A for profit hospice and home health care company Beacon Hospice with eight locations in New Hampshire has agreed to pay $150 million to settle Government charges that it defrauded Medicare.
The whistleblower in the case, a former employee of Beacon Hospice in Concord, which was acquired by Amedisys in 2011 has filed a federal lawsuit saying the company wrongfully fired him. Laurie Turner of Concord, a business office specialist at Beacon claims she was fired for raising allegations that hospice staff were visiting patients without first getting orders from physicians and then improperly billing for those unauthorized visits.
This is not the only hospice company which has come under scrutiny by Uncle Sam recently for fraudulent practices. The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in May against the nation’s largest for profit hospice chain VITAS Hospice Services. The DOJ says it submitted claims for people who were not terminally ill.
Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers
