The practice owner of I Design Optical stores in Macquarie Fields and Minto, New South Wales, has been jailed for at least three years for defrauding Medicare by more than AU$4 million, according to a report published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
According to the report, Tisha Thi Thi Phan is not an optometrist, and therefore does not have a Medicare provider number. Instead she used the Medicare provider numbers of six optometrists who worked for the business to submit almost 30,000 claims for over 49,000 optometry services (patient consultations, services relating to contact lenses and computerised perimetry tests) between 18 October 2013 and March 2015. In the process, she acquired $4,046,671 in Medicare benefits. Almost 12,000 other claims, worth more than $870,000, were submitted but rejected.
she used the Medicare provider numbers of six optometrists who worked for the business to submit almost 30,000 claims for over 49,000 optometry services
Tisha Thi Thi Phan pleaded guilty to obtaining a financial advantage by deception and attempting to obtain a financial advantage by deception. On 23 November she was sentenced to jail for a maximum of five years, with a non-parole period of three years.
Read the full story, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald here.
