$25 Million Settlement Shows DOJ Focus on Home HealthCare Fraud

CareAll Management, a home healthcare provider based in Nashville, Tennessee, recently agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting false and “upcoded” billings to Medicare and Medicaid. The settlement resolves a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. The suit alleged that CareAll overstated the severity of patients’ conditions to increase billings (upcoding) and billed for services that were not medically necessary and were rendered to patients who were not homebound. CareAll is one of the largest home healthcare providers in Tennessee.

As part of the settlement, the relator, Toney Gonzales, will receive more than $3.9 million as his share of the total recovery. Gonzales brought the lawsuit against CareAll under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to sue on behalf of the United States for fraudulent uses of federal funds (including Medicare and Medicaid) and to share in any recovery.

The CareAll settlement illustrates efforts by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to make home healthcare fraud a bigger enforcement priority. In many cases, the government is criminally prosecuting the individuals responsible for the fraud in addition to the corporate entity. In the same week that it announced the CareAll settlement, DOJ reached multi-million dollar settlements involving three other home healthcare fraud schemes. These settlements mark the success of the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) initiative, a partnership between the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to increase efforts to prevent Medicare and Medicaid fraud.

Tagged: False Claims Act (FCA), Fraud Types, Medicaid Fraud, Medicare Fraud, Whistleblower Laws (Federal)