Dr. Larry Joe Russell and friends. Stealing from Medicare ???

For the record, I have still not received a response to my letter to Dr. Aldona Vos, Secretary of the NCDHHS. Copies of the same letter were sent to Governor Pat McCrory, Kathleen Sebelius, CMS, Beverley Speroff and other officials. I have not received a response from any of the letters I sent.

In the last post I shared a couple of links to a website that posts referral data on doctors. According to the website, the referrals are taken from Medicare billing records. That would indicate that the data does not contain any information concerning private insurance, or Medicaid. It also states that only the top ten referring physicians are listed. That said I am going to post some information given on the website.
This was copied and pasted directly from the website, which I believe is published by the CMS.
"In order to protect patient privacy, the referral data records the number of times two providers billed Medicare for the same patient within a sliding 30-day period, where at least 11 patients were involved in transactions."

Dr. Larry Joe Russell received a total of 429,739 incoming referrals in a three year span. That means an average of 143,246 a year, or 11,937 a week. That's a lot of patients for one small town doctor. But it gets better Dr. Russell also had 315,328 outgoing referrals, 105,109 a year or 2,021 a week. Together that totals 745,067 over a three year period, or, 248,355 a year or 4776 a week. Dr. Russell charges $125.00 for an office visit, that means if the data is correct, Dr. Russell billed Medicare around $93,133,375.00 over the three year period. Red Flag, Red Flag!!! Is nobody monitoring these numbers.

I will post the top five incoming and the top five outgoing sources, in the interest of public awareness. I will post the information from the three years in the data base.
I will begin with the top five outgoing referrals, from Dr. Larry Joe Russell.
                                                                   2009           2010            2011           Total
Henderson County Hospital ( Pardee )    11,628         10,150          9894          31,672
Denise Hunt FNP                                     3437             3166            3791          10,394
Dr Kevan Hansel, BlueSky  MD             3254             2656            1593            7,503
Linda Brooks FNP                                   1036             1718            2575            5,329
Deborah Whitmire Pitillo FNP                2236                0               1878            4,114

For the record, Dr Russell was instrumental in the negotiations of the purchase of Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation from Pardee Hospital. Also Linda Brooks FNP is one of the owners of Hendersonville Physicians and Associates, the ones who purchased Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation. Denise Hunt FNP and Deborah Whitmire Pitillo are both under Dr. Russells supervision, according to the NC Medical Board. Dr Kevan Hansel worked in Dr Russels office but is now with BlueSky, who also owns a percentage of Hendersonville Physicians and Associates. Seems like a cozy little group, living off of Medicare Dollars!

Now here are the top five incoming referrals to Dr. Larry Joe Russell.
                                                                        2009            2010            2012         Total
Henderson County Hospital ( Pardee )          15,885         14,043         14,073     44,001
Dr. Kevan Hansel, BlueSky MD                    4,609           3,396           1,980       9,985
Denise Hunt FNP                                            2,900            2,411          3,004       8,315
Henderson County EMS                                 2,586            2,649         2,663        7,898
Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation      2,440            2,172         2,253        6,865

Looks like friends scratching each others backs, also looks a lot like several violations of the Stark Law and the law prohibiting physicians self referrals. It appears that somehow this little group of friends are exempt from State and Federal laws. Is nobody in law enforcement looking at this. It is all public information, posted by the very agencies that are supposed to enforce the laws.

All of the information posted here was also forwarded to the FBI, OIG, CMS, NCDHHS, DHHS, and members of Congress. Not one reply so far. Who's running the State of North Carolina ? Is it politicians, or the healthcare PAC's and wealthy nursing home owners? What's the difference at this point, the results are the same. People suffering and dying due to the low staff levels, and the high number of patients supposedly seen by the doctors.

Here is the link again to Dr. Larry Joe Russells referral information.
http://w.npidashboard.com/npi/1891772513