editor, Author at Monitor Telegram

Ex-Official Convicted of Defrauding Mental Health Clinic

June 23, 2017

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A member of a local politically connected family was convicted Friday of defrauding a nonprofit mental health clinic out of about $1 million for her personal benefit through a pattern of self-dealing when she was its landlord.

Renee Tartaglione was indicted last year and charged with taking $1 million from the Juniata Community Mental Health Clinic between 2007 and 2012, when she was the clinic’s landlord and president of its board of directors. Prosecutors say she charged the clinic exorbitant rent and as president of the board ensured the rent was approved.

An epic case of medical fraud – and the agent who cracked it

June 21, 2017

It started with a letter from US Senator Charles Grassley.

In December 2009, the Iowa Republican demanded to know how a Miami psychiatrist was writing more than 96,000 prescriptions for Medicaid patients. It was nearly twice the number of the second highest prescriber in Florida.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Fernando Mendez-Villamil, responded with a tartly worded message of his own. “I never thought I would be faulted for working hard or for being very organized and efficient,” he wrote the senator.

Health-care fraud costs the US government and insurance companies some $100 billion a year in overcharges and other rip offs, according to experts. It is a perpetual drain on the nation’s wealth, undercutting the ability to provide quality healthcare to those most in need.

Ontario Psychiatric Hospital Tortured Patients: Judge

June 21, 2017

An Ontario court has ruled that a provincial mental health facility ran therapeutic programs for years that amounted to torture for the patients involved.

Justice Paul Perell’s ruling came in the midst of a lengthy lawsuit filed by past and present residents of the Oak Ridge division of the Penetang Psychiatric Hospital in Penetanguishene, Ont., that alleges patients were gravely mistreated.

Perell says three programs at the hospital that involved the forced administration of drugs, physical restraint and sleep deprivation, amounted to both physical and mental torture.

(original article appeared 8 June 2017)

Chadron mental health therapist ordered to pay over $300,000 to state

June 20, 2017

Attorney General Doug Peterson announced today that a judge has ordered a Chadron-area mental health therapist to pay more than $300,000 to the state due to her improper billing practices.

Dawes County District Judge Travis O’Gorman ordered Anna Young to pay $308,866.80 after an investigation by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Patient Abuse Unit found that she had billed Nebraska Medicaid $102,955.60 for mental health services. Young admitted that she knowingly failed to maintain documentation to support the submission of the claims, as required by law. She was ordered to repay triple the amount that she billed to Medicaid, per the Nebraska False Medicaid Claims Act.

Improving the quality of our healthcare system: Are we adopting the right approach?

June 20, 2017

This article was sent to us by the author, Ijaz Rauf, President at Eminent Tech Corporation and an Adjunct Professor of Physics, School of Graduate Studies at York University.

Growing evidence of problems in the level of quality and safety of care across healthcare organizations, along with public awareness, has made the quality of health care the talk of town. This has drawn significant government and regulatory attention to healthcare systems across the country. Health Quality Ontario (HQO) was established with the mandate to monitor and report on healthcare performance in Ontario and the mission to bring about meaningful improvement in health care. Besides reporting on the key performance indicators, HQO holds quality rounds to share knowledge and best practices. Recently, I attended one of HQO’s quality rounds, and I left with the impression that quality in health care is not considering the right measures, using the right experts or measuring the right data.

A major Medicare fraud ring was busted in May, and a Houston doctor will not be psyched when he does his time for the crime

June 19, 2017

Earlier this year, Houston psychiatrist Riaz Mazcuri was found guilty for his involvement with a $158 million Medicare fraud scheme being run out of Riverside General Hospital.

He was convicted in May by a federal jury on one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and five counts of fraud, and his sentencing is set for October.

Ontario doctors go to court to keep billing information secret

June 19, 2017

Two groups of doctors and the Ontario Medical Association are headed to court Monday to argue that OHIP payments to top-billing physicians are “personal information” and should not be public.

The information and privacy commissioner last year ordered the public disclosure of the top billers’ identities, along with amounts each receives in payments from the taxpayer-funded insurance plan. The information is business-related, not personal, and should be public because of the importance of transparency of government expenditures, the ruling said.

Jeremy (Jay) Peers sentenced to 3.5 years for fraud, misrepresentations

June 17, 2017

Jeremy (Jay) Peers has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud, misrepresentations, and dealing and advising in securities without registration under the Alberta Securities Act.

Alberta provincial court Judge Fred Day called Peers “a con man,” as he delivered his sentence in an Alberta courtroom.

Peers, the grandson of early Edmonton mayor and coal baron Harry Marshall Erskine Evans, was the key player behind one of the biggest, most complex securities frauds in recent Alberta history.

Massive U.K.-based scheme aimed to swindle $52M in tax refunds from Canadian government

June 17, 2017

Websites for fraudulent telecommunications service providers based in the U.K. managed to squeeze $4.7 million out of federal coffers over five years before investigators with the Canada Revenue Agency caught on to the scheme.

The proceeds were put into Canadian banks, then transferred to offshore accounts or used in real estate transactions.

Government wants to tax your internet

June 15, 2017

OTTAWA — A parliamentary committee studying Canada’s slumping media industry will reportedly call for a five per cent tax on broadband Internet services to boost a sector struggling to adapt to technological changes and evolving consumer habits.

The Globe and Mail, citing Liberal and opposition sources, says the new levy is at the core of a majority report of the Canadian Heritage Committee to be released today.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as the report is not yet public. The tax would be on top of sales taxes you already pay.