On July 30, the DOJ announced that two Montana nurse practitioners have been sentenced to 12 and nine months in prison, respectively, and ordered to each pay millions in restitution for their involvement in a Medicare fraud conspiracy.
The court documents allege that between late 2017 and mid-2019, the two, in their capacities as nurse practitioners, were employed by Integrated Support Plus Inc., among other staffing and telehealth companies, to sign off on thousands of orders for orthopedic braces on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries which were either prepared by telemarketers who lacked any requisite medical training or otherwise signed without having spoken to or examined the patients to determine whether the orders were medically appropriate.
Over the relevant time frame, Janae Nichole Harper is purported to have signed 7,673 brace orders, resulting in approximately $4.3 million in payments by Medicare. For her role in the scheme, she is purported to have received at least $94,395 in compensation from her employers.