personal injury attorneys in Miami Tag Archives

According to CNBC, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) uncovered a $1 Billion scheme to defraud Medicare and Medicaid. As a consequence of this investigation the owner of more than 30 Miami-area nursing homes, Philip Esformes, was indicted by a federal grand jury in July of 2016. The DOJ also accused a physician’s assistant and hospital administrator for their role in stealing and laundering money from the federal government since 2009. The depth and breadth of the fraudulent scheme shows how elders and the infirm are at the mercy of unscrupulous health care providers. Miami personal injury attorneys who have experience recovering damages for injuries and abuse in nursing homes will fight to protect your loved one in a nursing home or long-term care facility.

The DOJ alleges that Esformes, with assistance from the other individuals involved, bilked the faltering health care system to fund a ridiculously lavish lifestyle. All at the expense of some of our most vulnerable people in our community: the elderly and the poor. Prosecutors alleged that Esformes subjected his residents to unnecessary medical treatments so that he could bill Medicare for the treatment. Additionally, and perhaps most egregiously, Esformes allegedly drugged some of his patients with prescription narcotics. The over prescription of narcotics renders the patient incapable of weaning themselves off of the drug. As a result, the patient remained bound to the facility because they were addicted to the painkilling drugs. Prosecutors referred to this abuse as a “cycle of fraud.”

Local law enforcement authorities are aware of the problem. The United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, which represents the Miami-area, indicated that the South Florida area is replete with Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Consequently, law enforcement is paying close attention to facilities in the hopes of preventing this type of wide-spread fraud in the future.

Earlier this month, thirty-six year-old woman Keythe Perez was struck and killed by a vehicle while crossing Palm Beach Boulevard in Fort Myers, Florida. This unfortunate incident marks the sixth pedestrian that has been killed in Lee County since the beginning of the year, and, even more shocking, the fifth in a little more than a month. Based on those numbers, motor vehicle crashes involving a pedestrian death now account for 37.5% of all traffic fatalities that have occurred in Lee County this year. Our Miami pedestrian accident attorneys can help those injured in pedestrian accidents.

In 2011, the city of Fort Myers adopted an ordinance in 2011 reducing the speed limit on all streets to 25 miles-per-hour. However, Palm Beach Boulevard was one of four roadways that was exempted from the measure, which was seen by some as a significant issue given the high volume of pedestrian and bicycle traffic on that road. The incident involving Keythe Perez gives some credence to these concerns and raises questions regarding the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in an environment of ever-increasing motorists.

In November of last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) published a press release in which it discussed findings related to U.S. highway traffic accidents in 2011 and 2012. According to the release, highway traffic fatalities jumped more than three percent (3.3%) from 32,479 in 2011 to 33,561 in 2012, with nearly three-quarters (72%) of the increase involving motorcyclists and pedestrians. At the time of the study, the NHTSA estimated that fatalities for the first half of 2013 would be lower than those that occurred during the same time period in 2012, but that pedestrian fatalities would increase for the third straight year by 6.4% over 2011.

Articles Tagged with personal injury attorneys in Miami

Medicare Fraud Indictment Proves Elders Are Abused In Nursing Homes

Another Florida Pedestrian Killed In Recent Spate Of Motor Vehicle Accidents