LEXINGTON, Ky (LEX 18) The Department of Justice said that a Breathitt County Ambulance company, its owner, and its managers, each pled guilty to health care fraud.
They say that Hershel Jay Arrowood, Lesa Arrowood, Terry Herald, and Arrow-Med Ambulance Inc. pleaded guilty to health care fraud in connection with fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid for medically unnecessary ambulance transports.
Jay Arrowood has owned and operated Arrow-Med in Breathitt County since September 2012. The Department of Justice said that Arrow-Med provided certain patients with non-emergency ambulance transports, to and from a dialysis clinic in Jackson. The press release said that Jay Arrowood, Lesa Arrowood, Terry Herald, and Arrow-Med all admitted that they knew that Medicare would only pay for these non-emergency transports if other forms of transportation would endanger the patient’s health. Similarly, the defendants knew that Medicaid would only pay for nonemergency transports if the patient’s condition required a transport by stretcher.
Jay Arrowood, Terry Herald, and Arrow-Med all admitted that between September 2012 and August 2015, they worked together to submit false claims to Medicare and Medicaid seeking payment for non-emergency ambulance transports provided to certain patients, according to the Department of Justice. Lesa Arrowood admitted that she joined this scheme in December 2013. They admitted that they knew these patients did not qualify for Medicare or Medicaid coverage for the ambulance services, and that the run sheets documenting hte transports were falsified to misrepresent the patients’ true medical conditions.
As a result of the defendants’ conduct, the Department of Justice said Medicare and Medicaid were defrauded of $249,539.
The defendants are scheduled to appear for sentencing on October 29, 2018.
