The Whistle-blower Effect
AseraCare is a subsidiary of Golden Living, a ``post-acute`` healthcare company in Texas that is partially owned by a private equity firm located in San Francisco California. It provides a variety of services from nursing home care to home/comfort care. Their hospice providing palliative care can range from pain relief to psychological services and spiritual guidance--all to patients who are terminally ill with less than 6 months to live--at least that`s what they told Medicare...
According to the legal complaint filed this week by the United States Department of Justice, AseraCare has been milking Medicare for millions of dollars. Again just as we witnessed in the LabCorp investigation the complaint came on the heels of a whistle-blower suit filed by a former AseraCare Hospice executive director as well as a nurse who worked for the corporation in Alabama. As per the whistle-blowers attorneys, the practice of fraudulently certifying patients as terminal to collect illegal Medicare payments is something that is seen across the board throughout the organization. Just as Lenco Labs kept our readers as informed and as up to date on the recent LabCorp and Quest Diagnostic investigations, we will continue to keep all of you knowledgeable on the topic as we can.
