Medicare will suspend millions of dollars in payments to dozens of additional home healthcare providers in Miami-Dade after a federal judge ruled it has the power to stop reimbursements to companies suspected of overcharging for diabetic and other services.

The government agency began the crackdown on the top 10 Miami-Dade home healthcare operators in October, citing potential fraud, but one of the providers sued in federal court claiming Medicare exceeded its authority.

This week, U.S. District Judge Paul Huck sided with Medicare, saying the taxpayer-funded program's suspension policy is ``reasonable and appropriate.''

His decision allows Medicare to continue halting payments to local companies suspected of submitting excessive claims for nurses treating homebound patients who either aren't diabetic or don't need help injecting insulin.

Miami-Dade is home to 334 Medicare-certified home healthcare providers. Many could be affected by the giant entitlement program's unprecedented suspensions.

''Because of the judge's decision, we will be able to expand our efforts to look at other home healthcare companies for payment suspensions and audits,'' Medicare spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said Friday. ``We just want to make sure the people getting home healthcare services are receiving them under the law.''

The judge's decision followed a Miami Herald story that detailed how the home healthcare company that sued Medicare over the suspension policy had billed the agency about $75,000 last year for a nurse to inject the insulin of a homebound diabetic patient.

But the patient, 92-year-old Maria C. Perez, who was living in a Westchester group home, told the Miami Herald that she has never been diabetic and didn't receive twice-a-day insulin injections from a visiting nurse in the latter half of 2007.

Her family doctor and medical records backed up her statement.

Home Care Services Provider, based in Kendall, said it did send a nurse twice daily to treat Perez for diabetes from June to November last year based on a prescribed referral by a Hialeah physician. It denied any wrongdoing.

MULLING AN APPEAL

As for the dispute over Medicare's suspension policy, the company's lawyer said it is considering an appeal of the judge's decision, filed Wednesday.

''We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling,'' attorney Anthony Vitale said in a statement. ``We believed then and we believe now that the Medicare payment suspension regulation is illegal.''

But that dispute with Medicare could be the least of Home Care Services Provider's problems.

The company's Miami-Dade owner, Maria Del Carmen Escarpio, 48, was charged in July with defrauding the Florida Medicaid program, which covers healthcare services for low-income people.

She's accused of using her Kendall home healthcare business to bill the state program $447,000 in wound care supplies and oxygen equipment that were never delivered to Medicaid patients in 2003-04. Moreover, the patients didn't have any wounds or need the oxygen, state authorities said.

''We're vigorously defending her in that case,'' said Escarpio's criminal attorney, Louis Martinez. ``It has nothing to do whatsoever with the current Medicare case [in federal court] nor does it have anything do with the suspension.''

In early October, Medicare suspended millions of dollars in payments to the top 10 home healthcare agencies in Miami-Dade County, citing a spike in questionable billing for diabetic and other services.

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