Provider Pleads Guilty to Accepting Cash Kickbacks for Patient Referrals

A New Jersey internal medicine physician admitted to receiving cash kickbacks for providing diagnostic testing referrals of his patients, making him the seventh person to plead guilty in the government’s investigation of the same Orange, New Jersey, facility and its referring physicians, states an October 10, 2012, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. According to court documents and statements made in court, from March 2010 through December 2011, the physician had an agreement with representatives of the diagnostic testing center that he would be paid for each magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computer axial tomography (CAT) scan he referred to the facility. As part of the scheme, the physician admitted to receiving $75 for each Medicare or Medicaid patient he referred for an MRI, $50 for each CAT scan referral, and $25 for each ultrasound referral. The physician also admitted that on October 4, 2011, he received $200 in cash from a government informant at his office in Newark in exchange for referrals and to receiving $275 in cash for referrals on October 13, 2011, again at his office in Newark.