ELMWOOD -- Federal agents raided a locally based, regional hospice provider last week to investigate its Medicare business, sources tell WWL-TV.
An attorney for the end-of-life health care company Canon Hospice acknowledged the government gathered documents and “has questions relating to its business.” Sources also tell WWL-TV the federal agents seized computers during a night-time raid.
“Canon has cooperated with the government inquiry and has pledged its continued cooperation in supplying any documents and information requested,” Canon’s defense attorney, Pauline Hardin, said.
Canon is owned by Dr. Shiva Akula and is based in Elmwood. It has inpatient and outpatient facilities there, in Covington, in Baton Rouge and in Gulfport, Miss.
Hardin declined to comment further about what the government is investigating, but Canon has been at odds with the feds before over how it charges Medicare.
Hospices can collect up to four times as much from federal Medicare for patients who stay in their facilities, rather than those who live elsewhere. In 2010, the federal Department of Health and Hospitals determined Canon had exceeded a cap for both 2002-03 and 2003-04 limiting how many days it could collect for inpatient services.
The government ruled Canon had overcharged Medicare by more than $1 million over those two years. Canon sued to reverse that decision and reached a compromise out of court in 2013.
Another regional hospice provider, St. Joseph, agreed to pay a fine of nearly $6 million in 2015 for over-collecting Medicare payments for continuous home care, another type of hospice service that reimburses providers at higher rates.