Becker's Spine Review

6 SPINE SURGEONS Former spine surgeon accidentally burns down mansion in evidence- destroying venture By Eric Oliver M ark Kuper, MD, and wife Melissa Kuper accidentally burned down their $1.6 million Fort Worth, Tex- as-based, house when Mrs. Kuper allegedly burned medical records in an attempt to hide evidence of fraudulent medical claims, state prosecutors alleged in an indictment filed against the couple. e Dallas Morning News reported on the in- dictment which alleged Mrs. Kuper, who was the clinic's office manager, set fire to a number of medical records in their backyard in Octo- ber 2017; that fire spread and ultimately razed the couple's mansion. e indictment accused the Kupers and their clinic, Fort Worth-based Texas Center Or- thopedic & Spinal Disorders, of defrauding Medicare and other government healthcare programs for around $5 million. Dr. Kuper and the clinic allegedly submitted more than 100,000 fraudulent claims for fake physical therapy, psychotherapy and pain management services from 2014 to 2017. Dr. Kuper started his career as a surgeon, but converted his practice to an unregistered pain management clinic in 2014 aer settling a mal- practice lawsuit against him. Dr. Kuper viewed pain management as "bottom feeding," the indictment said. e government alleged Dr. Kuper used opioids to get regular patients to return for treatments so he could bill the gov- ernment for "worthless services." Dr. and Mrs. Kuper appeared in federal court in Fort Worth June 22 and pleaded not guilty in a whistleblower lawsuit. n 6 billionaire doctors in the US have a combined net worth of $25.3B By Laura Dyrda Six physicians are currently on the Forbes Billionaires list. Here are the six physicians and their net worth as of July 24. 1. Thomas Frist, MD. Founder of HCA Healthcare: $11.6 billion 2. Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD. Inventor of Abraxane, owner NantWorks, Los Angeles Times and San Diego Tribune: $6.7 billion 3. Phillip Frost, MD. Inventor and CEO of Opko Health: $2.4 billion 4. Gary Michelson, MD. Retired spine surgeon and inventor with more than 340 patents: $1.7 billion 5. James Leininger, MD. Founder of Kinetic Concepts: $1.5 billion 6. George Yancopoulos, MD, PhD. Chief scientific officer of Regeneron: $1.4 billion n $368M+ in undisclosed spine journal industry contributions found in study; researchers want transparency By Alan Condon R esearchers from UPMC are advocating for more transparency from spine journal authors after finding more than $368 million in un- disclosed industry contributions in a recent study, according to News-Medical. Financial conflict of interests were studied in Spine and two other spine journals between 2014 and 2017, including almost 40,000 authors and 6,800 articles. The conflict of interests were compared with CMS' Open Payments Data- base, which requires pharmaceutical, medical device and biological prod- ucts manufacturers to report all physician payments of more than $10. Researchers found 15.8 percent of spine surgery authors had payments re- ported in the CMS database. Undisclosed payments comprised $180 million in researcher funding and $188 million in royalties, and made up 22 percent of the $1.9 billion re- ceived by authors during the four-year period. Spine had about 77 percent of study authors accurately disclose payments, compared to just over 40 percent for the other two journals, according to the study. Researchers suggested searching public databases such as the Open Pay- ments Database to verify financial ties between authors and industry before publishing. n

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