What are journalists missing from the state of Delaware? What would you most like WHYY News to cover? Let us know.
A Delaware doctor who ordered medically unnecessary genetic cancer tests for 103 people she never examined has agreed to pay the federal government $180,000 to resolve claims that her illegal actions cost Medicare $565,000.
Dr. Shayasta S. Mufti’s alleged civil violations of the False Claims Act occurred during a seven-month period in 2019 and were outlined in the complaint filed in June by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware.
Mufti has not been charged criminally, but the U.S. District Court complaint and the April settlement that included an “undisputed” statement of facts detail how she went afoul of the law by ordering tests that were “not reasonable and necessary, and not covered by Medicare,” court records show.
Working as a consultant for the telemedicine company MySpecialistMD, Mufti was paid $25 for each “purported consultation,” the complaint said, and with other fees received a total of $15,000 from MySpecialistMD.
Her phony exams led to $1.7 million in bills being sent to Medicare, the complaint said. Medicare actually paid $565,000, the settlement said.
Mufti ordered the tests, even though as an enrolled provider in Medicare, the government’s health program for older Americans and some people with disabilities, she had agreed to comply with program laws, regulations and program instructions.
That meant she would “not knowingly present or cause...
Prosecutor Park Sang-yong has partially won a defamation lawsuit he filed against former and current lawmakers over the so-called "Ulsan District Prosecutors' Office drinking party and feces alleg...