The CEO of a California hospice advocacy group told congressional lawmakers Tuesday that fraud in the industry is flourishing across the state, questioning how numerous fraudulent providers can continue to operate under the nose of regulators.
Sheila Clark, the president and CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association (CHAPCA) — a nonprofit that pushes to improve access to quality end-of-life care — told the House Ways and Means Committee that some hospices operate in name only, meaning they have no patients or staff.
Clark said the surge in hospice and home healthcare providers is a symptom of failures across multiple regulatory bodies that degrade patient protections and hurt taxpayers.
"You'd be amazed at how many hospices… the door you can walk up to in California and there is nobody there. Five months' worth of mail that you can see stacked… nobody's there," Clark said. "And that passed a survey. How did that happen?"
"How do you put a hospice in a burrito stand in California?" she quipped. "How do you put a hospice in an entire store in California? That all had to be vetted through licensure and through certification and accreditation."
Dr. Lynn Ianni, a licensed psychotherapist with nearly 40 years of clinical experience who also testified, said she was locked out of her own Medicare benefits for months after she was falsely enrolled in hospice care.
"Imagine being told, in effect, that you are at the end of your life — when you are not — and then being denied access to care because of that error. It was not just frustrating," she said. "It was terrifying."