New Brunswick Adult Daycare Overbilled Medicaid $126,782

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — A New Brunswick adult daycare was named as one of the worst offenders in the state when it comes to over-billing Medicaid.

The adult daycare is Golden Path Adult Day Care, located on Charles Street in New Brunswick. Golden Path overbilled Medicaid $126,782, and had to pay it all back.

It was named in this report, released Tuesday by the NJ Office of the State Comptroller, of 21 adult medical daycares across the state that improperly billed Medicaid. The 21 facilities were all investigated by the state's Medicaid Fraud Division.

The five adult daycares that overbilled Medicaid the most were: New Life Adult Care, Peaceful Adult Day Care, and Atmiya Adult Day Care, all in Bergen County, along with Golden Path Adult Day Care in New Brunswick, and Signature Medical Day Care in Essex County.

All five have repaid their overpayments in full.

The state says the 21 adult daycares improperly billed for duplicate services and/or billed for services that exceeded the amount permitted by Medicaid.

The state looked at claims from January 2016 through May 2022, and found those 21 businesses filed more than 11,000 claims that violated Medicaid regulations in one or more of the following ways:

• Billed for more than five days of services in a week
• Billed for services for a beneficiary who was actually an inpatient at a different facility
• Billed for services provided to a beneficiary when another adult daycare also billed for the identical service on the same date.

The state is seeking full repayment and has so far recouped $839,000.

“Whether the improper billing was due to careless mistakes or intentional fraud, these daycares were paid for services that were unauthorized and, in some cases, not delivered,” said Josh Lichtblau, Director of the the NJ Medicaid Fraud Division. “That’s a waste of tax dollars."