A common target, as federal investigators ramp up their aggressive Medicare fraud efforts, is the ambulance company.
For years, Medicare and ambulance transport services worked as a team in getting patients in trouble to hospitals. As concern over fraud has mounted, and the political need for convictions has grown, the government has trained its guns on companies whose mission is to save lives.
Questions of reimbursement
Ambulance services are covered under Medicare Plan B. To be reimbursed, the ambulance can be used only for situations where other transportation – taxi, family car, city bus – pose a risk to the patient’s health. The law allows ambulances to transport patients to the nearest care facility.
Transport is also reimbursable in emergency situations. When appropriate, transport by air is also paid for.
The problem arises when these rules appear to have been stretched, or the transport service is falsified. Most Medicare fraud cases today turn on this apparent falsification. The ambulance company is charged with providing unnecessary transportation, wrongly describing the services rendered, or billing improperly for the service. These charges are the heart of emergency services medical fraud cases.
The best defense for these charges is to show that the charges are simply wrong. The federal government doesn’t really know anything about your business. They deal mostly with billing records, from which they make guesses about what actually happens in any given case.
Frank A. Rubino
Frank A. Rubino is one of the elite Medicare fraud defense lawyers in South Florida. His approach is usually to demonstrate greater knowledge of how your business works than the paperwork by itself suggests.
Using this reality-based approach, Rubino has obtained justice in some of the biggest and most prominent Medicare cases in the Miami area. If you read the papers, you are aware of his successes.
If you own or operate an ambulance or air transport service and are under investigation for Medicare fraud, don’t wait – immediately seek the best criminal defense available.
Chances are, that will be Frank A. Rubino.
