A cardiologist will have to pay $17 million for double billing nuclear stress tests to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE.
A U.S. district court in the District of Columbia handed down the judgment against Ishtiaq Malik in July for False Claims Acts stemming from his billing of myocardial perfusion studies. Malik owned two companies – Ishtiaq Malik M.D. and Advanced Nuclear Diagnostics – both of which billed for the nuclear stress tests.
The tests, used to determine whether a patient has heart disease due to inadequate blood flow to the heart muscles, has two phases – stress and rest. But even when the two phases are performed on separate days, the procedure is billed and submitted as one test, explained in a U.S. Department of Justice
press release.
The government alleged that Malik and his companies inappropriately billed for each phase of the test studies.