By IANS,
New York : Two well-placed Indian American doctors – one in California, and the other in Florida – are facing charges related to Medicare and Medicaid fraud, as per newspaper reports.
Rudra Sabaratnam, co-owner and CEO of City of Angels Medical Centre in Los Angeles, was arrested last month by federal authorities on the charge that he conspired with social worker Estill Mitts to recruit people from homeless shelters to receive unnecessary health services.
The homeless were paid a puny $30 for a three-day stay and were treated for such minor complications as skin eruption and dehydration, and the state was billed hundreds of thousands of dollars in the scam, the indictment alleges.
Estill Mitts, who faces a 140-year maximum sentence, has since entered a plea agreement with prosecutors, under which he admitted in late August that he paid homeless people to fake illnesses and be admitted to three for-profit hospitals, including City of Angels, as a means of defrauding Medicare and Medicaid.
Sabratnam pleaded not guilty Aug 11 in US District Court. He was ordered to home detention after posting $700,000 bond. His trial date was set for Sep 30. If convicted, he could face 50 years in federal prison.
“The indictment (against Sabaratnam and other LA hospitals) alleges a sophisticated scheme to defraud important taxpayer-financed healthcare programmes, a scheme that ranged from street-level operatives to the chief executive of a hospital,” said US Attorney Thomas O’Brien in a statement.
The other Indian American doctor enmeshed in a similar case is Urmundalvaru Mallikarjuna, a paediatrician from DeFuniak Springs, Florida.
He was arrested late last month for allegedly billing the state Medicaid programme over $100,000 in the last three years for services for which he knew he should not be reimbursed. If the charges are proved, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
Florida’s Attorney General Bill McCollum said investigators had uncovered how Mallikarjuna created a scheme to bill the Medicaid programme for providing Medicaid-recipient children with a minor complaint, a physical exam, or a ‘well visit’ to double his payment from Medicaid.
Mallikarjuna, who is out on bail, allegedly submitted over 2,600 false claims affecting between 100 and 200 patients, many of them duplicates, according to the attorney general’s office.
He is also charged with allegedly billing Medicaid for office visits “that were in reality brief phone conversations with their parents”, a statement from McCollum’s office said.