United States v. Valnita Turner

620 F. App'x 249
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedAugust 6, 2015
Docket14-20399
StatusUnpublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 620 F. App'x 249 (United States v. Valnita Turner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Valnita Turner, 620 F. App'x 249 (5th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

PER CURIAM: *

Vainita Turner, a registered nurse, was convicted by a jury on four counts of healthcare fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1347 and one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349. The jury found that Turner engaged in a multifaceted scheme to fraudulently obtain Medicare reimbursements. In carrying out the scheme, Turner purchased stolen, confidential health information about Medicare beneficiaries, and used it to recruit patients for the home-health agencies with which she was affiliated. She also submitted, on behalf of those agencies, claims to Medicare seeking reimbursement for home-health services not authorized by a doctor who had seen or treated the patient. As a result of the scheme, the agencies received more than $3 million in' reimbursements that Medicare otherwise would not have paid.

On appeal, Turner challenges one count of her healthcare-fraud conviction, one of the district court’s jury instructions, and several of the district court’s sentencing determinations. For the reasons stated below, we AFFIRM.

I.

Turner owned Houston Compassionate Care, Inc., a home-health agency, and was the director of nursing at Prestige Health Services, Inc., another home-health agency. She also owned Texas Comprehensive Healthcare Resources, Inc., a marketing company. Both Houston Compassionate and Prestige were enrolled Medicare providers, meaning that they were authorized to claim reimbursement from Medicare for services provided to Medicare beneficiaries.

Medicare reimburses the costs of home-health services provided to beneficiaries who are, because of illness or disability, “homebound,” but only under certain circumstances. See, e.g., United States v. Njoku, 737 F.3d 55, 61 (5th Cir.2013). As relevant here, Medicare reimburses the costs of home-health services only if the services are ordered by a doctor who has examined the beneficiary. Typically, home-health agencies memorialize a referring doctor’s orders using a standardized form called a “CMS-485.” If the doctor initially gives orders verbally, a registered nurse must, in Box 23 of a CMS-485, verify them with her signature. Box 24 of a CMS^85 asks for the name and address of the referring doctor, and Box 27 re *252 quires that doctor’s signature. According to the trial testimony of the government’s Medicare expert, Medicare does not pay claims when the doctor who signs in Box 27 of a CMS-485 is not the same as the doctor listed in Box 24 (i.e., when the CMS-485 has an “invalid countersignature”). Additionally, the expert testified, Medicare does not pay claims associated with services provided to beneficiaries who were obtained as patients through the provider’s use of kickbacks or bribes.

In 2008, Turner, along with her brother Valdie Jackson, initiated a plan to generate business for Houston Compassionate by purchasing the stolen health information of Medicare beneficiaries from a friend of Jackson’s named Jarvis Thomas. Thomas worked for a local hospital, the Harris County Hospital District (the Hospital), and therefore had access to the confidential health information of a large number of Medicare beneficiaries. According to the plan, Turner would provide money to Jackson, who in turn would pay Thomas every few weeks in exchange for the health information of a new set of beneficiaries. Turner would then use the information (through her marketing company Texas Comprehensive) to solicit the beneficiaries to become patients of Houston Compassionate.

In addition to recruiting patients using stolen health- information, Turner and others at the home-health agencies with which she was affiliated engaged in a practice of submitting reimbursement claims to Medicare for services that had not been ordered by a referring doctor. In doing so, Turner far another nurse at the agency) would sign in Box 28 of a CMS-485, falsely stating that she had received verbal orders from a patient’s referring doctor to begin home-health services. She would then fill in Box 24 with the name and NPI number 1 of a doctor, but have a different doctor — specifically, the on-staff medical director of either Houston Compassionate or Prestige — sign in Box 27. 2 (Typically, she would first send the CMS-485 to the doctor whose name she had used in Box 24, but if the doctor ignored it or declined to sign — as, unsurprisingly, would often happen — she would then have the form taken to one of the medical directors for his signature.)

Turner took steps to shield these activities from detection. For instance, Turner directed Jackson to open his own home-health agency — Jackson Home Health — in order to spread out the patient population from Houston Compassionate and therefore avoid raising any “red flag[s].” r For a similar reason, Turner would distribute the patients recruited using the stolen health information among Houston Compassionate, Prestige, and Jackson Home Health. Finally, although she initially provided Jackson with money to pay Thomas in the form of cash or checks made out to Jackson, she eventually began making out checks to Doctors Choice Medical Billing, another of Jackson’s companies. She directed Jackson to generate false invoices from Doctors Choice to make these payments appear legitimate.

Despite these measures, Turner’s activities were eventually detected, and she and *253 several coconspirators were indicted on charges of healthcare fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1347 and related charges. Under this court’s precedent, “each execution” of a particular healthcare-fraud scheme “maybe charged as a separate count.” United States v. Hickman, 331 F.3d 439, 446 (5th Cir.2003). Accordingly, Counts 5-8 of the indictment charged Turner with healthcare fraud based on claims submitted by the home-health agencies with respect to four particular Medicare beneficiaries (beneficiaries B.J., M.D., J.C., and P.O.).

The jury found Turner guilty on all four counts of healthcare fraud and on a count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. The district court sentenced Turner to 151 months of imprisonment, and held her jointly and severally liable with the others charged in the indictment for a restitution award of $3,011,899.09.

II.

Turner raises several issues on appeal, which are subject to varying standards of review.

First, Turner argues that the evidence was insufficient for the jury to convict her on Count 8 of the indictment. Because she failed to raise this argument in a motion for acquittal “at the close of all evidence,” our review is for plain error only. United States v. Daniel, 957 F.2d 162, 164 (5th Cir.1992).

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Bluebook (online)
620 F. App'x 249, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-valnita-turner-ca5-2015.