Doctor, executive who pled guilty to Medicare fraud leave ailing practices behind them

Health care providers with employees who committed Medicare fraud also face consequences. 

The Memphis Daily News reports that the Eye Specialty Group "can't help but question their decision to turn in a colleague for Medicare fraud. Doing the right thing, they said, has been a costly business decision." The practice has to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars to the government for the actions of Dr. Seth Yoser who pled guilty to diluting "dosages of eye injection medicine, falsely billed Medicare for the amount of medicine used, then removed the medicine from the practice and sold it elsewhere. In total, false billings of about $1.6 million were submitted to Medicare, prosecutors said." Yoder continues to practice medicine, and his partners are suing him while trying to pay back Medicare for the false billings (Wilemon, 2/10). 

Los Angeles Times: "A former top executive with Tustin Hospital and Medical Center has agreed to plead guilty to paying illegal kickbacks for patients recruited from L.A.'s skid row, according to papers filed Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles. … Authorities said the hospital, under [Vincent] Rubio's direction, paid $2.3 million to the skid row recruiters for a guarantee of 40 to 50 patients a month. The hospital netted $10.6 million from Medicare and Med-Cal because of those patients, according to court papers" (Winton, 2/10).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.