A physician in East Setauket, N.Y., has pleaded guilty to accepting kickbacks for ordering medically unnecessary brain scans.
From June 2013 to December 2019, internist Kenneth Fishberger, MD, conspired with others to commit healthcare fraud, according to a Nov. 15 news release from the Justice Department.
Dr. Fishberger worked with an executive and a salesperson from a medical diagnostics company that performed transcranial doppler scans to order hundreds of unnecessary scans in exchange for kickbacks.
The scheme involved using false diagnoses to justify the scans, leading to about $891,978 in fraudulent claims submitted to Medicare and other payers. In exchange, Dr. Fishberger received cash kickbacks of about $100 per test.