Poet Charles Bukowski is quoted as saying, “I’m not dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay, who isn’t?” That’s what 24 healthy people in Louisiana might have said when they found out that they were registered for and receiving hospice care. Kristal Glover-Wing, owner of hospice services business Angel Care, has been convicted of Medicare fraud involving people who were not terminally ill. In fact, they were never formally placed in hospice at all.
Generally, Medicare pays hospice agencies a daily rate of each day a patient is enrolled in the hospice benefit. Medicare makes this daily payment regardless of the number of services provided on a given day, including days when the hospice provides no services. Between 2009 through 2017, Glover-Win fraudulently processed invoices for hospice care services for twenty-four people who did not meet any of the criteria required by Medicare.
During that time period that the victims were supposedly on hospice and under the care and supervision of Angel Care, but none of them had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. In fact, many of the victims themselves, who are still alive and thriving many years later, testified that they never knew that they had been placed on hospice. The testimony revealed that while on hospice care, these victims were living normal lives and although most of them did have medical conditions, none had been diagnosed as being terminally ill. The fraudulent claims submitted by Glover-Wing to Medicare and reimbursed to Angel Care resulted in a loss of approximately $1,539,161.10 to Medicare.
Great job by the Medicare Investigative team on this case.
Today’s Fraud Of The Day is based on article “Hospice owner convicted in $1.5 million Medicare scheme” published by The Telegraph on April 6, 2023
A former hospice service owner in Louisiana has been convicted on conspiracy and fraud charges in a $1.5 million Medicare scheme involving patients who weren’t terminally ill and didn’t know they’d been signed up for end-of-life care, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.
U.S. Attorney Brandon Brown in Lafayette said in a news release that the verdict was returned against Kristal Glover-Wing, 50, of Broussard.
Prosecutors said that over about nine years, Glover-Wing’s Angel Care Hospice arranged for 24 people to get services who did not qualify for the business’s end-of-life care.
