A north Idaho woman was convicted of defrauding the Idaho Medicaid program by overbilling the state.

Barbara Buvel of Coeur d’Alene was ordered to repay $3,015 to Medicaid and sentenced to 80 hours of labor inmate detail and two years of probation.  Buvel, a Medicaid family home provider, erroneously billed the state program for taking care of a patient in her home for two months in 2009 after that patient moved to Twin Falls.  That patient died in a Twin Falls hospital on the final day Buvel billed Medicaid for care.

The case is the third fraud conviction in less than a month reported by the Idaho Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which was created by the Idaho Legislature in 2007.  Medicaid provides medical services for 200,000 Idahoans, largely children and the elderly, as well as people who are poor or disabled.  The federal government currently pays for a large majority of Medicaid costs, with the state government covering a smaller share.