Imagine the following scenario: You are a Medicare patient. You receive an offer from a medical practice in Atlanta that includes paid travel to the practice for treatment and a four-day trip to a hot spring in Florida.
Sounds like a simple, straight-forward, completely illegal patient inducement scheme, right? But Dr. Lawrence Eppelbaum, owner/operator of the
Atlanta Institute of Medicine and Rehabilitation (AIMR) and the
Pain Clinic of AIMR wasn’t content with violating health care fraud laws. He also had to violate tax law by starting a fake charitable organization called the Back Pain Fund. And then there was the money-laundering scheme with a
private school and some other unnamed organizations.
Yes, it’s complicated, but it all boiled down to
27 counts of health care fraud, tax fraud and money laundering. Sentencing will occur later, but we suspect he is going to get more than a slap on the wrist.
As U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates so eloquently put it: “In addition to the Hippocratic oath, Medicare doctors take a special oath that they will not interfere with a patient’s ability to choose a doctor based on medical needs alone. This defendant violated that oath in favor of personal greed. As a result, he has done harm to his future rights and liberties.”
While paid vacations are obviously illegal, practices can offer some items to patients that don’t violate the law. You can read about them in
Medical Practice Compliance Alert.