WHAT HEELS: Maxim Settles Medicaid Fraud Charges
Maxim Healthcare Services Co., a privately held MD-based company that provides home health-care services to Medicaid patients, has agreed to pay $150 million to settle criminal and civil allegations by attorneys general in more than 40 states and the U.S. Attorney's office in NJ that it had falsely billed government health-care benefits programs since October 1998, The Wall Street Journal reports:
Maxim Healthcare also agreed to enter into a criminal deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark, which alleged the company defrauded Medicaid and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs programs out of $61 million between 2003 and 2009. The company received more than $2 billion in reimbursements from government programs in that period.
Nine individuals, including eight former Maxim Healthcare employees, also have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, said acting U.S. Attorney J. Gilmore Childers. Three of those charged were former regional managers in the company responsible for "tens of millions of dollars in revenue" annually, he said.
"Fraudulent billing for services not rendered uses patients as pawns in a game of corporate greed that puts cash over care and wastes precious taxpayer dollars," said Tony West, assistant U.S. attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Division, at a press conference in Newark on Monday.
State and federal authorities alleged that Maxim Healthcare submitted false claims to government health-care benefits programs for services that weren't provided; submitted government health care benefits program claims that were improperly documented; and operated health care staffing offices that were not licensed under applicable state laws and regulations.
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