If you think your family gatherings are awkward, imagine what it would be like if you’d all been indicted by the feds.
Take the plight of Peter Tsai, his parents Tahsiung and Ruey Tsai and his cousin Wei Lih Sheih. Son Peter owned a medical clinic, his parents owned an imaging clinic and cousin Wei worked for both. They’ve all been indicted for charging Medicare for medically unnecessary services, including multiple and unnecessary CT scans, including those used to justify unnecessary injections of Synvisc, which – based on our reading of the
Orthopedic Coder’s Pink Sheet – is tricky to bill when you aren’t breaking the law.
The clan is also facing charges that they performed unnecessary piriformis injections “and ignored and/or stopped documenting statements and complaints from patients that the injections were not working or were not wanted.” We checked the
Anesthesia & Pain Coder’s Pink Sheet and found that here they picked another service that is tricky to bill.
Piriformis injections don’t have their own CPT code, and you need to be familiar with CPT guidelines to pick the right one.
But it looks like they won’t have to wait until they’re out of prison to reminisce about that one time when they were all busted by the Justice Department. The indictment seeks forfeiture of the proceeds from the conspiracy. There’s no mention of jail time.