A top UPMC doctor was a "rogue surgeon" who made his own rules in billing for surgeries he didn't perform and his employers let him get away with it, the U.S. Attorney’s Office told a federal court, urging it not to dismiss the government’s pending lawsuit.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office made the allegations Tuesday in response to a motion by Dr. Paul Luketich, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and University of Pittsburgh Physicians to dismiss a federal whistleblower suit brought by the Justice Department last year over Dr. Luketich's conduct in UPMC operating rooms.
The suit claims that Dr. Luketich, chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and one of the top earners in the UPMC network, systematically billed for multiple surgeries he didn't perform. Sometimes he wasn't in the building when the surgeries were underway, exposing patients to hours of unnecessary anesthesia, according to the suit.
The case was originally filed by a former UPMC doctor under the False Claims Act. The U.S. attorney intervened under the whistleblower provisions of that act, saying UPMC cost the government health care programs with false billings.
UPMC has tried to get the case tossed on grounds that the U.S. Attorney's Office has overreached in applying an "unreasonable interpretation" of how concurrent or overlapping surgeries are done in U.S. hospitals.
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