Jeffrey Eugene Rose Sr., 56, has been ordered to serve 19 years (233 months) in federal prison and pay $14.5 million in restitution to the Department of Labor Office of Worker’s Compensation Program.
The CEO of the Team Work Ready chain of physical therapy clinics received the sentence June 1 after his October 2017 conviction on conspiracy, healthcare fraud, wire fraud and money laundering charges. Rose’s wife, Pamela Annette Rose, 56, the clinic’s chief financial officer, and Frankie Lee Sanders, 56, the clinic’s vice president, were also convicted in the case.
Pamela Rose and Sanders were sentenced last year to 10 years and 25 years respectively.
According to the suit, Team Work Ready submitted $18 million in claims for worker’s compensation claims for physical therapy services to federal workers that were never provided.
In many instances, the chain of 10 clinics in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas billed for one-on-one physical therapy services, but patients testified that instead they “exercised independently on treadmills, bicycles, elliptical machines and with the Nintendo Wii game as well as other pieces of exercise equipment,” states a
Department of Justice release.
“One patient described an electronic massage chair in the San Antonio clinic, while another patient testified that unlicensed staff told him to do exercises on both of his arms, although he only injured his left elbow and to use the electronic massage chair and the treadmill for his injury. Similarly, a patient from Houston testified that she was asked to do some exercises that had nothing to do with her carpal tunnel wrist injury, specifically walking on a treadmill."
Former clinic employees revealed that patients received little or no supervision of their exercises because staff “were busy in the back doing massages, electrical stimulation treatments and ultrasound treatments,” the DOJ release states.
Employees also testified that “they did not perform all the one-on-one services documented on patient treatment notes and admitted they frequently completed the patient treatment notes at the end of the day by following a ‘cheat sheet’ and asking each other and the patients what activities had been done,” according to the release.
During the trial, jurors heard from 38 witnesses and listened to secret recordings made by undercover federal agents posing as patients at the clinics, the government said.
The Roses were convicted of money laundering after attempting to hide $700,000 from government investigators conducting raids on multiple Team Work Ready clinics.