “It’s a good study for Oregon,” Baker added. “It makes Oregon look really good, but it’s apples-to-oranges for California. It’s just not comparable.”

According to Jay Dotter, who put together the Oregon study, anyway you slice it the report doesn’t bode well for California’s workers’ comp system. The report takes 50 business classes and compares losses over a three-year period. “That’s going to vary a little bit state by state,” Dotter acknowledged. “But you can look at top 10 by payroll and you’re going to see the same top 10 (in terms of premium ranking) probably in every state.” He added: “What that’s saying is the industry mix really doesn’t have that big of an effect on it.”

Also not taken into account in the report are the reforms to California’s workers’ comp system ushered in by Senate Bill 863 in 2012, many of which have yet to take effect, Baker said. Projections indicate that without SB 863, workers’ compensation costs would have spiked more sharply in 2013 and 2014, and that insurance prices had already begun to rise in 2012. SB 863, which initiated an independent medical review and a utilization review process, has already had a positive impact on workers’ comp, according to DIR. Medical expenses appear to be under better control, according to preliminary data from the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California. The data indicates that the estimated ultimate medical loss per lost-time claim is down 1.3 percent from accident year 2012 to 2013.

SB 863 also reduced ambulatory surgery center facility fees from 120 percent to 80 percent of Medicare’s hospital outpatient fee schedule, according to DIR, which stated the average amount paid per ASC episode in the first six months after the change in fee schedules was 26 percent lower than in the year before the change took effect.

Yet another aspect of SB 863 repealed the separate reimbursement for spinal hardware, after which the average amount paid per episode of the spinal surgery involving implantable hardware fell by 56 percent, according to DIR.

Finally, perhaps the biggest SB 863 change was a lien filing fee. During the first year the filing fee was in effect, 213,092 liens were filed, down from 469,190 in 2011, a greater than 50 percent reduction, according to DIR, which estimates the lien filing fee is saving California employers and insurers $270 million per year in litigation and settlement costs. “I think there are a lot of things happening at the same time,” Baker said of the ongoing SB 863 reforms. “We’re hearing from the judges that cases are settling a lot quicker. It will take time to balance all of this out. It will take another two to three years I think.”

Dotter acknowledged that the report, which looks at data up to Jan. 1, 2014, does not reflect SB 863 reforms. But, he added, “We’ll have some idea of that when we do the 2016 study.”