Lawsuit Contends Doctor Defrauded Medicare Program

A Beverly Hills doctor was accused in a federal lawsuit Tuesday of falsely billing the Medicare program for home visits to hundreds of elderly patients, some of whom were dead, institutionalized or live hundreds of miles away.

Dr. David Yedidsion submitted at least 1,600 bogus bills to Medicare from 1992 through 1995 for which he received more than $311,000 in reimbursements, according to a civil complaint brought by the U.S. attorney’s office.

Once Yedidsion billed Medicare for visits to the homes of 147 patients on a single day, the complaint said. On 38 other dates, the suit said, he claimed to have made about 80 daily house calls.

In addition to receiving reimbursement for visits that never occurred, Yedidsion was accused of double billing and inflating charges for visits he did make.

Yedidsion, who was the single largest biller of doctor home visits in California in 1994, could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

His attorney, Patric Hooper, a specialist on Medicare fraud law, said that any irregularities might have been caused by the billing service Yedidsion hired.

“Like a lot of busy doctors, he didn’t pay all that much attention to paperwork and left it to the billing service,” Hooper said. “Sometimes, these outfits get sloppy.”

But in a statement, U.S. Atty. Nora Manella blasted the 48-year-old general practitioner.

“It’s shameful that a doctor entrusted to provide care for the elderly would cheat the very system designed to protect them,” she said. “Such systematic abuse of the Medicare program is the worst kind of fraud against the federal government and threatens the stability of the nation’s health care system.”

A report last summer by the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department found that federally subsidized home health care--the fastest-growing segment of the $200-billion Medicare program--was rife with fraud, costing the government billions of dollars a year.

Since then, the Clinton administration has imposed a moratorium on certifying any more home health care providers and promised to double audits of suspected offenders.

A 1976 graduate of Shiraz University School of Medicine in Iran, Yedidsion completed a residency program at Jersey City (N.J.) Medical Center and was first licensed to practice in California in 1982. The State Medical Board said Tuesday that it had no record of any disciplinary actions against him.

The lawsuit was filed under the federal False Claims Act. The suit, prepared by Assistant U.S. Atty. Wendy Weiss, asks for triple damages plus penalties of $5,000 to $10,000 for each false claim.