Former Shelby Regional Medical Center CFO, Joe White has been ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution for his role in a meaningful use fraud scheme, KXXV first reports. White pleaded guilty for directed its EHR vendor, eCareSoft and hospital employees to manually enter data from paper records into the EHR system after the patient was discharged to meet the MU thresholds criteria. Additionally, White also made false statements regarding other hospitals had successfully converting to EHR.
The false attestation resulted in CMS paying Shelby Regional $785,655 in January 2013. Medicaid and Medicare EHR incentive programs paid hospitals operated Dr. Mahmood, including Shelby Regional $16,794,462.66 for fiscal years 2011 and 2012..
In November, Mr. White also pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft for using an employee’s name to falsify documentation for the incentive funds that Shelby Regional received, according to the report. Shelby Regional Medical Center’s owner, Tariq Mahmood, MD was sentenced in March to more than 11 years in prison for healthcare fraud, conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and identity theft. Dr. Mahmood received nearly $313,000 in Medicare reimbursements from false claims.
