Community Health Care Solutions, LLC and the Estate of Yolanda Burnom Agree to Pay $4.6 Million in Medicaid Fraud Lawsuit

US Attorney's Office, Western District of Louisiana, February 27, 2025

SHREVEPORT, La. – Acting United States Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook announced that a Shreveport counseling service, Community Health Care Solutions, LLC (“Community Health”) and the estate of its deceased owner/operator, Yolanda Burnom, have agreed to pay $4,600,000 to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting claims to Medicaid for reimbursement for services that were not rendered.

Through the investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, law enforcement agents determined that Community Health, through Burnom’s operations, created a scheme to defraud the Medicaid program by offering financial incentives to Medicaid recipients to share their patient information. Burnom and her employees would use that patient information to bill Medicaid for crisis intervention services that did not occur.  Instead, counselors working for Community Health were instructed to create generic notes that could be cut and pasted onto patient files, in order to bill for crisis intervention, which carried the maximum reimbursement.  In many instances, the counselors never met the patients or provided any services at all.

A federal grand jury returned an indictment on September 28, 2022, charging Burnom with one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, six counts of healthcare fraud, and two counts of wire fraud. Four months later, Burnom passed away unexpectedly, and civil litigation was the only remaining avenue for the United States to recover its money.

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