Ginny showed me the printout of the sixty-one visits billed to Nettie since I was fired, all logged under a real nurses ID, and asked if that nurse was there tonight. I knew the ID the second I saw it. It belonged to Danas own daughter, a nurse at the agency, and I nodded across the ballroom to where she sat.
My boss did not just fire me on a lie, she kept billing Medicaid for visits that never happened, using her own daughters nursing credential, to a ninety-one-year-old woman no nurse had seen since March.
Ginny had already brought the whole thing down. My name is Ginny, State Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. This agency billed Medicaid for 412 home visits this year that never happened. She held up my notebook. Teresa wrote down every patient and every odometer reading, and on the days this agency billed visits under her name, her car was forty miles the other way, her mileage didnt match because the visits werent real, Dana billed them anyway. The two men were investigators, and they walked Dana into the hallway, and she left her glass award on the podium.
Then Ginny said Nettie had sixty-one visits billed since I was fired, logged with a real nurses ID, though her family said no nurse had come since March.
I am Teresa, sixty-six, a home health nurse in Rapid City for twenty-two years. Most of my patients live way out, Box Elder, Piedmont, past Hermosa, and I put thirty thousand miles a year on a 2011 Buick, and every visit I write it in a spiral notebook in the glovebox, date, initials, odometer out, odometer in, the way my daddy taught me. In March Dana called me into the break room in front of the whole staff and slapped down a printout, eleven hundred forty dollars in mileage you cant explain, people like you are the reason home care costs so much, clean out your locker.
Lou said take the hit, you cant fight a company. I did not argue. But at midnight I took the notebook from the Buick, went down it against Danas printout with a ruler until three in the morning, hid it in a freezer bag in my flour canister, and made one call to Pierre.
A nurses own dated mileage log proves where she was, and mine proved I was never where Dana billed me. The visits were invented. That is Medicaid fraud, 412 times over.
And Netties sixty-one phantom visits were logged under Danas daughters ID, a nurse who let her mother use her credential, which is why an old woman who needed real care got none while the agency billed for it. I knew that ID, and the daughter was in the ballroom, in a sequined dress, right up until the investigators asked her into the hallway too.
Dana and her daughter faced the Fraud Control Unit, not my anger. You cannot bill the government for care you never gave, to a ninety-one-year-old you never visited, and keep a Best Places to Work award on the podium.
People like you are the reason home care costs so much, Dana told me. People like me write down every mile in a glovebox notebook, and people like Dana bill for visits that never happened. Nettie has a real nurse again, and I have my job back, with back pay. I kept a notebook my whole career because my daddy drove a feed truck and taught me to. It was worth more than any award in that ballroom.