Feds Raid 3 Calif. Hospitals, Arrest CEO
In the latest fallout from reports in 2006 that hospitals were dumping homeless patients in need of care on the streets, federal agents investigating alleged Medicare fraud raided three hospitals in the Los Angeles area today.
They arrested the chief executive officer of one, Rudra Sabaratnam of City of Angels Medical Center, and more arrests are expected, reports the Los Angeles Times. Sabaratnam was indicted last week, along with Estill Mitts who allegedly recruited homeless patients to stay at the hospital, on 21 counts of health care fraud and receiving illegal kickbacks. Mitts is also charged with money laundering and tax evasion.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, announced that lawsuits have been filed against City of Angels, Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center and Tustin Hospital and Medical Center, concerning a claimed scheme to defraud the federal Medicare program and a California state counterpart of millions of dollars.
The scheme allegedly involved payments made to recruit homeless individuals who didn’t need hospital treatment to fill empty beds and the medical centers’ coffers.
“The privately owned medical centers allegedly worked with patient-recruiting operations on skid row that plucked homeless people from the streets and delivered them, with fake medical diagnoses, to the hospitals,” the newspaper writes. Authorities say the process at least sometimes involved “runners” who directed homeless individuals to an assessment center where their eligibility for government benefits was checked and false descriptions of fictitious medical conditions were prepared by non-doctors.
“Prospects were offered small sums of money, typically $20 or $30, to be paid upon completion of a hospital stay of one to three days,” according to the suit, the Times reports. Alleged payments by others claimed to be involved in the scheme reportedly were higher: $20 to $40 to the runner, for each homeless person recruited; a $3,500 monthly kickback to one hospital official; and hospital payments of as much as $20,000 monthly to recruiting groups for a stream of homeless patients.
The suit says one mentally ill woman claimed to have been admitted to all three hospitals during the past four years, including at least six admissions to Los Angeles Metropolitan alone, reports an Associated Press article on the raids.
Identified as “Recruit X,” the woman received little treatment for “chest pains” and the like, the complaint contends, and none of the treatment allegedly was needed. According to the suit, “she frequently used the money she received for participating in the scheme to buy crack cocaine,” the news agency writes.
Updated at 11:59 a.m. to identify Mitts and the charges made against him alone.
