Ex-operator of Helena hospice pleads guilty to Medicaid fraud

A former Arkansas hospice owner, a key player in what authorities say is one of Mississippi’s worst Medicaid-fraud schemes, pleaded guilty to similar charges in Little Rock on Monday, plus a count of failure to file Arkansas income taxes.

Charline Brandon, 63, of Cleveland, Miss., will be sentenced next month after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright determines how much restitution she should pay.

Brandon, the former administrator and co-owner of Helena-West Helena’s Bridge of Faith Hospice and Palliative Care, was represented by Little Rock attorney Don Trimble when she pleaded guilty to two counts of Medicaid fraud and the income-tax charge. The facility has been sold.

In exchange for the plea, prosecutors dropped a third Medicaid-fraud charge and a health-care-fraud count. She faces more than 40 years at sentencing on April 9.

In Mississippi federal court, Brandon faces up to 10 years when she is sentenced in July.

Court filings show that as a result of the federal probe into Brandon’s operations, investigators for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge uncovered evidence that the hospice operator was responsible for fraudulently billing the state Medicaid program for $289,986 for caring for two patients who were not terminally ill over a nearly six-year period between March 2011 and January 2017.

The state Medicaid program paid out $196,833 for one of those patients over six years. That patient had been falsely listed as having a terminal diagnosis of lung disease, stroke, end-stage heart disease and congestive heart failure.

Another $93,153 was paid out on behalf of a second patient who was falsely listed as suffering from lung disease and congestive heart failure.

Federal officials suspended Medicare payments to the hospice in May 2016, and Arkansas suspended Medicaid payments to the facility in March 2017.

Deputy Attorney General Lloyd Warford said authorities are negotiating with lawyers for the remaining defendant, Dr. Thomas Odell Bailey of Lexa, to resolve the criminal charges through a civil fine and restitution. Bailey, 53, had been the facility’s medical director.

Warford said evidence from the federal case has caused authorities to reconsider Bailey’s involvement in Brandon’s Arkansas scheme.