Acupuncture business owner allegedly defrauded Medicaid providers of more than $1.75M

he owner of a Twin Cities acupuncture service faces more than a dozen felonies for her alleged role in a Medicaid billing scheme that over the course of four years netted more than $1.75 million in fraudulent payments.

A two-year investigation by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) alleges Xiaoyan Hu, the owner of Chinese Acupuncture and Herb Center, directed her employees to bill insurance providers for full-hour sessions when the actual care provided to patients typically lasted 30 minutes, a criminal complaint states.

From March 2016 to June 2020, the MCFU found 41,858 separate fraudulent claims at Hu’s locations in Burnsville, Edina, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and briefly in Elk River. Those alleged offenses took place in Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, and Sherburne counties, but prosecutors decided to have them all combined as one case filed in Hennepin County.

The 60-year-old from Eden Prairie is also accused of running a scheme to bill providers for interpreter services that did not correspond with any patient appointments; investigators found 1,381 interpreter logs that misrepresented services provided at Chinese Acupuncture and Herb Center.

Source: Charges: Acupuncture business owner allegedly defrauded Medicaid providers of more than $1.75M / KSTP

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *