MD2U, a home care company with operations in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina has agreed to pay the federal government $21 million after admitting to fraudulent billing practices so widespread, the government called the company an “extreme outlier.”
Kentucky-based MD2U Holding Company has admitted to violating the False Claims Act and is now liable to the United States in the amount of about $21.5 million, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Thursday.
Nearly all Medicare claims MD2U submitted between July 1, 2007, and Nov. 30, 2014, were falsely billed to Medicare, the DOJ says
In a review of MD2U’s activity during that same period, the federal government found that the home care company submitted fraudulent bills for patients who were not homebound; billed government health care programs at the highest payment codes when a lower code would have been more applicable; wrongly billed the government for visits that were medically unnecessary; and cloned medical records as a means of justifying patient visits.
Patient visits conducted by MD2U’s non-physician providers, for instance, would frequently last under 10 minutes, with some lasting less than five minutes. Even so, these encounters were billed as comprehensive medical visits and billed at the highest level evaluation and management (E&M) code possible, DOJ said. Also, MD2U used an electronic medical record (EMR) system that enabled its non-physician practitioners to electronically cut, copy and paste medical notes from previous visits, DOJ found.
Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers but not those in this case
