An Indian-American cardiologist in Nevada has been arrested on the charges of unlawful distribution of prescription opioids and healthcare fraud.<\/p>\n
The accused, Dr Devendra Patel, today appeared in a federal court in Reno city of Nevada. He was charged with 36- counts of distribution of controlled substances such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, and three-counts of health care fraud.<\/p>\n
The statutory maximum penalty for distribution of a controlled substance is 10 years in prison and the maximum penalty for healthcare fraud is 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors alleged that from May 2014 to September 2017, Patel routinely prescribed fentanyl, hydrocodone, and oxycodone for his patients without a legitimate medical purpose and that he fraudulently billed Medicare and Medicaid for medical tests that he did not perform.<\/p>\n
The indictment alleges that Patel performed EKGs on his patients, so he could then order nuclear stress tests which he did not administer.<\/p>\n
He allegedly used a poorly calibrated machine and presented his patients with fraudulent X-rays, in order to deceive his patients into thinking they had coronary issues that needed to be treated by him, the indictment alleged.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Patel is the first person to be charged in Nevada since the formation of the Justice Department\u2019s Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit,\u201d Acting US Attorney Steven Myhre said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite his physician\u2019s oath to do no harm, Dr. Patel recklessly prescribed opioids, for no legitimate medical purpose,\u201d stated FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Indian-American cardiologist in Nevada has been arrested on the charges of unlawful distribution of prescription opioids and healthcare fraud. The accused, Dr Devendra Patel, today appeared in a federal court in Reno city of Nevada. He was charged with 36- counts of distribution of controlled substances such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, and three-counts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13609,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607\/revisions\/13609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}