Flushing, NY – Independent journalist Nick Shirley confronted employees at a Flushing adult day care center after reviewing federal healthcare payment data that he said showed the facility had 7,899 registered members and received approximately $12.9 million in Medicaid payments during 2024.
During the exchange, an employee disputed the membership figure, telling Shirley, “No, we don’t have 7,000 members,” before asking him to leave the property after he questioned whether the reported figures indicated overbilling.
Employee disputes public database figures
According to Shirley, the membership total came from publicly available Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data.
“This public document says you have 7,899 members,” Shirley said during the encounter. After the employee denied having that many members, Shirley responded, “So you’re overbilling then? You’re getting paid $1,600 per patient — that’s how you got $12.9 million in 2024.”
The employee replied, “Please leave,” and declined to discuss the billing data further.
Shirley later argued that the reported membership total appeared inconsistent with the size of the facility, although no government agency has publicly concluded that the center committed fraud based on those figures.
Broader investigation into adult day care spending
The confrontation was part of a larger investigation by Shirley examining Medicaid-funded adult day care centers in Flushing. Throughout the video, he visited several facilities and questioned operators about public reimbursement records, transportation billing, and allegations of kickbacks.
Employees at one separate adult day care told Shirley they believed some competitors were offering financial incentives to attract members, while insisting their own operation did not participate in such practices. Those claims were made during recorded interviews but were not independently verified.
The video also features Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, discussing healthcare fraud broadly. Oz said suspicious billing patterns and businesses operating from unlikely locations can be indicators investigators examine, but he did not accuse any specific facility shown in the video of criminal wrongdoing without further investigation.
What happens next
As of the video’s publication, no criminal charges or enforcement actions related to the specific Flushing facility featured in the confrontation had been announced.
Why it matters
Medicaid-funded adult day care programs provide social services, meals, activities and supervision for eligible seniors. Because the programs are financed with taxpayer dollars, unusually high reimbursement figures or discrepancies in public records often draw scrutiny from watchdogs, journalists and government investigators.
