East Setauket doctor pleads guilty to health care fraud charge
A Long Island doctor has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud after being charged in Boston with ordering unnecessary brain scans over a six-year period ending in 2019, federal officials announced.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts said Dr. Kenneth Fishberger, 75, of East Setauket, allegedly received cash kickbacks of approximately $100 per test as part of a scheme that ultimately resulted in fraudulent bills of $891,978 to Medicare and a host of private insurance companies.
A date for the plea acceptance hearing has not been scheduled, officials said. Fishberger was charged Wednesday. As part of the agreement, officials said, Fishberger has agreed to forfeit $48,000 in kickbacks and unspecified other proceeds received for his role in the scheme.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Fishberger, an internist, was a licensed medical doctor in New York for 47 years.
Between June 2013 and December 2019, officials said in the statement, Fishberger “conspired with others, including a principal for a mobile medical diagnostics company,” along with a salesperson for that unnamed company, and ordered hundreds of what are known as transcranial Doppler scans — TCD scans, which measure blood flow to the brain — in exchange for kickbacks.
It was further alleged in the charging papers that Fishberger and his co-conspirators used “false diagnoses” to order the scans — and, officials said in the statement, a co-conspirator would submit the claims to Medicare and other insurance companies for payment.
The charge against Fishberger carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, 3 years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000, officials said.
The attorney representing Fishberger, Zachary Hafer of Cooley LLP in Boston, declined to comment Friday.
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
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