A federal jury has convicted Dr Harcharan Narang and Dayakar Moparty, the owner of Red Oak Hospital in Spring, of health care fraud.
A second doctor, Dr Gurnaib Sidhu, had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He is awaiting sentencing.
Dr Narang owned and practiced at North Cypress Clinical Associates. He and Moparty submitted false claims for medical tests that were not medically necessary, not provided or both and then billed at Red Oak Hospital at a higher reimbursement rate.
Patients lured in with Groupon coupon
Dr Narang’s wife, owned Forever Fit Wellness Center, a weight-loss business that operated inside in the clinic in North Cypress. Forever Fit sold Groupon coupons for weight loss injections. Patients were told by either doctor that they needed further testing in order to proceed with the weight loss treatments, which consisted of receiving Vitamin B-12 injections.
The doctors then authorized Moparty to bill for medical tests such as allergy tests, ultrasounds, EKG’s, nerve conduction tests and vestibular testing. The testing was done at the clinic.
Moparty billed private health insurers for tests allegedly provided at the clinic as if they were performed at Red Oak. Sometimes the insurer would reject the claim. Moparty then re-submitted the billing to other entities he was associated with such as Cleveland Regional Medical Center.
Between May 2012 and August 2014, Moparty billed the health insurers approximately $20 million for tests that were not medically necessary. Moparty was paid $3.2 million for these tests. He then transferred approximately $3 million to entities owned by Narang.
Interestingly many reviewers on Groupon suspected fraud was taking place. For example, in March 2013 Lori wrote ‘the doctor is a quack… where are the Feds when you need them!!’
Sentencing in June.
Narang and Moparty face up to 10 years in prison for each of the 17 counts of health care fraud and up to 20 years for each of the three counts of money laundering that they were convicted of. They will be sentenced in June.
Moparty under separate indictment
Not mentioned in the Department of Justice press release is the fact that Moparty is under indictment in a separate, but similar, case involving a $17 million alleged fraud. His co-conspirators are three doctors from Northwest Houston Cardiology, which is located in the same building as Narang’s clinic! That scheme allegedly ran from May 2011 to July 2013.
We have seen many cases related to healthcare fraud. One of my friends has also faced this issue, he went for a checkup and the doctor told him that he needed medical tests like sonography , which was not necessary. but my friend is working in a law firm agency, so he was aware of such fraud which saved him.