LOS ANGELES—A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, his son, medical practices and billing company have agreed to pay $23.9 million to resolve allegations that they violated federal law by submitting or causing the submission of false claims to both Medicare and Medicaid, officials announced April 28.
The settlement resolves allegations that Dr. Joel Aronowitz, Daniel Aronowitz, and other entities falsified the place of service for skin grafts and billed multiple times for single-use skin substitute products, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ contends that the parties manipulated the place of service code on claims for skin grafts to fraudulently maximize reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. The department further alleges that Dr. Aronowitz failed to properly dispose of unused portions of single-use skin graft materials and, instead, used them in later procedures involving other Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, resulting in thousands of instances of double billing….