Here’s a crash course on “doctor chasing”. If you don’t understand the scam, it increases the odds that you’ll fall victim to it. Of course, falling victim to it means that you might still go to prison.
To put the scam into context, the ringleader of one such scam, Manishkumar Patel of Pelham Manor, New York, was recently sentenced to 14 months in federal prison to be followed by one year of home detention. He was also ordered to pay $48,150,692.49 in restitution to CMS and to forfeit an additional $6,839,900.00.
Here’s how Patel worked the scam:
He obtained patient information from call centers that phoned Medicare beneficiaries and asked them perfunctory questions designed to justify a script that would be reimbursed by Medicare.
With that information, Patel then went “doctor chasing”: He arranged for cursory telemedicine appointments for those beneficiaries with physicians who then signed a script for some pharmaceutical, or for some DME item, or for some lab test. And here’s the kicker for you: in some instances, and don’t ask me how he pulled this off, the physicians were unaware of what they were signing.
To recap, the concept of “doctor chasing” is that the ringleader criminals have all the information to create a script for some BS item that is going to be paid for by Medicare. They just need a sucker with a medical license to sign the script. They’re chasing you down. Don’t be the sucker.
There’s huge danger in any arrangement in which you put your prescribing imprimatur on any script or order for any item, especially those reimbursed by Medicare, for a patient with whom you do not have a solid doctor-patient relationship, and I would put any “relationship” that originates at a call center into that category.
Many physicians, from those with office-based practices to anesthesiologists and radiologists, seeking to make a few extra bucks, well, $50,000 a month, working part-time at night, fall victim to the scams.
The problem is that once you’re participating in the scam it becomes extremely hard to convince a prosecutor that you’re a victim as opposed to a co-conspirator.
If this resonates with you, perhaps we should talk.
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