On a busy, gritty street in suburban Los Angeles, the white one-story stucco building looked like any other. Among the apartments, offices, sidewalk bodegas, the only defining feature was the building's door – a thick, solid slab of dark oak with a small, security grill about six inches square.
"Is Dr. Faustina here," I asked. "This is his address of record with the medical board."
A face appeared in the cutout, "He doesn't work here."
That's odd, I thought, considering multiple home healthcare agencies at this address had billed Medicare more than $40 million dollars using 87-year-old Dr. Gilbert Faustina's Medicare number, according to federal records.
Yet as multiple state and federal audits have shown, healthcare fraud in Los Angeles is big business, with taxpayer losses estimated at $3.5 billion.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are demanding federal inspectors exercise stronger oversight to combat what they call "large scale fraud" with patients receiving inappropriate or nonexistent care, with doctors signing off on patient care plans having never met the patient, and hospice and home health providers using multiple licenses to 'shuffle' patients from one agency to another to escape state and federal audits.
more at https://www.foxnews.com/us/la-medicare-fraud-doctor-provider-number-billing-probe