Worcester home healthcare firm to pay $6.5M over MassHealth fraud
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Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey
Compassionate Homecare, Inc., a now-bankrupt home health agency based in Worcester, must pay $6.53 million to MassHealth to resolve allegations of billing the insurance agency without authorization.
The settlement resolves a lawsuit against Compassionate from March 2018, which alleged the company stole millions of dollars from MassHealth by billing the company for services not authorized by a physician, according to a Thursday press release from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.
Up to $375,000 of the fine will be set aside for payment of unpaid wages for former Compassionate employees.
This is not the first legal trouble for the Worcester healthcare company, which was formed in 2010. The AG’s Fair Labor Division issued three citations against the firm in 2017 totaling $646,714 for failing to pay timely wages and overtime to its employees.
In 2019, Compassionate and its owner, Francis Kimaru, pleaded guilty to separate criminal charges, in which Kimaru admitted to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from MassHealth by overbilling and falsely billing.
Compassionate filed for bankruptcy in May 2020, according to the release.
MassHealth is a government-funded healthcare program which provides services to low-income individuals. It pays for three types of home health services: nursing, home health aid, and therapy.
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