Philadelphia Mental Health Provider Accused of Medicaid Fraud

Philadelphia-based Nueva Vida Multicultural/Multilingual Behavioral Health Inc. and and its owner violated the False Claims Act by improperly billing Medicaid for psychiatric services, according to a Monday complaint by federal prosecutors.

Nueva Vida and its owner Ghodrat Pirooz Sholevar, over a 7-year period, billed Medicaid for so many psychiatric services over the course of a day that they couldn’t have reasonably provided those services appropriately, the government told the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Sholevar systematically short-changed patients through too-brief med checks, which are how a psychiatrist monitors and evaluates the effects of prescribed drugs, the ...