Arizona wound care company charged for billing older patients about $1 million each in skin graft scheme
CBSN
Washington — Federal prosecutors charged the owners of an Arizona wound care company and two nurse practitioners who worked with them for conspiring to defraud Medicare of over $900 million after they allegedly targeted elderly patients — many of them terminally ill — in a sprawling medical scheme, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
According to prosecutors, the defendants carried out medically unnecessary or ill-advised skin graft treatments to older patients at a billing rate of approximately $1 million per patient. The alleged scheme also involved hundreds of millions of dollars in kickback payments in exchange for illegitimate Medicare billing.
The Justice Department said the defendants applied "unnecessary and expensive amniotic wound grafts" without the appropriate treatment for infection and also placed them on superficial wounds that didn't require this treatment. Over a period of 16 months, Medicare paid two of the defendants over $600 million as part of the fraud scheme, the department alleged.
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