The owners of a New Jersey firm that provided mobile diagnostic testing services including ultrasound were sentenced to prison for their role in healthcare fraud, according to U.S. government authorities.
Kirtish N. Patel received a prison term of 100 months and his wife Nita K. Patel was sentenced to 78 months. They were also ordered to forfeit $4.8 million and pay restitution of $4.8 million.
Both pleaded guilty in November 2015 to a scheme in which they submitted and received Medicare reimbursement for diagnostic tests that were never interpreted by a licensed physician. The couple operated Biosound Medical Services and Heart Solutions, which provided testing services such as ultrasound scans, echocardiograms, and nerve conduction studies in the New York and New Jersey area.
U.S. authorities charged that Biosound technicians would travel to the offices of primary care physicians to conduct tests that were supposed to be read by appropriate specialist physicians. But government officials said that from 2008 to 2014 Kirtish Patel interpreted and wrote "diagnostic reports produced by Biosound despite having no medical license and knowing that the reports would be used by the referring physicians to make important patient treatment decisions." Authorities also charged that Nita Patel forged physician signatures on the reports to make them appear legitimate.
The government believes that Biosound generated some 10,000 diagnostic reports that were never actually reviewed or interpreted by a physician, and the Patels received over $4.8 million from Medicare and private insurance companies for the fraudulent reports, "which they used for personal expenses, including multiple residences and luxury vehicles," the government stated.
