MEDICARE FRAUD: Beverly Hills Doc Indicted By Federal Grand Jury
"A Beverly Hills physician was indicted by a federal grand jury [yesterday] on charges of defrauding the Medicare home health program by inflating bills and billing for services never performed, including house calls to dead patients," the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the case against Dr. David Yedidsion, "the largest biller of doctor home visits in California in 1994," is "believed to be the biggest involving a doctor in the federally subsidized home health care program." Dr. Yedidsion faces "a 20-count indictment accusing him of receiving more than $216,000 in fraudulent payments." A lawyer for Dr. Yedidsion said the charges arose "because of technical issues about how to properly bill for those services and irregularities in the billing process."
Something Fishy Here?
The Times reports that the new charges accuse Yedidsion of "submitting bills for patients who were dead or in state prison or in cities far from Los Angeles." Yedidsion allegedly billed house calls to places where the patients didn't live and wrote other bills for medical facilities where he was "barred from treating patients." The U.S. Attorney's Office filed a civil suit against the doctor three weeks ago, "charging that he submitted at least 1,600 bogus bills from 1992 through 1995, netting more than $300,000 in improper reimbursements." According to the civil suit, "Yedidsion once billed Medicare for visits to 147 patients in a single day," and "[o]n other dates, ... he claimed to have made 80 house calls a day." The civil suit "asks for triple the $300,000 in damages plus $5,000 to $10,000 for each false claim" (Rosenzweig, 2/5).