Doctors Face 2nd Probe in Illegal Medi-Cal Billing

The former chief of obstetrics at High Desert Hospital in Lancaster and two other former county physicians suspected of double billing the state’s Medi-Cal program were investigated in the same offense four years ago, according to court documents obtained by The Times.

The doctors were investigated earlier in alleged “improper and illegal billing of the Medi-Cal Program,” and all were given memorandums to sign that acknowledged that double billing is improper, according to the court file. The Oct. 7, 1991, memo says in part, “you are not permitted to bill Medi-Cal for patients identified as county patients.”

All three are under investigation now in illegal billing of the Medi-Cal program since the 1991 memo for services they were already being paid to perform as employees of Los Angeles County, according to a document in a court file prepared by an investigator for the state attorney general.

The doctors are Calvin N. Ladner--the former head of obstetrics, who earned $135,000 a year from his county employment--and physicians Samy F. Farid and Dietmar Habeck.

Investigators seized records of more than $3 million in Medi-Cal billings from 1991 to 1995 by the three, according to the court file. Officials said they do not know yet what portion of the total might be the result of double billing.

County health officials said that during the 1991 probe, they had no basis to take stronger action.

Fred Leaf, chief of the inspection and audit division for the Department of Health Services, said that when investigators pursued complaints about billing irregularities, they learned that High Desert Hospital had failed to establish clear guidelines for physicians or internal controls to pinpoint fraud.

The hospital “did not provide adequate . . . direction to hold the doctors accountable for what they were doing, plus we couldn’t determine exactly what they might have been doing,” Leaf said.

As a result, the hospital instituted internal controls, including a more rigorous time-keeping system for county physicians such as Ladner, Farid and Habeck, who were also in private practice. Those controls have allowed investigators to pursue the current case, Leaf said.

The three doctors implicated in both the 1991 county investigation and the current state investigation no longer work for the county health department, said Mel Grussing, administrator at High Desert.

Ladner, 60, and Haybeck, 55, both longtime county employees, retired during last year’s county layoffs, shortly after they became aware of the investigation, Grussing said.

Farid, 46, resigned about the same time, he said. In a telephone interview Friday, Habeck said he and the others have nothing to hide.

He said the earlier investigation produced “no negative findings of any sort,” and that the current probe caught him and his colleagues by surprise.

“We understand that we are accused of double billing, [but] as far as I know, nobody did any double billing,” Habeck said. “I didn’t do any double billing. I talked to my colleagues and they didn’t do any double billing, either.”

Habeck said the investigation is not only embarrassing but unjust. “We gave a good deal of our effort and sleepless nights . . . in serving the underprivileged of the county for very scant pay,” he said.

Ladner’s attorney David Durchfort said the case involves misunderstandings but “absolutely no intent to overbill.”

He said there was confusion between the hospitals and the doctors’ private offices as to “whose patients were whose”--and that this continued after the county supposedly implemented the internal controls in 1991. “We dispute the contention that . . . fail-safe procedures were implemented to clear up the double billing misunderstanding,” Durchfort said.

A fourth High Desert doctor, Parviz Hakimi, is also being investigated in fraudulent billing of Medi-Cal, but Hakimi was apparently not involved in the 1991 investigation, according to court documents. Hakimi works at the Antelope Valley Health Center in Lancaster, “under direct supervision, and is not involved in billing,” Grussing said.

Farid and Hakimi could not be reached for comment, but in the past have maintained their innocence.

From 1991 to 1995, according to the investigator’s report, Farid collected about $1.4 million in Medi-Cal billings; Habeck took in $982,315; Ladner received $765,300, and Hakimi collected $68,000. Ladner, Habeck and Farid also had private practices.

No charges have been filed in the current investigation, which Tom Timmerman, head of the attorney general’s Medi-Cal fraud investigation unit, described as continuing.