Hospitals charged with using homeless
to defraud Medicare
Three Southern California hospitals are accused of paying recruiters thousands of dollars a month to find homeless people on Skid Row, give them fake diagnoses and send them to the hospital. The hospitals then allegedly billed Medicare or Medi-Cal (California’s version of Medicaid) for treatment of the patients’ nonexistent conditions.
After a two-year investigation, officials from the FBI and other local, state federal agencies raided three Los Angeles hospitals. The CEO of City of Angels Medical Center was arrested on federal charges, along with a man accused of recruiting the fake patients.
The LA city attorney filed civil charges, claiming the scheme used hundreds or thousands of homeless people — who were often paid $20 or $30 for their participation — to bilk millions from the government. The investigation began after a city cop saw what he thought was a routine dumping case but turned out to be part of the alleged scheme.
Read the Los Angeles Times report here.
posted by Jacqueline Dowd @ 11:00 PM
2 Comments:
I am a New Yorker, I am a patient(customer), I have viewed an excellent documentary entitled "Life for Sale" and I am not afraid to tell the truth. I am not a healthcare professional and no one is paying me to lie about my employer(the hospital). My relation to a hospital is that I am the CUSTOMER(patient). I do not wish for a hospital administrator to have control over me and my doctor when it comes to my quality of care. Hospitals are the third party. If it were not for the patient(customer) to approach the doctor for care, the hospitals would not be making money. Since hospital administrators wish to have so much control over our quality of care and pressure doctors to follow their instructions or else get fired, then I declare as a customer/patient that hospital administrators be charged and liable for malpractice and relieve doctors of these actions. Please note that emergency room long-waits are the result of bad hospital administrator judgment, not the doctors, not the nurses, but the hospital administrators. We as patients/customers who have complained to hospital administrators regarding this bad practice, do not wish to pay for this poor quality of care any longer. Therefore, please consider adding your name and comment to the “Improvement in Quality of Patient Care Petition” http://www.petitiononline.com/patients/.
jccicchi@yahoo.com
www.LeapforPatientSafety.org
I am a New Yorker, I am a patient(customer), I have viewed an excellent documentary entitled "Life for Sale" and I am not afraid to tell the truth. I am not a healthcare professional and no one is paying me to lie about my employer(the hospital). My relation to a hospital is that I am the CUSTOMER(patient). I do not wish for a hospital administrator to have control over me and my doctor when it comes to my quality of care. Hospitals are the third party. If it were not for the patient(customer) to approach the doctor for care, the hospitals would not be making money. Since hospital administrators wish to have so much control over our quality of care and pressure doctors to follow their instructions or else get fired, then I declare as a customer/patient that hospital administrators be charged and liable for malpractice and relieve doctors of these actions. Please note that emergency room long-waits are the result of bad hospital administrator judgment, not the doctors, not the nurses, but the hospital administrators. We as patients/customers who have complained to hospital administrators regarding this bad practice, do not wish to pay for this poor quality of care any longer. Therefore, please consider adding your name and comment to the “Improvement in Quality of Patient Care Petition” http://www.petitiononline.com/patients/.
jccicchi@yahoo.com
www.LeapforPatientSafety.org
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