Virgil and Bertha Hutchinson of Lumberton, North Carolina, co-owners of Southeastern Behavioral Healthcare Services, apparently never learned that lesson. That is, until it was too late.
The pair have agreed to pay a whopping $2,505,000 fine for falsely billing for services they never actually delivered.
What?
Yes, patients they claimed to be providing services to were actually dead people—dead people the Hutchinsons not only alleged were alive and kicking above ground, but receiving “treatment.”
Is that “treatment” by psychiatrists or psychics? Are they counseling or channeling?
And you mean to say that some of the patients they claimed to have treated were in prison at the time the nonexistent services were “taking place”? Yes, indeed. The “patients” were residents of the jailhouse when they were supposed to be free and receiving “treatment” in Lumberton.
Oops!
“Medicaid dollars are taxpayer dollars, and health care providers need to be responsible stewards of this money.”
In fact, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina states, “Hutchinsons improperly submitted claims to North Carolina Medicaid for services that were not in fact rendered, evidenced by recipient interviews establishing that services were not necessary at all, were systematically not rendered as billed, that services were billed for patients who were incarcerated or deceased on the billed date of services, and by a pervasive lack of medical records supporting either the provision of or necessity for the billed services, during the period from March 1, 2016 through July 14, 2020.”
That’s right, the duo was ripping off US taxpayers for more than four years before they got caught.
It makes you wonder about the honesty of “mental health care” providers, doesn’t it?
But don’t wonder—just read on.
“Medicaid dollars are taxpayer dollars, and health care providers need to be responsible stewards of this money,” said North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein.
The Hutchinsons, of course, are far from alone in defrauding the government. To date, the Medicaid Investigations Division of the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office has recovered $1 billion in restitution and penalties.
And North Carolina itself is certainly not alone when it comes to taxpayer rip-offs. Medicare and Medicaid fraud is a huge criminal enterprise spanning the entire country, and the “mental health” business leads the gangster pack in criminal fraud.
An estimated $100 billion of health care fraud takes place each year, and psychiatrists and the mental health business commit up to $20 billion of it.
Even Mark Schiller, president of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, himself a neuropsychiatrist, said, “I have frequently seen psychiatrists diagnose patients with a range of psychiatric diagnoses that aren’t justified, to obtain third-party reimbursements.”
“A study of US Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud, especially in New York, over a twenty-year period, showed psychiatry to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines,” mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights stated.
“Billing taxpayer-funded health care programs for services that are not rendered at all will not be tolerated,” US Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina Michael F. Easley, Jr., warned.
Thankfully, authorities have now put a leash on Southeastern Behavioral Healthcare Services, which entered into an “integrity agreement” in which they will implement a compliance program and be subject to regular audits to prevent future fraud.
At least one big hole leaking taxpayer funds into the hands of greedy mental health operators has been plugged.
After four long years, it’s about damn time.
