Defense Attorneys Go on Offense in Va. Squad`s Trial
Sept. 20--ABINGDON, Va. -- Defense attorneys went on the offense in the Saltville Rescue Squad's health care fraud case Wednesday by accusing prosecutors of favoring procedure over sick patients.
"According to the government here, if the paperwork isn't right [people] die," defense attorney Michael Khouri told jurors on the fifth day of trial in U.S. District Court in Abingdon.
Judge James P. Jones sent jurors home Wednesday afternoon after more than three hours of deliberation and told them to return to court this morning.
Khouri's closing arguments followed a case in which the squad as a corporation and former President Eddie Wayne Louthian are accused of bilking Medicare of nearly a million dollars from 2005 to 2011 by delivering what were supposed to be bedridden patients to dialysis treatment.
Former member Monica Jane Hicks pleaded guilty in June to a single count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.
The defense rested its case Wednesday morning without calling a witness. So far, Khouri and fellow defense attorney R. Wayne Austin have instead aggressively attacked every statement made by prosecution witnesses.
Jurors filed into the deliberation room Wednesday afternoon with the option of siding either with a prosecution focused on altered medical documents and surveillance videos of stretcher-bound patients who were able to walk, or a defense that's labeled the squad's members as heroes.
"At least two of the three people we're talking about had a medical emergency [on the way home from dialysis] and needed to be taken to the hospital," Austin said. "Thank God the Saltville Rescue Squad was there."
Assistant U.S. District Attorney Janine Myatt focused on ambulance trip sheets that were filled out the day before patients were delivered to dialysis in Abingdon and back home. The narratives on those pre-filled sheets described patients as unable to walk and requiring a stretcher and oxygen.
"The rescue squad was making over $100,000 a year just on these three patients alone," she said.
Myatt also noted that the squad chauffeured the three patients for 18 months without a doctor's order for medical transport, which is required by Medicare regulation. Even when they did have an order, Myatt argued, the squad should never have transported patients well enough to walk around and drive, as patients could be seen doing in surveillance videos.
"It's not about whether the [ambulance driver] thought patients needed transport ... it's about the fact that they lied on paperwork to get paid," she said.
If convicted of all charges, Louthian could face as many as 60 years in prison, while the squad could have to forfeit money, property and/or equipment.
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