Mohammad Khan, assistant administrator of a Houston-area hospital has pleaded guilty on charges involving a $116 million scheme to defraud Medicare by making false claims for mental health services called partial hospitalization program (PHP). The PHP services were not ordered by a doctor and so not considered medically necessary, and in some cases, they were not actually provided.
Khan won’t be sentenced until May 25th, but he could spend several years in prison for his part in the fraud.
Khan, as an administrator of a facility that purportedly provided PHP for referred patients, recruited owners of group care homes and assisted living facilities to refer patients for PHP services, whether they were needed or not. In exchange, he paid kickbacks for the patient referrals.
