{"id":15581,"date":"2012-01-24T14:59:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=15581"},"modified":"2012-01-24T14:59:47","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:59:47","slug":"whistleblower-lawsuit-filed-against-5-cardiologists-in-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/01\/24\/whistleblower-lawsuit-filed-against-5-cardiologists-in-pennsylvania\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblower Lawsuit Filed Against 5 Cardiologists in Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. government has joined a cardiologist in a whistleblower lawsuit against Hamot Medical Center \u00a0in western Pennsylvania \u00a0and a group of cardiologists with whom he once practiced, Ed Palattella\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goerie.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=2012301229939\">reports in the\u00a0<em>Erie Times-News<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cardiologist Tullio Emanuele, who now practices in Kentucky, has accused five former colleagues &#8212; members of\u00a0Medicor Associates Inc. and its affiliate, Flagship Cardiac, Vascular and Thoracic Surgery of Erie &#8212; of billing Medicare for unnecessary angioplasty and other procedures. Hamot Medical Center\u00a0 is now affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, according to the\u00a0<em>Times-News,<\/em>\u00a0alleges that the contracts the cardiologists had with Hamot Medical Center were \u201csham arrangements intended to disguise the actual purpose of Hamot to pay kickbacks to Medicor and Flagship CVTS in exchange for patient referrals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The case has a strong tie to the much publicized\u00a0Mark Midei case. One of the lawyers representing Emanuele is\u00a0Jamie Bennett, who was the assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who negotiated a $22 million settlement with St. Joseph Medical Center in a similar case alleging kickbacks to Midei\u2019s cardiology group. The investigation in that case ultimately led to the Mark Midei case. Bennett has now entered private practice, where she specializes in whistleblower cases.<\/p>\n<p>The 5 physicians named in the lawsuit are Richard W. Petrella, Robert J. Ferraro, Charles M. Furr, Timothy C. Trageser, and Donald Zone.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.massdevice.com\/news\/cardiologists-charged-with-medicare-fraud-over-stenting-cases\">An article in\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.massdevice.com\/news\/cardiologists-charged-with-medicare-fraud-over-stenting-cases\">Mass Device<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>quoted from the suit: \u201cBeginning in 2004, [Emanuele] began to notice higher rates of intervention among certain physicians in the group. During the period from April 2004 through February 2005, the cath lab activity records show that 4,408 catheterizations were performed and that Drs. Petrella, Trageser and Ferraro had a rate of surgical intervention following catheterization of double the junior members of the group.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The suit alleges that one patient died after an unnecessary catheterization and another patient following complications from an unnecessary CABG.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. government has joined a cardiologist in a whistleblower lawsuit against Hamot Medical Center \u00a0in western Pennsylvania \u00a0and a group of cardiologists with whom he once practiced, Ed Palattella\u00a0reports in the\u00a0Erie Times-News. Cardiologist Tullio Emanuele, who now practices in Kentucky, has accused five former colleagues &#8212; members of\u00a0Medicor Associates Inc. and its affiliate, Flagship [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1,9],"tags":[598,1125],"class_list":["post-15581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cardiac-surgery","category-general","category-interventional-cardiology","tag-mark-midei","tag-whistleblower-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}