I have been speaking with physicians for years about the importance of developing effective fraud and abuse compliance programs in their practices and I often still get the same response: The government is only interested in the big fish like pharmaceutical manufacturers and hospitals -physicians are under the radar.
Well, contrary to popular belief, it appears that there are some pretty big fish in the physician community when it comes to fraud enforcement. The Department of Justice announced this week the largest Medicare fraud bust by dollar amount of a single physician ever. Dr. Jacques Roy of Texas was accused on Tuesday of a fraud scheme which resulted in improper payments from the Medicare and Medicaid programs totaling in excess of $375 million and spanning more than half a decade.
According to the DOJ, Dr. Roy allegedly certified or directed the certification of more than 11,000 individual patients from more than 500 home health agencies over the past five years. Between 2006 and 2011, Dr. Roy’s medical-practice allegedly certified more Medicare beneficiary for home health services and any other practice in the country.