Plano, Texas-based Heal 360 Urgent Care, Heal 360 Primary Care and their owner, Mohammed Amer Mohiuddin, MD, have agreed to pay $20 million to resolve allegations that they billed a federal COVID-19 program for office visits that never happened, according to an Oct. 7 news release from the Justice Department.
From Jan. 1, 2021, through March 23, 2022, Heal 360 allegedly billed HRSA’s COVID-19 Uninsured Program for level 3 and level 4 evaluation and management services when patients only received nasal swab specimen collection at dozens of mostly walk-up and drive-through testing sites in Texas. Specimen collection should have been billed under CPT code 99211, which pays substantially less than the higher-level codes the clinics allegedly used.
To support the claims, Heal 360 and Dr. Mohiuddin allegedly created template-generated medical records, filled in by overseas remote scribes, that included sections such as past medical history and examination. Dr. Mohiuddin was listed as the rendering physician on most of the claims even though he did not visit or treat patients at the testing sites, according to the Justice Department. The clinics allegedly submitted hundreds of thousands of claims for higher-level services.
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