JRC Ventures Inc. d/b/a BrightStar Care of Chattanooga
Outcome
BrightStar Care of Chattanooga paid $20,374 after employing an excluded caregiver whose services were billed to federal healthcare programs.
Details
BrightStar Care of Chattanooga (TN) — Excluded Caregiver Employed and Billed (2024)
Outcome: JRC Ventures, Inc. d/b/a BrightStar Care of Chattanooga paid $20,374.43 after employing a caregiver who had been excluded from federal healthcare programs and billing those programs for the excluded individual's services.
BrightStar Care of Chattanooga, a franchise location of the national BrightStar Care home care brand, employed a caregiver who had been excluded from participation in any Federal health care program. The excluded caregiver provided home care services to clients, and those services were billed to Medicare and/or Medicaid, violating the Civil Monetary Penalties Law.
The settlement was entered October 8, 2024. The case demonstrates that franchise-model home care agencies — where individual franchise operators bear responsibility for compliance — must maintain independent, systematic OIG LEIE screening programs for all caregiving staff. National branding does not substitute for local compliance infrastructure.
Primary Source: OIG Enforcement Record
How Crucible Prevents This
Crucible's LEIE exclusion screening and monthly monitoring hooks prevent the exact pattern of employing excluded caregivers. For franchise-model home care agencies, automated OIG LEIE cross-referencing of all staff at hire and monthly is a mandatory compliance control. BrightStar is a national franchise with hundreds of locations — demonstrating that even branded national operators face this exposure without systematic screening.
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