From: hounddog23x@gmail.com   
      
   Jurors to decide fate of South Florida psychiatrist, others in Medicare fraud   
   trial    
      
   BY JAY WEAVERJWEAVER@MIAMIHERALD.COM    
   02/16/2015 1:16 PM  02/17/2015 11:23 AM    
   Story    
   Comments    
   Barry Kaplowitz was a psychiatrist with a "robotic" signature who signed off   
   on thousands of bogus treatments at a Hollywood psychiatric facility that   
   bilked Medicare for millions -- even when he was out of the country,   
   prosecutors say.    
      
   "It's not just any kind of signing; it's robo-signing," Justice Department   
   prosecutor Andrew Warren declared during closing arguments at his Miami   
   federal trial.    
      
   "He often signed in the wrong place...where the patient was supposed to sign,"   
   Warren said. "Accidental? Sure, but it's evidence that he was just a rubber   
   stamp, signing whatever was put in front of him."    
      
   On Tuesday, Miami federal jurors resumed deliberating the fate of Kaplowitz,   
   54, an Aventura psychiatrist who worked part-time as the medical director of   
   Hollywood Pavilion's outpatient facility, and two other defendants on charges   
   of conspiring to    
   defraud Medicare and related offenses.    
      
      
   The jurors began deliberations Thursday after closing arguments before U.S.   
   District Judge Cecilia Altonaga, but did not convene Friday or Monday because   
   of the Presidents' Day holiday.    
      
   Last week, Kaplowitz's defense attorney, Joel Hirschhorn, said that his client   
   was unaware of the Hollywood-based psychiatric facility's misuse of his   
   signature to fleece the taxpayer-funded program for disabled patients with   
   purported mental health    
   issues.    
      
   "Evil, wicked people took advantage of this man's good name, good reputation,   
   and efforts to provide good, honest services," Hirschhorn countered during   
   closing arguments. "Yeah. He signed lots of forms in blank, and he didn't date   
   it with the date that    
   he signed them. But did he do so with the intent to defraud?"    
      
   Hirschhorn answered his own question, saying: "There was absolutely no   
   authorization for anyone to use Barry Kaplowitz's provider number" from   
   Medicare. "If it was used, it was without his authorization."    
      
   The other defendants are Melvin Hunter, 63, a Broward resident who worked as   
   an admissions supervisor for Hollywood Pavilion's inpatient facility, and   
   Tiffany Foster, 49, an Alabama resident accused of taking bribes to refer   
   mental health patients.    
      
      
   A fourth defendant, Christopher Gabel, 62, of Davie, the former chief   
   operating officer, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to commit   
   healthcare fraud and pay kickbacks to patient recruiters. Gabel, who is   
   serving a six-year prison term, testified    
   that Medicare beneficiaries -- including drug addicts with disability status   
   -- were admitted regardless of whether they qualified for treatment or even   
   saw a doctor.    
      
   The latest trial followed the 2013 conviction of Hollywood Pavilion's chief   
   executive officer, Karen Kallen-Zury, of Lighthouse Point, who was found   
   guilty along with three other employees of conspiring to bilk $67 million from   
   Medicare by filing phony    
   claims for mental health services from 2003 to 2012. Medicare was tricked into   
   paying $40 million to Hollywood Pavilion. Of those defendants, Kallen-Zury   
   received the longest sentence: 25 years.    
      
   During the six-week trial, prosecutors presented evidence showing that   
   Kaplowitz generated $6.5 million in false claims for Medicare patients who did   
   not need psychiatric treatment, resulting in $3 million in tainted income for   
   Hollywood Pavilion between    
   2008 and 2011. The psychiatrist was paid $1,250 a month over that period for   
   showing up one day a week to sign charts and other paperwork to justify 2,800   
   false claims to Medicare, prosecutors said.    
      
   "He's an absentee doctor," Warren argued, saying he did not see his patients.   
   "He rented out his medical degree. He sold his signature. Why? Simple, because   
   Hollywood Pavilion needed it to bill Medicare."    
      
   He said in one instance, Kaplowitz was in Canada in 2011 when he was   
   purportedly seeing a patient at Hollywood Pavilion. He said the notion that   
   the psychiatrist did not have to supervise patients and could just sign off on   
   their treatments was "not only    
   nonsensical" but "offensive."    
      
      
   "Simply put, Barry Kaplowitz can hide behind the 'I-didn't-know-better   
   defense,'" said Warren, who prosecuted the case with Justice Department   
   lawyer, Nicholas Surmacz. "He did know better. He just didn't care."    
      
   The prosecutor said that Hunter, in charge of admitting patients at Hollywood   
   Pavilion's inpatient facility, "was the gatekeeper" who "admitted patients   
   based on one thing, whether they had Medicare."    
      
   He described Foster, based in Alabama, as the "matriarch of the HP patient   
   brokers" at the psychiatric facility who received $500,000 in kickbacks for   
   delivering patients.    
      
   But their defense attorneys strongly disagreed, saying they were not involved   
   any Medicare fraud.    
      
   Hunter's lawyer, Martin Feigenbaum, said his client had no authority to decide   
   which patients could be admitted to Hollywood Pavilion and knew nothing about   
   false Medicare billing or kickbacks paid to patient recruiters.    
      
   "He did his job," Feigenbaum said, noting Hunter was paid about $50,000   
   annually over a six-year period. "He didn't get any money" from the alleged   
   scam.    
      
   Foster's attorney, Marshall Dore Louis, said she was a well-educated   
   businesswoman who had a marketing contract with Hollywood Pavilion to generate   
   patients. He said that when Kallen-Zury, the onetime CEO, took over the reins   
   of the family-run operation    
   in 2005, Foster quit because she suspected something was not right.    
      
   "The evidence is overwhelming that she withdrew from this conspiracy" that   
   September, Louis said. "Think about the evidence: Not one patient after that   
   date, not one check to her after that date."    
      
   The prosecution of Kaplowitz, Hunter and Foster was the latest crackdown by   
   the Justice Department and U.S. attorney's office against operators of   
   mental-health facilities accused of fleecing the Medicare program.    
      
   Three previous major prosecutions led to the convictions of about 100 clinic   
   operators, doctors, therapists and patient recruiters at American Therapeutic,   
   Biscayne Milieu and Health Care Solutions Network in South Florida.    
      
      
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