Scooter Store Agrees to Pay $19.5M of $108M in Alleged Medicare Overcharges

(New Braunfels, TX) --  A scathing report this week by CBS News about Medicare fraud firmly planted the issue at the feet of New Braunfels-based The Scooter Store. 

The report focuses on Medicare's power wheelchair program and the tactics used by companies like the Scooter Store, which is the largest supplier of power wheelchairs in the country. 

CBS News interviewed several former Scooter Store employees who claim the company bullies doctors into writing prescriptions for people to get a scooter or wheelchair, whether they need one or not.  Those former employees say that the company ranked doctors on their willingness to prescribe a chair to a patient, and that there was a specific program at the Scooter Store to get chairs for those that doctors had already turned down.   

As proof that those claims are valid, CBS cites a recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General which found that, industry-wide, 80% of Medicare payments for power chairs are made in error, with most going to those who didn’t need the chairs or lacked proof that they needed a chair.  The Inspector General also found that the Scooter Store had overbilled Medicare by as much as 108-million dollars. 

The Scooter Store disputes that number, but did agree to pay back 19.5-million dollars for chairs that it admits should not have been paid for by Medicare.  In a written statement, the Scooter Store told CBS News that they have a rigorous internal screening process, including a Medicare-required, face-to-face doctor examination, that disqualifies 88% of those seeking Medicare or private insurance reimbursement for power mobility devices.  And they say that the 19.5-million dollars they’ve agreed to pay back amounts to less than 4% of the Medicare payments it received in the last two years.

But CBS News points out that, according to the Special Committee on Aging, the Scooter Store only agreed to pay back that money after the Inspector General threatened to suspend the company from all federal health programs.  And at least 2 Democrat Senators have written letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid questioning why they didn’t require more of the 108-million dollars be paid back by the Scooter Store.

And there may be more issues ahead for the Scooter Store.  According to a report in the San Antonio Express News, the Inspector General found that the Scooter Store’s failure to refund overpayments may be in breach of a 2007 agreement to settle claims investigated by the FBI that it had defrauded the federal government through false Medicare claims.

The Express News report also details the Scooter Store’s plan to pay back the 19.5-million dollars over the course of the next 5 years, without interest. 

To read the full report from CBS News, click here.

To read the full report from the San Antonio Express News, click here.