Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigation of the home health care industry broke new ground with the arrests of multiple members — including two from Queens — of a distribution network for falsified certifications.
According to prosecutors, the Bronx Institute for Career Training and Development, Inc., located on Ogden Avenue in the Bronx, sold falsified home health aide certifications through a network of brokers and distributors who acted as intermediaries between would-be aides and the school.
“These arrests illustrate the extent of the problems we’re fighting to fix,” Cuomo said. “Untrained aides are an offense to the patients they are supposed to treat, as well as the taxpayers who pay the bill.”
The manager of the Bronx Institute was arraigned on charges of grand larceny in the first degree, as were Sara Kurayeva, 55, of Kew Gardens, and Manush Janash, 61, of Flushing, as well as eight others.
Prosecutors alleged that untrained home health aides used documents issued by the Bronx Institute - and furnished by the brokers and distributors - to gain employment with agencies that billed Medicaid over $1 million for their work.
Cuomo’s investigation, dubbed “Operation Home Alone,” has so far brought the convictions of 17 uncertified aides, two registered nurses, the managers of two other schools that provided false certifications, an agency and its two managers that employed the aides and nurses, and a Medicaid recipient complicit in a no-show billing scheme. In those cases, the aides and nurses were found to have been billing for services they did not render, providing and billing for services despite the lack of proper training and certification, and billing more than one agency at a time in order to be paid for as much as 36 hours in one day.
“The problems we have uncovered demand a solution,” Cuomo said. “The thousands of elderly and infirm New Yorkers who allow home health aides into their homes every day deserve total assurance they are in good hands, and New York taxpayers can’t afford to foot the bill for unqualified workers, cheats and scammers.”
In conjunction with Operation Home Alone, Cuomo has announced a legislative proposal calling for a statewide registry of certified home health aides to be developed and maintained by the New York State Department of Health.
The proposal calls for the following:
According to Cuomo, a statewide registry of certified home health aides would be a first step toward enhancing the state’s ability to oversee the industry. It would also provide potential employers with the ability to screen home health aides and help to detect and deter fraud, he said.
A registry already exists for nurse aides that work in nursing homes.
Cuomo is urging New Yorkers to report cases of suspected fraud to his Medicaid Fraud Hotline at 1-866-NYS-FIGHT (697-2444).
