Hospice centers in LA County are ‘ground zero’ for fraud: Report

WASHINGTON (TNND) — CBS on Tuesday released an exclusive investigation into fraud in hospice centers in Los Angeles, California.

“There’s a stretch in Los Angeles with 500 registered hospice companies within just three miles of each other,” CBS wrote on X.

“And 89 in a single building. But when we visited, we found empty offices, piled-up mail, and phone lines dead.”

Attached to the social media post is a video of CBS journalist Andy Yamaguchi going door to door to hospice companies to ask questions. However, they were given no comment.

“Medicare hospice fraud can happen in a few different ways,” Yamaguchi said in the video. “Shell companies can buy stolen Medicare numbers on the dark web and then bill the government for the services that they don’t ever actually provide.”

In the story, CBS News analysts report that out of about 1,800 hospices in LA, about 700 of them have red flags for fraud, according to California’s standards.

A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded to CBS News and said that Hospice fraud has been cracked down on under his leadership.

“Under Governor Newsom’s administration, California has cracked down on hospice fraud, launched partnerships across state agencies, and the California Department of Justice has arrested criminals to hold them accountable,” the spokesperson told the news outlet.

The investigation found that 742 hospice companies still operate despite there being indicators of fraud.

State attorney general Rob Bonta said that more needs to be done with hospice fraud.

“We need to be responsive to the red flags and react to them, not just count them,” he said. “Our main lane is the accountability side, the criminal investigations, the civil investigations. That’s after the damage is done though, unfortunately.”