Desai has already been sentenced to life in prison.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: Dr. Dipak Desai, the Indian American owner of a now defunct Nevada endoscopy center, and one of the most notorious criminals ever known in the history of medical practice in the US, pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and other private health insurance companies by inflating and overcharging for anesthesia services it provided.
Desai, 65, of Las Vegas, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Larry R. Hicks to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, one count of health care fraud, and agreed to the forfeiture of property of up to approximately $2.2 million.
Desai is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9, 2015, and faces a maximum of five years in prison on the conspiracy count, 10 years in prison on the health care fraud count, and maximum fines of $250,000 on each count.
Last July, Desai’s co-defendant and chief operating office of the endoscopy center, Tonya Rushing, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 4, 2015.
According to Desai’s guilty plea agreement, between about January 2005 and February 2008, Desai and Rushing conspired to overcharge Medicare, Medicaid, and other private health insurance companies at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada by significantly overstating the amount of time the certified registered nurse anesthetists spent with patients on a given procedure.
Desai and Rushing created a separate company, Healthcare Business Solutions, owned by Rushing, to handle the billing for the anesthesia services. This company received approximately nine percent of all money collected for anesthesia services rendered at the endoscopy center.
Desai and Rushing imposed intense pressure on the endoscopy center employees to schedule and treat as many patients as possible in a day, and instructed the nurse anesthetists to overstate in their records the amount of time they spent on the anesthesia procedures. Desai and Rushing also instructed the office staff to rely on the false anesthesia records when preparing the claims for reimbursement which were sent to Medicare, Medicaid and the insurance companies. The plea agreement states that the parties agreed that the amount of loss to the victims is approximately $2.2 million.
The Healthcare Finance News reported that the plea comes less than two years after Desai was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a deadly hepatitis C outbreak in Nevada.
In 2013, Desai was sentenced with life in prison after being found guilty of neglect and unsafe practices that led to a 2007 outbreak of hepatitis C. He was found also guilty of second-degree murder for the death of a 77-year-old patient. Desai routinely “double dipped” injection needles, spreading the infection among patients.
That investigation resulted in more than 64,000 people being urged to get tested for the blood infection.
Fierce Health Payer put the latest plea deal by Desai in its perspective, noting that “the fraud charges pale in comparison to the 114 lives irrevocably altered by Desai’s actions, but it also fills in another piece of the puzzle, revealing a physician driven by greed and wealth and more than willing to leave a path of destruction in his wake–the means to a profitable end.”
The report added: “Desai’s business model was simple: Make money at any cost. No, fraudulent billing didn’t lead to the largest hepatitis C outbreak in the country, but it certainly contributed to the driving force behind his approach. This was a physician willing to go to any length to achieve maximum profit margins, whether by falsifying documentation or blatantly ignoring basic infection control best practices.”