Two doctors and a nurse working for a Texas-based hospice agency were sentenced to a combined total of more than 25 years in prison for a healthcare fraud scheme exceeding $40 million, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.
Bradley Harris, the CEO of the now-defunct Novus Health Services in Frisco, Texas, entered a guilty plea before the trial and later testified against his former employees, Mark Gibbs, MD, Laila Hirjee, MD, and Tammie Little, RN. As a result of his testimony and other evidence presented at the trial, Gibbs was sentenced to 13 years in a federal prison and was ordered to pay $27,978,903 in restitution, and Hirjee was sentenced to 10 years and ordered to pay $16,253,281. Little was sentenced to 33 months in prison.
According to the DOJ and Harris's plea papers, Gibbs, Hirjee, and Little helped Harris defraud Medicare and Medicaid by falsely admitting patients into hospice when it was not medically appropriate and submitting false claims for hospice services from 2012 to 2016.
Harris disclosed that Gibbs and Hirjee frequently determined that patients were terminally ill without conducting any in-person examinations, as required by Medicare; the doctors were paid around $150 for each false order, a DOJ press release from March stated.
Harris and Novus nurses -- not the licensed physicians on staff -- decided which patients would be admitted and discharged from hospice care, and which drugs and drug doses the patients would receive. Witness testimony...
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