2. Cme owner asked admin people to change psych testing answers of work comp applicants
I recently received a text from another former employee of california medical evaluators regarding the other outscam posted on here. I was very sad to see that so many people were afected by what cme and gabor have done. The doctors i worked with when i was there were so nice and i cant believe it that they lost their lisences because of cme.
For me, i feel like i need to tell my story as well. I left cme recently because working there was so bad. I was an admin person so i dont know first hand about the billing problems going on there Only things i heard from my coworkers about how the owner gabor would tell the bookkeper and billers to change bills etc and that they felt uncomfortable doing it).
What i can say is that working there was awful - the owner gabor vari is condescending, rude, nasty and treated his employees horribly. Nobody is paid what they should be paid - he micromanaged everyone and made people cry at least weekly. He made everyone so uncomfortable that i ended up having to leave. He monitored people's email accounts and was even found going through people's desk after hours. And clearly im not the only one who thinks it was bad. If you look at the number of employees that have left over the past few years its unbelievable. More than 50 - and the company is not that big. Nobody can stand to stay there longer than a few months and deal with gabor.
The biggest reason i decided to leave, besides gabor and the working conditions, was that i felt very uncomfortable with one of the things i saw happening there. I used to work at a law firm and knew that something wasnt right at cme.
Basically, when work comp injured workers get evaluated by a psych doctor, they take a test called a mmpi. There are hundreds of multiple choice questions on the test that can tell if someone is faking in their evaluation and work comp claim - the applicant fills out a sheet with bubbles and the answers are scored. The scores tell a lot about the person being evaluated.
At least half the time, gabor asked me and other cme employees to take the mmpi bubble answer sheets after an applicants evaluation and redo the answer sheets.
I refused to do so or would always say i was too busy because i didn't feel comfortable doing that. Hundreds of mmpi answer sheets were rewritten by cme employees because not all of the bubbles were filled in correctly or some were left blank by the applicant. Whatever the reason was, the receptionist or another admin person would have stacks of bubble sheets and would fill in bubbles on the original one or would transfer answers to a new sheet. The mmpi answer sheets sent to get scored were the ones changed or redone by cme employees.
I was only at cme for 5 months but i asked other employees there and they said that gabor had asked them to change mmpi answer sheets for as long as they could remember. I even remember the receiptonist with a stack of answer sheets partly filled in with another stack of blank sheets and she would answer the phones and talk to people while she was transfering answers from the applicant's answer sheets. It was so bad!! who knows how many answers were accidentlaly changed or not transferred correctly and could have changed the results of the test.
I knew that the answers that the applicant put on the answer sheet shouldn't be changed. In my experience at my prior law firm, i knew something like that would get the attorneys in trouble and the evidence could be thrown out. I don't know what happened with all those cases where cme employees changed mmpi test results but i just hope that the changed results didnt hurt the applicants cases.
The dwc really should look into cme and gabor and stop them from doing this.
Psych QME - Thank you for posting this and providing the public with truthful information about California Medical Evaluators and its owner Gabor Vari!! I'm so sorry to hear that you lost your certification as a result of the company's actions.
I used to be a QME with California Medical Evaluators (aka CME) and fortunately caught on to what they were doing in terms of unlawful biling pretty quickly - I left before they were able to cause too much damage so I still have my QME certification. I am aware of many of the CME doctors losing their QME license and being audited because of billing issues. I don't know exactly what the DWC's concern was with respect to those doctors but I can speak about my experience with the company:
I have been a QME for over 10 years. About 2 years ago, I met a recruiter who worked with CME who I really liked (he is no longer with the company). After speaking with him, it seemed to make sense to increase my workers' compensation evaluations by going with a management company who could handle more volume. The recruiter explained that CME would handle all of the administrative tasks relating to the evaluations (including the billing). After I started up with the company, I no longer had any interaction with the recruiter (who I really liked) and unfortunately only had interactions with the owner Gabor Vari. I learned very quickly that this guy (an ex-psychiatrist) was a person I did not want to be associated with AT ALL.
After QME doctors perform an evaluation, they write a report and send it to California Medical Evaluators to be sent off to the insurance companies with a bill. Under the state medical-legal fee schedule, ML105s are billed out hourly (whereas the lower codes are billed at flat rates). Also, QMEs are billed out less than AMEs (agreed medical evaluators). I freqently asked Gabor Vari for copies of my final reports before they were sent out. I was always met with defiance and would have to go to the billers or the accounting people for a copy of my reports. Unfortunately, they'd be sent to me AFTER they billed the insurance company. More than 1/2 the time I noticed that the company billed me out incorrectly - and it wasn't done by accident. For example, they would bill me out as an AME when I clearly was a QME chosen to do an evaluation through the panel system. On at least 4 different ocassions, they had upcoded my services. I also saw times where the company double and even triple billed the insurance company under my name and kept the overpayments for themselves!!!!
I frantically called Gabor Vari asking him to immediatley inform the insurers of the errors and to reimburse overpayments. He refused to do so claiming that "if it was the insurance company's fault, he was going to keep the money." He tried to convice me that I shouldn't be concerned about the upcoding or the "errors" in billing because I would ultimately get paid more if I just stayed quiet and didn't tell the payors about the errors. He tried to convince me that if the DWC caught on, that he'd be able to argue that the higher billing codes were proper or would hire an attorney to do so.
At least twice while I was with the company, Gabor Vari performed internal "audits" of the doctors and would inform us if we weren't billing enough ML105s...threatening to fire us if we only billed lower billing codes.
Nothing about that company felt right and I refused to stay quiet knowing that my license (medical and QME) was on the line. I informed the DWC of what was going on at CME and promptly left the company.
What's frightening is that CME takes 50% of everything it bills the doctors for. So it's not surprising that Gabor Vari would not fix bills submitted in my name. He makes a lot of money off of the QMEs - unfortunately though - he has no consideration for the doctors and is even less concerned of the damage he is causing by fraudulently billing the insurance companies. It's also unfortunate because California Medical Evaluators and Gabor Vari have approval from the division of Workers Compensation to provide training to QMEs - yet here they are fraudulently billing and their doctors are losing their licenses.
I am one of the lucky ones who left the company when my gut was telling me to do so. Now there are a lot of doctors who are stuck in a really bad place, being audited by the DWC and being denied renewal of their certification (or losing it) becasue of CME's fraudulent billing in the doctors' names.
Please be careful QMEs!!! These guys don't care who they hurt to make a buck. If you lose your QME certification, the Division of Workers Compensation can report this to the medical board and you could lose your license to practice! I spoke with an attorney when I left CME last year and he told me that a company's fraudulent billing under your name is not a defense!!
California Medical Evaluators (aka CME) and its owner, Gabor Vari, are being investigated for insurance fraud and are the reason over a dozen of its doctors have lost their QME license.
I used to be a QME with California Medical Evaluators. I did not hear great things about the service or its owners but I was convinced by a colleague of mine that it was easier to go with a management company to handle my workers compensation evaluations. Shame on me for not going with my gut feeling.
My QME license was up for 2 year renewal and it was denied because of California Medical Evaluators. CME claims to be a management company. They handle all of the doctors billings for workers compensation reports. The doctor completes an evaluation, writes a report, sends it to the company and they send it to the workers compensation carrier with a bill. I used to always ask to see the final reports before they went to the insurance company but they would rarely send them to me. On the few ocassions that they sent the reports to me, I realized they had incorrectly billed my time (either upcoded it or billed it as a different type of evaluation). On many ocassions I asked California Medical Evaluators and Gabor Vari to fix bills I knew were submitted incorrectly. They refused to fix them. I ultimately decided to leave CME but it was too late and when the Division of Workers Compensation audted me - CME submitted reports without my approval and I lost my license.
I personally know of 5 other doctors with the company that have lost their QME license and currently 8 other doctors are being audited because of California Medical Evaluators.
Be very very careful with these guys. You don't want to be the next person to lose your license.
California Medical Evaluators Reviews
1. Terrible work environment
2. Cme owner asked admin people to change psych testing answers of work comp applicants
I recently received a text from another former employee of california medical evaluators regarding the other outscam posted on here. I was very sad to see that so many people were afected by what cme and gabor have done. The doctors i worked with when i was there were so nice and i cant believe it that they lost their lisences because of cme.
For me, i feel like i need to tell my story as well. I left cme recently because working there was so bad. I was an admin person so i dont know first hand about the billing problems going on there Only things i heard from my coworkers about how the owner gabor would tell the bookkeper and billers to change bills etc and that they felt uncomfortable doing it).
What i can say is that working there was awful - the owner gabor vari is condescending, rude, nasty and treated his employees horribly. Nobody is paid what they should be paid - he micromanaged everyone and made people cry at least weekly. He made everyone so uncomfortable that i ended up having to leave. He monitored people's email accounts and was even found going through people's desk after hours. And clearly im not the only one who thinks it was bad. If you look at the number of employees that have left over the past few years its unbelievable. More than 50 - and the company is not that big. Nobody can stand to stay there longer than a few months and deal with gabor.
The biggest reason i decided to leave, besides gabor and the working conditions, was that i felt very uncomfortable with one of the things i saw happening there. I used to work at a law firm and knew that something wasnt right at cme.
Basically, when work comp injured workers get evaluated by a psych doctor, they take a test called a mmpi. There are hundreds of multiple choice questions on the test that can tell if someone is faking in their evaluation and work comp claim - the applicant fills out a sheet with bubbles and the answers are scored. The scores tell a lot about the person being evaluated.
At least half the time, gabor asked me and other cme employees to take the mmpi bubble answer sheets after an applicants evaluation and redo the answer sheets.
I refused to do so or would always say i was too busy because i didn't feel comfortable doing that. Hundreds of mmpi answer sheets were rewritten by cme employees because not all of the bubbles were filled in correctly or some were left blank by the applicant. Whatever the reason was, the receptionist or another admin person would have stacks of bubble sheets and would fill in bubbles on the original one or would transfer answers to a new sheet. The mmpi answer sheets sent to get scored were the ones changed or redone by cme employees.
I was only at cme for 5 months but i asked other employees there and they said that gabor had asked them to change mmpi answer sheets for as long as they could remember. I even remember the receiptonist with a stack of answer sheets partly filled in with another stack of blank sheets and she would answer the phones and talk to people while she was transfering answers from the applicant's answer sheets. It was so bad!! who knows how many answers were accidentlaly changed or not transferred correctly and could have changed the results of the test.
I knew that the answers that the applicant put on the answer sheet shouldn't be changed. In my experience at my prior law firm, i knew something like that would get the attorneys in trouble and the evidence could be thrown out. I don't know what happened with all those cases where cme employees changed mmpi test results but i just hope that the changed results didnt hurt the applicants cases.
The dwc really should look into cme and gabor and stop them from doing this.
Psych QME - Thank you for posting this and providing the public with truthful information about California Medical Evaluators and its owner Gabor Vari!! I'm so sorry to hear that you lost your certification as a result of the company's actions.
I used to be a QME with California Medical Evaluators (aka CME) and fortunately caught on to what they were doing in terms of unlawful biling pretty quickly - I left before they were able to cause too much damage so I still have my QME certification. I am aware of many of the CME doctors losing their QME license and being audited because of billing issues. I don't know exactly what the DWC's concern was with respect to those doctors but I can speak about my experience with the company:
I have been a QME for over 10 years. About 2 years ago, I met a recruiter who worked with CME who I really liked (he is no longer with the company). After speaking with him, it seemed to make sense to increase my workers' compensation evaluations by going with a management company who could handle more volume. The recruiter explained that CME would handle all of the administrative tasks relating to the evaluations (including the billing). After I started up with the company, I no longer had any interaction with the recruiter (who I really liked) and unfortunately only had interactions with the owner Gabor Vari. I learned very quickly that this guy (an ex-psychiatrist) was a person I did not want to be associated with AT ALL.
After QME doctors perform an evaluation, they write a report and send it to California Medical Evaluators to be sent off to the insurance companies with a bill. Under the state medical-legal fee schedule, ML105s are billed out hourly (whereas the lower codes are billed at flat rates). Also, QMEs are billed out less than AMEs (agreed medical evaluators). I freqently asked Gabor Vari for copies of my final reports before they were sent out. I was always met with defiance and would have to go to the billers or the accounting people for a copy of my reports. Unfortunately, they'd be sent to me AFTER they billed the insurance company. More than 1/2 the time I noticed that the company billed me out incorrectly - and it wasn't done by accident. For example, they would bill me out as an AME when I clearly was a QME chosen to do an evaluation through the panel system. On at least 4 different ocassions, they had upcoded my services. I also saw times where the company double and even triple billed the insurance company under my name and kept the overpayments for themselves!!!!
I frantically called Gabor Vari asking him to immediatley inform the insurers of the errors and to reimburse overpayments. He refused to do so claiming that "if it was the insurance company's fault, he was going to keep the money." He tried to convice me that I shouldn't be concerned about the upcoding or the "errors" in billing because I would ultimately get paid more if I just stayed quiet and didn't tell the payors about the errors. He tried to convince me that if the DWC caught on, that he'd be able to argue that the higher billing codes were proper or would hire an attorney to do so.
At least twice while I was with the company, Gabor Vari performed internal "audits" of the doctors and would inform us if we weren't billing enough ML105s...threatening to fire us if we only billed lower billing codes.
Nothing about that company felt right and I refused to stay quiet knowing that my license (medical and QME) was on the line. I informed the DWC of what was going on at CME and promptly left the company.
What's frightening is that CME takes 50% of everything it bills the doctors for. So it's not surprising that Gabor Vari would not fix bills submitted in my name. He makes a lot of money off of the QMEs - unfortunately though - he has no consideration for the doctors and is even less concerned of the damage he is causing by fraudulently billing the insurance companies. It's also unfortunate because California Medical Evaluators and Gabor Vari have approval from the division of Workers Compensation to provide training to QMEs - yet here they are fraudulently billing and their doctors are losing their licenses.
I am one of the lucky ones who left the company when my gut was telling me to do so. Now there are a lot of doctors who are stuck in a really bad place, being audited by the DWC and being denied renewal of their certification (or losing it) becasue of CME's fraudulent billing in the doctors' names.
Please be careful QMEs!!! These guys don't care who they hurt to make a buck. If you lose your QME certification, the Division of Workers Compensation can report this to the medical board and you could lose your license to practice! I spoke with an attorney when I left CME last year and he told me that a company's fraudulent billing under your name is not a defense!!
California Medical Evaluators (aka CME) and its owner, Gabor Vari, are being investigated for insurance fraud and are the reason over a dozen of its doctors have lost their QME license.
I used to be a QME with California Medical Evaluators. I did not hear great things about the service or its owners but I was convinced by a colleague of mine that it was easier to go with a management company to handle my workers compensation evaluations. Shame on me for not going with my gut feeling.
My QME license was up for 2 year renewal and it was denied because of California Medical Evaluators. CME claims to be a management company. They handle all of the doctors billings for workers compensation reports. The doctor completes an evaluation, writes a report, sends it to the company and they send it to the workers compensation carrier with a bill. I used to always ask to see the final reports before they went to the insurance company but they would rarely send them to me. On the few ocassions that they sent the reports to me, I realized they had incorrectly billed my time (either upcoded it or billed it as a different type of evaluation). On many ocassions I asked California Medical Evaluators and Gabor Vari to fix bills I knew were submitted incorrectly. They refused to fix them. I ultimately decided to leave CME but it was too late and when the Division of Workers Compensation audted me - CME submitted reports without my approval and I lost my license.
I personally know of 5 other doctors with the company that have lost their QME license and currently 8 other doctors are being audited because of California Medical Evaluators.
Be very very careful with these guys. You don't want to be the next person to lose your license.