A Pennsylvania radiologist who is serving prison time for writing illegal opioid prescriptions may get out of prison early due to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to published reports.
A federal judge granted a motion by radiologist Dr. Omar Almusa to reduce his two-year sentence given his participation in a drug abuse program, according to an April 17 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Almusa has been serving the sentence after pleading guilty in June 2018 to three counts on charges that he illegally prescribed Vicodin to patients while employed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Investigators charged that he and another radiologist, Dr. Marios Papachristou, had been writing the prescriptions over three years and submitting for insurance reimbursement for the scrips.
UPMC fired Almusa and Papachristou shortly after the charges were filed. Papachristou pleaded guilty to charges related to the case in 2018.
The federal judge initially denied Almusa's request for a reduced sentence due to the novel coronarvirus outbreak, but he did grant his motion to recommend that the Bureau of Prisons take into account his participation in the drug abuse program in calculating time served, according to the newspaper article.
The article notes that other federal inmates have been appealing for early release by citing the COVID-19 outbreak, and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has been granting "compassionate release" for prisoners who have served half their sentence. The system currently does not consider time served in the drug abuse program; if it did, Almusa would be eligible for early release.
