Home health agency is billed for care not given, charges allege

Last update: October 21, 2009 - 10:39 PM

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A Brooklyn Park nursing agency owner has been charged by the attorney general with falsely billing taxpayers to care for 25 patients, and claiming that skilled nursing services were provided when they, in fact, were not.

In charges filed against Ometta Vent Care Services and its owner, Barbara Currin, Attorney General Lori Swanson said that Currin employed 10 family members to care for more than two dozen vulnerable adults and submitted $2.7 million in medical assistance claims over an 18-month period.

The complaint said that, in one four-month instance, the agency billed the medical assistance program for 15,427 hours of registered nursing services even though company records showed that only 814 hours of such services were provided. The registered nurse services, Swanson said, are reimbursed at a rate of $40.44 per hour while those provided by a personal care assistant are reimbursed at $16.24 an hour.

"This home health care agency deprived very sick and fragile patients -- many who cannot even breathe on their own -- of necessary health care and bilked the taxpayers at a time when budgets are stretched thin," Swanson said in a statement released Wednesday.

The nursing agency could not be reached for comment.

MIKE KASZUBA

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