sober houses - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T06:19:02Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/sober+housesAlong the Coast: ‘Drug test doctor’ pleads guilty, faces up to 20 years in prisonhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-drug-test-doctor-pleads-guilty-faces-up-to-20-yea2022-11-02T15:10:05.000Z2022-11-02T15:10:05.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Larry Keller</strong><br /> <br /> More than two years after his arrest in a massive insurance fraud scheme involving drug treatment centers and sober houses, Delray Beach physician Michael Ligotti has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge that will net him a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison.<br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10861028459,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10861028459,RESIZE_180x180{{/staticFileLink}}" width="96" alt="10861028459?profile=RESIZE_180x180" /></a>Ligotti, 48, pleaded guilty Oct. 4 to a single count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud. Federal prosecutors dropped 12 other counts of health care fraud and money laundering.<br /> The doctor also could be fined up to $250,000, and with other defendants be held liable for paying $127 million in restitution. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 13.<br /> Ligotti was arrested in July 2020 and subsequently indicted on charges of fraudulently billing private insurance companies and Medicare of approximately $746 million for which they paid $127 million over a span of nine years. He is free on a $1.5 million bond.<br /> The doctor opened Whole Health medical practice at 402 SE Sixth Ave. in 2005. It purported to be an urgent care facility, a family practice and an addiction treatment medical office, but most of its patients were addicted to drugs and alcohol and had private insurance. Ligotti was the only physician, assisted by nurse practitioners and other medical professionals.<br /> Ligotti’s scheme worked like this, according to the government:<br /> Ligotti became the medical director at more than 50 sober homes and treatment facilities. He signed approximately 137 standing orders for these businesses, which then required their patients to submit to urine drug tests three or more times per week on Ligotti’s orders.<br /> These were sent to laboratories, which billed insurers for the tests and paid kickbacks to the sober home and treatment center operators. They in turn would require their patients to regularly visit Ligotti’s Whole Health practice for additional testing and treatment — the clinic had its own in-house lab — or they would permit Ligotti to send staff to them for this purpose. <br /> “This allowed Ligotti to profit by billing patients’ insurance for duplicative, unnecessary and expensive tests and treatments,” prosecutors said in a statement of facts to which Ligotti admitted. The result often was “double-billing the same services for patients at Whole Health that had already been billed by the substance abuse treatment centers, sober homes and/or the clinical testing laboratories.” <br /> A Whole Health nurse practitioner told investigators that sometimes 10 to 15 addiction patients were transported there in vans dubbed “druggy buggies.”<br /> Ligotti and Whole Health ordered urine and blood drug testing so frequently that additional tests were often ordered before any medical professional had received or reviewed the results of earlier tests. And when a patient did test positive for a banned substance, Whole Health and the treatment facilities seldom imposed consequences. <br /> The drug screens were lucrative. Whole Health billed one patient’s insurer more than $840,000 in a little more than six years, and the insurer of another patient $707,000 in less than four years, prosecutors said.<br /> Ligotti also billed insurers for other services, such as psychiatric therapy sessions that didn’t occur and for which Whole Health didn’t have qualified staff.<br /> Ligotti originally had a trial date set for April 2021, but the complexity of the case contributed to its being delayed. In July and August alone, the government produced more than 88,000 pages of documents such as patient charts, billing records, insurance claims and patient interview reports, Ligotti’s lawyer said in court papers. There also was a “voluminous” amount of material released earlier, he said. <br /> The doctor “is drowning in the amount of information he must analyze to get ready for trial, and his attorney is similarly drowning,” the attorney, Jose Quiñon, wrote in late August in a motion seeking a trial continuance of at least six months.<br /> Complicating matters further, one of Ligotti’s three children contracted COVID-19 in August, and then he and his wife also were diagnosed with the virus.<br /> Before his legal woes, Ligotti lived well. His Whole Health practice paid $128,600 to a Boca Raton jewelry store, according to court records.<br /> The doctor and his family lived in a seven-bedroom home on Seagate Drive in Delray Beach, and owned a second six-bedroom house nearby. The homes and the Whole Health building have been sold for a cumulative $9.3 million. Net proceeds after mortgages and other encumbrances have been paid will be forfeited to the government. </p></div>Delray Beach: State intervention sought in regulation of sober houseshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/delray-beach-state-intervention-sought-in-regulation-of-sober2012-11-28T19:14:05.000Z2012-11-28T19:14:05.000ZDeborah Hartz-Seeleyhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/DeborahHartzSeeley<div><p><span><b>By Tim Pallesen</b></span></p>
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<p>Delray Beach is asking the state to regulate sober houses after the city failed in its own effort to prevent the Caron Foundation from opening two such coastal houses for recovering addicts. </p>
<p>Delray and Boca Raton will share the cost for a Tallahassee lobbyist to persuade legislators that the state Department of Families and Children should license and regulate sober houses.</p>
<p>“Let’s start this from another angle,” Delray Beach Vice Mayor Tom Carney said of the issue for coastal residents in the city’s upcoming mayoral campaign.</p>
<p>Carney faces another coastal resident, Cary Glickstein, in the March 12 election for mayor. </p>
<p>“Tom as a commissioner failed to get any results,” Glickstein said. “Now, as a candidate for mayor, this is his priority all of a sudden.”</p>
<p>The City Commission at Carney’s urging agreed to pay $15,000 to hire Joe McCann, senior vice president of the Tallahassee lobbying firm Ballard Partners, to be the city lobbyist. </p>
<p>Firm owner Brian Ballard is the brother of former County Commissioner Mary McCarty.</p>
<p>McCann will meet with legislative committee leaders before the April legislative session to gather support for state licensing and regulation of sober houses. </p>
<p>“The real issue is the proliferation of sober houses that don’t give you the treatment that they promise,” Carney said. “Government’s role is to make sure businesses in the community do what they say they’re going to do.”</p>
<p>The Florida League of Cities, also concerned about sober houses in residential neighborhoods, has proposed less costly legislation because it doubts the legislature will pay for DCF enforcement.</p>
<p>“The law won’t be changed just for Delray and Boca,” Glickstein said. “The more economical way is to get other cities on the same page.”</p>
<p>Glickstein became a figure in the Caron Foundation’s lawsuit against the city when a federal judge said his outspoken comments showed Delray Beach was discriminating against recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. Glickstein, the planning and zoning board chairman at the time, had called sober houses a “cancer” on Delray Beach.</p>
<p>“The key is not to be the loudest, but rather to be the most effective,” Carney said, as the mayoral campaign heats up with sober houses still a concern for coastal residents.</p>
<p>Federal housing laws prevent discrimination against recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. </p>
<p>Both Glickstein and Caron Foundation attorney Jim Green cautioned Delray Beach that federal courts could overturn a state law to regulate sober houses, just as a federal judge blocked Delray Beach ’s attempt to do so. </p>
<p>“The fact that Delray Beach is attempting to spearhead state legislation with its history of discrimination against people in recovery would be viewed with suspicion by the federal courts,” Green said. <span>Ú</span></p></div>