A Dallas physician and his clinic have been accused of fraud against the health insurance organization for active military, veterans, and their families. The clinic has agreed to pay $3.7 million to resolve the issue.
Dr. Clay Cockerell is the owner and principal physician at Cockerell Dermatopathology, near the Dallas medical center. Dermatopathology is a joint subspecialty of dermatology and pathology and focuses on skin diseases at the microscopic and molecular levels.
In 2021, the government filed a civil suit alleging that Dr. Cockerell knowingly allowed laboratory management company Progen to use his clinic’s lab license to submit false claims to TRICARE, the federal health insurance program for medically unnecessary tests in return for 20 percent of the revenue from the tests.
Cockerell was originally accused of submitting $4.2 million worth of fraudulent claims to TRICARE in 2015. He was nearly named chairman of Baylor Scott & White’s dermatology program in 2016 when both sides of the agreement backed out after the scheme was exposed. Cockerell was also a past president of the American Academy of Dermatology and a clinical professor of dermatology at UT Southwestern. From our past story:
Cockerell allegedly requested that the clinic would not serve federal payers like Medicare and TRICARE. Progen submitted claims for federal payers despite the requests. Progen offered $50 Walmart gift cards to get TRICARE beneficiaries to provide urine and saliva for costly...
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