Crooked HME sales rep could go to jail
By HME News Staff
Updated Sun May 9, 2004
May 10, 2004
NORFOLK, Va. - A former sales rep for Home Care Supply, the nation's largest independent HME, could be going to jail for forging physician signatures on CMNs and fraudulently billing insurers for roughly $460,000.
Between May 1999 and January 2003, Amy E. Gowin lied on medical documents by indicating that patients needed equipment or medication that their doctors had not prescribed, court records show. She provided false test results and medical conditions and forged the signatures of 54 physicians on documentation for 179 patients, the Virginian-Pilot reported last month.
Gowin, 29, of Chesapeake, Va., pled guilty to the charges in late April.
Home Care Supply discovered Gowin's transgression in 2002, conducted an internal investigation and disclosed the findings to the federal government. The company fired Gowin in 2002.
“We got kudos from the feds, but you are never happy about a 29 year old who messed up her life,” CEO Todd Christopher said last month. “She is not the first person we have dismissed because of a compliance violation, but she is the first who could get a jail sentence and a fine.”
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