The physician owner of a Nevada clinic linked to a deadly hepatitis C outbreak pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to Medicare fraud.
Dr. Dipak Desai, who owned the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, admitted to healthcare fraud and conspiring with others to systematically overcharge Medicare, Medicaid and other private health insurers for anesthesia billing as part of a plea agreement. Desai's practice significantly exaggerated the amount of time certified registered nurse anesthetists spent with patients, according to court documents.
Attempts to reach Desai's lawyers for comment Monday morning were not immediately successful.
As part of the plea agreement, Desai will have to pay restitution of $2.2 million and may serve whatever sentence is imposed concurrently with his sentence from a previous conviction.
A jury convicted Desai in state court in 2013 of second-degree murder, among dozens of other criminal counts, related to a hepatitis C outbreak. A state investigation found that unsafe injection practices related to the administration of anesthesia—such as re-using syringes and using single dose vials of anesthesia on multiple patients—might have exposed patients to other patients' blood. In 2008, the Southern Nevada Health District notified 40,000 of the clinic's patients about potential exposure to hepatitis C.
According to court documents in this latest case, Desai also issued a “standing order” that the nurses list at least 30 minutes of anesthesia time in their records for each procedure regardless of the amount of time actually spent. The doctor “imposed intense pressure” on his employees to schedule and treat as many patients as possible each day, meaning the nurses could not have spent more than 30 minutes with a patient, according to court documents.
Desai's chief operating officer, Tonya Rushing, already pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to commit healthcare fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced May 4.
In 2013, a jury ordered two UnitedHealth Nevada subsidiaries to pay $24 million in compensatory damages to plaintiffs in a case involving the hepatitis C outbreak and $500 million in punitive damages—a figure later reduced to $366 million. UnitedHealth ultimately settled that lawsuit and others from people allegedly infected with hepatitis C for undisclosed amounts of money.
Desai's endoscopy center had been an in-network facility for the plan's members, and the plan and its parent company were accused of being negligent in their credentialing and monitoring of the clinic, according to a UnitedHealth Group SEC filing from February.
UnitedHealth Group also said in that filing it was still a party in two class-action suits related to the outbreak, brought on behalf of uninfected patients who wanted UnitedHealth to pay for medical monitoring.
