Three Buffalo-area nursing homes will repay $9 million after admitting to a years-long scheme that used fraudulent billing to boost their Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced.
Safire Rehabilitation of Northtowns, Safire Rehabilitation of Southtowns and Williamsville Suburban Nursing Home submitted false data from July 2016 through December 2020 that artificially inflated their reimbursement rates, according to a joint investigation by the state attorney general’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.
The facilities manipulated the system by inflating the amount of rehabilitative services certain residents needed during periods that affected their Medicaid reimbursement calculations, investigators found. During periods that did not impact reimbursement rates, the facilities reduced rehabilitation services to those same residents, regardless of their actual needs…