A Spring Valley woman pleaded guilty to taking part in a multi-year scheme to falsify medical certifications while working as an advocate for immigrants seeking help in obtaining U.S. citizenship or government benefits.

Nawal Talia, 57, admitted during a hearing in federal court in San Diego that she recruited patients for National City psychologist Roberto Velasquez, who was sentenced earlier this year to 21 months in prison and ordered to repay more than $1.5 million to the Social Security Administration in the largest single restitution order in the agency’s history.

As part of her job, Talia for several years submitted documents to federal agencies on behalf of her clients, certifying that they were mentally disabled. Rather than obtain benefits legitimately, she and Velasquez worked together to falsify medical certifications and fabricate patient histories, according to prosecutors.

Talia admitted that she helped Velasquez falsify disability-exception certification forms used by the Department of Homeland Security during the naturalization process and medical letters used by the Social Security Administration to award Supplemental Security Income and disability payments. She conceded that she lied on both types of documents about the length of time her clients had been under the care of Velasquez. In one case, she certified that a patient had been treated by Velasquez for a year, when the person actually had met Velasquez only once, court papers show.

In another instance, she filed a Social Security appeal falsely certifying that a man had been treated by Velasquez for 11 months. Talia simply made up that number so he appeared to be eligible for disability benefits, when Talia knew he was not, according to court documents. Investigators established that Talia repeatedly lied about durations of treatment in order to create a “track record” that would satisfy reviewers at the Social Security Administration and immigration agencies.

The scheme came to light during an undercover operation conducted jointly by the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Inspector General, Social Security Administration..

Scans of people’s knees are less likely to reveal a problem when the referring doctor has a financial stake in the imaging center or the equipment used, suggesting some tests may be unnecessary, according to a new study published in the journal Radiology and summarized by Reuters Health.

Researchers concluded that When doctors have a financial interest in the imaging facility, their patients are 33 percent more likely to get a test result that shows nothing wrong, compared to patients of doctors with no financial interest. “It does raise the questions: Are these studies being performed unnecessarily? Are these machines being over utilized because of an unconscious bias?” Dr. Matthew Lungren, the study’s lead author who did the research while at Duke Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, said.

In medical circles, it is known as “self referral” when doctors send patients to get images or scans taken at centers they partially own.

Lungren and his colleagues reviewed 700 MRIs of knees taken between January and April 2009 at a single imaging facility and ordered by two groups of doctors practicing in the same geographic area. One set of doctors had a financial stake in the imaging facility and the other did not. The patients in each group were similar to each other in age and the doctors in each practice also had similar training.

Of the 350 MRIs ordered by the group with a financial interest in the imaging equipment, 117 of the tests were negative for a problem with the knee. That compared to 88 negative results among the 350 MRIs ordered by the group without a financial interest in the MRI machines.

“There are a lot of possible explanations for this but the bottom line is that there is a significantly higher number of negative studies coming out of the one specific group,” Lungren said. He cautioned the new study cannot show that owning a stake in an imaging center or its equipment caused doctors to order unnecessary tests.

For example, Lungren and his colleagues write that the doctors in the group that owns part of the imaging center and its equipment may have a culture of ordering more tests, compared to the group without a stake in the imaging centers or equipment.

But Dr. David Levin, professor and chairman emeritus of the Department of Radiology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said he is not surprised by the results. “This whole issue of self-referral and imaging has a long history,” he said. “Every study that’s ever been done shows self-referring physicians are going to do more imaging than physicians who refer patients to hospitals or imaging centers.”

An MRI of the knee can cost between $700 and $1,000.

Allstate Insurance Company received a judgment this month of more than $7 million, following a Racketeering Influenced in Corrupt Organizations (RICO) investigation nearly 10 years in the making.

The RICO complaint was filed in 2008 in the Las Vegas Federal District Court against chiropractor Obteen Nassiri, D.C., and his businesses: Advanced Accident Chiropractic Care, ONN Management, Digital Imaging Services and Digital X-Ray. Since the suit was filed, the Chiropractic Physicians’ Board of Nevada revoked Obteen Nassiri’s license.

Allstate’s lawsuit alleged Nassiri began defrauding Allstate in 2003 by exaggerating clinical findings, submitting improbable diagnoses, charging for treatment he did not provide, providing unnecessary and excessive treatment, grossly misrepresenting billing, making inappropriate referrals, and exhibiting a general pattern of illegal and fraudulent conduct. The jury in the case also found Nassiri’s spouse, Jennifer Nassiri, liable for negligent misrepresentation in the overall fraudulent scheme to harm Allstate. The verdict sided with Allstate in June and the final judgment and award was made this month. The total judgment against the defendants included an award to Allstate for $3.59 million in compensatory damages, $2.51 million in punitive damages and $1 million in pre-judgment interest. The company is also pursuing more than a million dollars in attorney’s fees and costs.

Over the last decade, Allstate has filed a series of civil fraud related cases against alleged perpetrators in various states across the nation.

Allstate recently filed a $5.6 million lawsuit in August in New Jersey. It alleges that Shams M. Qureshi MD, age 63, made payments to individuals who acted as middlemen by brokering auto accident patients from New Jersey and New York clinics to Qureshi’s surgery center.

In early 2013 Allstate filed against three New York-area medical providers who allegedly engaged in a fraudulent medical billing scheme seeking $1.7 million Property Casualty 360 reports that since 2003, the insurer has filed a total of 46 fraud lawsuits in the state of New York State seeking more than $233 million in damages.

Last year A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge has ordered Daniel H. Dahan, D.C., and his business, Progressive Diagnostic Imaging, to pay Allstate Insurance Company $7 million in a qui tam (“Whistleblower”) lawsuit arising out of a scheme to defraud insurance companies. Dahan is president of Practice Perfect Management and Consulting Services, of Long Beach, California, which specializes in helping chiropractors set up clinics that combine chiropractic, medical, and physical therapy services. Allstate’s lawsuit alleged that Dahan purchased report-writing software that purported to analyze x-rays and form medical opinions and diagnoses, including opinions concerning permanent impairment ratings, and thereafter formed Progressive Diagnostic Imaging to solicit x-rays from chiropractors, with the assurance that “board certified radiologists” would analyze the films.

As far back as 2004 a Dallas jury found that Texas’ largest chiropractic chain, Accident and Injury Pain Center Inc., conspired in a statewide scheme designed to defraud Allstate. The jury ordered them to pay $2.8 million in actual damages and $3 million in punitive damages.

Heriberto Hernandez was an employee of Thermal Structures Inc. As part of his job, he used a power press to shape sheet metal. The press was not supposed to operate unless two buttons were pushed simultaneously. The buttons were mounted on a pedestal, three and a half feet apart from each other The pedestal was separate from the main body of the press, though connected to it by a cable. Hernandez suffered a gruesome on-the-job injury when his hands were crushed in the power press.

Under the worker’s compensation exclusivity rule (Lab. Code, § 3600, subd. (a)), and under the power press exception to that rule (Lab. Code, § 4558), Hernandez cannot recover against his employer in the tort action he filed against Thermal Structures, Inc. unless he can show that the accident occurred because Thermal either removed or failed to install a point of operation guard on the press.

The trial court granted the employer’s summary judgment ruling that there was no triable issue of fact that would cause this exception to the exclusive remedy to apply. Hernandez appealed, and the Court of Appeal sustained the dismissal in the unpublished case of Hernandez v Thermal Structures Inc.

When the accident occurred, the press did have a point of operation guard — two buttons, mounted on a pedestal; the press was not supposed to operate unless both buttons were pushed simultaneously. Hernandez’s theory was that Thermal “removed” the guard by adding wheels to the pedestal, which allowed the pedestal to move so close to the main body of the press that he could push the buttons with his elbows while his hands were still dangerously close to the press.

The problem with this theory was that, in discovery, Hernandez admitted that (1) Thermal did not remove a point of operation guard, (2) no changes were ever made to the press, and (3) the buttons were not being pushed when the accident occurred. Hernandez argues that the questions he was asked on this topic — and hence his responses — were ambiguous. The Court of Appeal reviewed his question and answer. “So as far as you know, no changes were ever made to the machine?”; he answered, “That I know of, no.” The Court concluded that this “was unambiguous and flatly inconsistent with his later testimony that Thermal added wheels.”.

Accordingly, the trial court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the employer.

The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau’s Governing Committee voted unanimously last week to authorize the WCIRB to submit a Jan. 1, 2014 Advisory Pure Premium Rate Filing to the California Insurance Commissioner. The pure premium rates for the 494 standard classifications proposed to be effective January 1, 2014 average $2.70 per $100 of payroll. This is $0.17, or 6.9%, greater than the corresponding industry average filed pure premium rate of $2. 53 as of July 1, 2013.

The proposed advisory pure premium rates reflect deterioration in the projected cost of losses and loss adjustment expenses of approximately 5.9 % as compared to the WCIRB’s amended January 1, 2013 filing. Below are some of the reasons for the recommended increase.

SB 863 provided for significant increases to permanent partial disability maximum weekly benefits effective January 1, 2014. While policies incepting in 2013 were partially impacted by the January 1, 2014 SB 863 permanent disability benefit increases, the full impact of these increases will be reflected in policy year 2014 cost levels. Almost one-third of the 5.9% deterioration in the indicated pure premium rate level is attributable to the January 1, 2014 SB 863 increases in permanent disability benefits.

In general, for many years, indemnity claim frequency has declined. This decades-long decrease in indemnity claim frequency, which has averaged approximately 3% to 4% per year, is attributable to multiple factors including long-term shifts from heavy manufacturing to a more service-based economy, increased mechanization within industries, and increased employer-sponsored safety efforts. However, in 2010, there was a sharp increase in claim frequency that was partly attributable to a spike in cumulative injury claims in the immediate post-recession environment. Rather than returning to the long-term pattern of decline, indemnity claim frequency in 2011 and 2012 remained high and early indicators for 2013 suggest a further indemnity claim frequency increase.

An increase in cumulative injury claims has been a driver in the recent high level of indemnity claim frequency. Not only does an influx of cumulative injury claims affect indemnity claim frequency, but WCIRB research has indicated that changes in the proportion of indemnity claims involving cumulative injuries is a strong predictor of changes in the number of non-cumulative injury indemnity claims.

The pure premium rates approved by the California Insurance Commissioner are only advisory in that insurers may, and often do, file and use rates other than those approved by the Insurance Commissioner.