An Indian-origin physician in Houston agreed to pay $2 million to settle medical fraud allegations towards him.

Dr Ajay Aggarwal, an Indian-origin ache drugs physician from Houston, has agreed to pay over $2 million to resolve allegations of medical fraud towards him, the US Justice Division revealed. Between 2021 and 2023, the 63-year-old physician billed federally funded well being care packages like Medicare and the Division of Labor’s Staff’ Compensation Packages for surgical implants that he by no means carried out. Dr Aggarwal obtained 1000’s of {dollars} per process, however sufferers obtained easy units which required no surgical procedure. And all machine placements used to happen at Aggarwal’s clinic, not a hospital or surgical heart. “A physician who makes use of easy medical units on his sufferers, but payments Medicare for a classy spinal surgical procedure, is billing the American taxpayer, plain and easy,” stated US Legal professional Nicholas J Ganjei.. “The Southern District of Texas will be certain that losses to federally funded healthcare packages from fraudulent billing, like what occurred right here, are recouped and that wrongdoers are held accountable.”

A 2023 doc of the DOJ revealed that earlier he was accused of giving pointless remedy to federal staff with federal staff’ compensation advantages and his pharmacy Medley, which was formally owned by his spouse, filed the prescriptions. An worker of Medley acted as a whistleblower and stated that in his time period of employment, he noticed sufferers being despatched pointless with pointless drugs being prescribed. In some circumstances, the sufferers didn’t even see or meet Dr Aggarwal. And Medley staff have been allegedly instructed to auto-fill drugs on a month-to-month foundation and to make use of pre-printed prescription pads to submit the prescriptions to DOL-OWCP with out consideration of medical want. The brand new fraud of Dr Aggarwal got here to be reported at a time when overseas medical doctors are below fireplace, whereas a number of Republican leaders stated US wants extra medical doctors and overseas medical doctors can fill the hole.