WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has charged a Texas doctor in an $89 million health care fraud scheme, accusing him of billing insurers for medically unnecessary cardiovascular screening tests for college student-athletes and then rubber-stamping the results as normal without reviewing them.
Jason Finkelstein, 53, faces charges of health care fraud and conspiracy in what prosecutors describe as a yearslong scheme that preyed on the fears of athletes that they could die on playing fields or courts of sudden cardiac arrest.
Athletes with no preexisting conditions who were concerned about being cleared to compete were administered tests they did not need and, in one case, a patient whose results were falsely certified as normal later died after his significant heart problems were undetected, the indictment says.
The prosecution is among a series of cases that the Justice Department intends to highlight at a news conference Tuesday in announcing what it says are record results in a nationwide crackdown on health care fraud, a long-running federal law enforcement priority that the Trump administration over the last year has sought to emphasize.
The department says Finkelstein’s case, with allegations not only of unrendered services but also poor medical performance that put patients at risk, represents the type of sophisticated scheme prosecutors are striving to disrupt.
