I was sitting in an ASC lobby with my wife waiting for her to go in for a second pain injection after the one she received the prior week had failed. My wife commented that the only other patient sitting in the lobby was a woman who had been there with her a week before for a pain injection, too. I commented, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not, that I thought I had discovered their business model.
No, impossible! No physician would do that!
Perhaps you aren’t familiar with Dr. William Harwin, who pleaded guilty on August 23, 2023, in connection his with criminal antitrust prosecution in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers, Florida, relating to his suppression of competition by agreeing to allocate chemotherapy treatments for cancer patients to his medical group, Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, and radiation treatments to a competing entity.
In April 2020, Harwin’s group was charged for its role in the same criminal conspiracy and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement under which it admitted to conspiring to allocate chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer patients. Under the agreement, the medical group committed to pay a $100 million criminal penalty and to cooperate fully with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation, which I’d guess is what led to Dr. Harwin’s guilty plea.
I represent physicians in transactions across the country and there are plenty of ways to make a profit and to do the right thing for patients. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that everyone does the right thing and that, just sayin’, someone’s business model might be encouraging repeat visits.
I shouldn’t need to remind you to stay on the right side of the line, but I do need to remind you to be careful with whom you deal because they might not be as careful about where that line is drawn.
