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The doctor in Delaware had never treated, examined, met or even communicated with the 57-year-old woman who lived in Louisiana.
The physician did try to reach the woman by phone for a telehealth consult. The doctor called three times, but ultimately learned it was the wrong number.
That failure to connect didn’t stop Dr. Shayasta Mufti from ordering a comprehensive battery of genetic tests to help determine the woman’s risk of contracting cancer, federal prosecutors allege in court papers.
The rationale for the expensive testing, according to Mufti’s “physician encounter note,” was that the woman’s sister and grandmother had breast cancer.
“Hence, patient would like to be informed of any further risk(s) to themselves and/or family members by understanding their genetic composition,” court documents say.
The tests were done and Medicare, the government’s health program for older Americans and some people with disabilities, reimbursed the lab $4,980.
But Mufti never reviewed the test results or followed up with the woman who lived 1,300 miles from her doctor’s office near Newark, Delaware.
In all, during an eight-month period in 2019, Mufti is accused of ordering “medically unnecessary genetic testing” for 103 people after “purported consultations” with people who were never her patients, according to the civil complaint filed last month by the U.S. Attorney’s...
A False Claims Act whistleblower failed to convince a federal appeals court Thursday that a lower court errantly sided with his ex-employers whom he accused of fraudulently billing Medicare and ot...