Becker's Spine Review

10 SPINE SURGEONS $3.5M kickback scheme allegedly involved 3 physicians at Maryland spine group By Alan Condon T hree physicians affiliated with Rock- ville, MD.-based National Spine & Pain Centers have been named as de- fendants in a $3.5 million kickback scheme that allegedly ordered unnecessary genetic tests for Medicare and Medicaid patients, e Orange County Register reported July 21. Proove Biosciences founder and President Bri- an Javaade Meshkin was arraigned July 12 in U.S. District Court in San Diego on multiple charges that include conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and making illegal payments. e indictment also named three former Proove Biosciences executives as co-conspir- ators: Steven Samuel Fichtelberg, Kirt om- as Pfaff and Bruce Walter Gardner. e company offered pharmacogenetic tests intended to determine a patient's risk of abus- ing opioids and how patients metabolized certain drugs, according to the report. e alleged scheme paid pain management physicians kickbacks ranging from $100 to $150 for each test ordered for Medicare and Medicaid patients Proove, under the direction of Mr. Mesh- kin, allegedly submitted about $45 million in Medicare claims for genetic tests that were "tainted by illegal kickbacks," accord- ing to the indictment, with CMS paying the company about $20 million between 2013 and 2017. Defendants concealed the scheme by disguis- ing the bribes as clinical research fees, the U.S. Department of Justice alleges. Representatives of National Spine & Pain Centers representatives allegedly said they would stop ordering Proove's genetic tests until it was paid overdue kickbacks, accord- ing to the report. In a March 2016 email, Mr. Meshkin seemed to suggest that the issue could be resolved if the practice ordered more tests. "We get a ton of emails about payment from you guys, but your volume keeps going down. It's down 50 percent from last month," Mr. Meshkin allegedly stated in the email, according to e Orange County Register. "Fiy percent reduction in volume is com- pletely unacceptable from our standpoint. If we could spend a little more time working on performance and volume, everything would work more effectively." In August 2019, National Spine and Pain Centers and another pain management group in Virginia paid the Justice Department $3.3 million to settle allegations that they illegally billed for medical services as if they were provided by physicians, when they were actually performed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners. n Minnesota surgeon performs 4-level fusion on 500-pound patient By Alan Condon A 500-pound man with debilitating back pain was turned away from four spine surgeons in Ohio before Minnesota neurosurgeon Hamid Abbasi, MD, PhD, agreed to take on the case with a unique approach. Dr. Abbasi, CMO of Burnsville, Minn.-based Inspired Spine, took a min- imally invasive approach to the surgery, performing a four-level L2-S1 fusion with the oblique lateral lumbar interbody fusion technique. Dr. Abbasi said the OLLIF approach allowed him to safely perform the surgery, without requiring the patient — who had a BMI of 62.5 — to lose 100 to 200 pounds. The patient was up and walking the day after surgery and dis- charged from the hospital two days later, according to a June 15 news release. The OLLIF procedure takes less than two hours, which is safer than the six-to-eight-hour operative time for traditional approaches, Dr. Abbasi said. OLLIF also uses a 15mm incision resulting in minimal blood loss and preserves muscles and the adjacent tissue. n Dr. Charles Park debuts minimally invasive spinal fusion technique By Carly Behm C harles Park, MD, PhD, has started using a new minimally invasive spine surgery method to treat lower back and leg pain. Dr. Park, of the Minimally Invasive Brain and Spine Center at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, be- gan using Spineology's OptiLIF method, which uses a 1-centimeter incision, according to a July 21 news release. "The OptiLIF procedure is less impactful on the patient and reduces operating times relative to other types of spine surgery," Dr. Park said. "As a result, patients can often leave the hospital the same or the following day of their surgery." n

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