Federal Jury Charges Doctor With Medicare Fraud

A Beverly Hills physician was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges of defrauding the Medicare home health program by inflating bills and billing for services never performed, including house calls to dead patients.

Dr. David Yedidsion, the largest biller of doctor home visits in California in 1994, was named in a 20-count indictment accusing him of receiving more than $216,000 in fraudulent payments.

“The charges filed today arise because of technical issues about how to properly bill for those services and irregularities in the billing process,” said the doctor’s lawyer, John D. Vandevelde.

“Dr. Yedidsion expects that when all the information is presented in court, he will be found innocent of any criminal conduct.”

The alleged fraud is believed to be the biggest involving a doctor in the federally subsidized home health care program, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Home health care--the fastest-growing segment in the $200-billion-a-year Medicare program--was declared to be rife with fraud in a report last year by the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department, which administers the program.

The Clinton administration has since ordered a crackdown on violators.

Yedidsion, a 48-year-old general practitioner, was accused of submitting bills for patients who were dead or in state prison or in cities far from Los Angeles.

Some of the bills involved patients who did not live where the house calls were said to have taken place or who lived at medical facilities where Yedidsion was barred from treating patients, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Maurice Suh, who presented the case to the grand jury.

Just three weeks ago, the U.S. attorney’s office filed a civil suit against Yedidsion, charging that he submitted at least 1,600 bogus bills from 1992 through 1995, netting more than $300,000 in improper reimbursements.

Yedidsion once billed Medicare for visits to 147 patients in a single day, according to the civil action. On other dates, it said, he claimed to have made 80 house calls a day.

The civil suit asks for triple the $300,000 in damages plus $5,000 to $10,000 for each false claim.