An Iowa doctor will have to shell out more than $315,000 after pleading guilty to lying about the amount of time he spent with nursing home residents to gain higher reimbursements.
Joseph X. Latella, was sentenced Thursday to two months in prison and ordered to pay about $316,400 to settle the False Claims Act allegations in a plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa announced.
The crimes took place between January 1, 2014 and November 30, 2018. Latella served as a medical director for two nursing homes during that time.
Latella billed more than 93% of his nursing home visits to Medicare using the most intensive and expensive claim code, which paid more than $94 per instance. Under this claim code, however, doctors must spend at least 35 minutes with patients.
Several federal investigations, however, revealed that Latella was lying about the total number of minutes he spent with nursing home patients. One investigation showed that he was only at a nursing home for a total of 14 minutes in one instance.
He also “recreated treatment notes” in order to cover up the scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“To recreate the notes, Dr. Latella contacted the nursing home administrators and nursing managers of various nursing homes and asked for copies of patients’ charts. In truth, elderly residents of nursing homes did not receive the care for which taxpayers paid him, and these vulnerable nursing home residents’ family members cannot know whether and to what extent those nursing home residents received medical care from Dr. Latella over the years,” a release from federal prosecutors stated.
Latella was warned about his billing practices in July 2016 before pleading guilty in July 2019.
Under the plea agreement, Latella must pay no less than $107,980.50 to Medicare and $9,218.73 to Medicaid for economic losses.
