Posted on 01/17/2013 12:06:35 PM PST by safetysign
Dr. John Natale, nationally recognized cardio-vascular surgeon was charged with Medicare fraud only to be found not guilty by the jury. He performed over 7500 surgeries in his career and never lost a patient on the operating table. The DOJ brought this case to court regarding 5 ruptured aneurysms performed in the emergency room on 5 elderly patients - all expected to die. Even the expert witness for the DOJ had to admit that Dr. Natale's skill as a surgeon was exemplary. The jury found that no fraud had been committed yet Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, under the strong urging of the DOJ sentenced the doctor to 10 months imprisonment for errors found in two out of over 1200 operative notes reviewed by the DOJ. The errors were clerical and misstatements in dictation which isn't a crime.
SIGN THE PETITION at the link.
“The errors were clerical and misstatements in dictation which isn’t a crime.”
Sumvun did nawt cross ze T or dot ze I on page three, your papers ar nawt in order!
Welcome to the USSSA . . . comrade.
If the minor clerical errors are not crimes, why was the judge persuaded by the DOJ to find him guilty and impose a jail sentence on him? Liberal Judge? Or could it be that the doctor wasn’t the right race and didn’t fall under Eric “The RED” Holder’s “JUST US” department standards?
Why should a superb surgeon be in jail for a couple of clerical errors? Just another example of the tyrannical nature of this administration.
“Well, we have to lock up SOMEBODY! After all, we had a trial!”
The idiocy astounds me.
Perhaps Natale is a Republican.
Natale is a Republican from Chicago.
( ^8 }
Petition signed.
Thank you.
This sounds like a case of the bully entering the room and going after one person in order to send a message to the rest of the people in the room.
safetysign~:” Natale is a Republican from Chicago. “
That expains it all
The goobberment doesn’t want him to have firearms
My expeirience is that codeing is generally done by some clerical support staff ~ I guess that doesn’t matter
What is really guilty of .. being a Republican supporter ?
Ah , but that isn’t a criminal charge , .. yet ! ..yet !
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/19466333/teen-shot-by-cops-charged-with-attempted-murder
It looks like the “clerical error” may have increased the Medicare payment and may have endangered one of the patients.
Probably sentenced to make a point, but it does sound like he benefited from the “error”.
The amount of regulations and overhead doctors have to comply with is mind boggling.
The same “justice” department that refused to prosecute election intimidation because the head of the department felt that the perps were “his people?”
Rhymes with Martha Stewart. ;)
It’s a good thing there weren’t any dangling participles in his reports.
I know that if a prosecutor wants to convict of medicare fraud, it's just a matter of looking long enough and deep enough and you will find an error.
Any error then can be compounded into multiple charges that include wire fraud as the banking portion of getting paid invariably crosses state lines.
This is not just true of physicians, almost anyone can be convicted of something if examined close enough. There are thousands of laws on the books and we all have violated some law somewhere unknowingly.
On the other hand I have also been involved with removing unethical physcians from a hospital practice.
When examining the records only the most egregious of records are forwarded to prosecutors for action.
It is impossible to know which of these is what has happened to this physician.
Well, if some of the comments on the fox article are indicative of what happened:
Dr Leighton Smith ordered surgery on a patient of Dr Natales’ against Dr Natale’s advice and judgement…Smith then sent another economic competitor of Dr Natale’s in to operate on the woman…twice…one day after the other….hoping to prove Dr Natale had not done the surgery he said he had done a year earlier…when Dr Natale had saved the woman from a serious anyeurism surgery where she almost bled out. Dr Natale did save her and did put the patch on the aneurysm exactly as he said he had done….
Dr Painter and Dr Smith wanted to prove Dr Natale wrong…but in their quest to prove Dr Natale wrong…they not only proved Dr Natale right (the woman did not need surgery and she did have a patched aneurysm from the previous year )… Dr Painter at Dr Leighton Smith’s direction to operate and also to take pictures inside the woman….cost that woman her life. How awful. How irresponsible …How final
Seems a bit more serious than just coding/clerical errors:
“...The charges focused on six surgeries in 2003 and 2004 at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights. Natale later operated at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, according to his trial testimony.
The jury found that for at least two patients in 2004, Natale prepared false post-surgery reports about aneurysm repairs that were never done, and detailing surgeries as more complex than they were, according to prosecutors.
In one case, another surgeon testified that if he had relied on Natale’s falsified records to treat a patient whose condition deteriorated a year after Natale operated, there would have been serious negative impacts for the patient, the release said.”
Why do I see a connection between Michelle Obama’s tenure on the boards of Chicago hospitals as a healthcare expert, and this good doctor? Vendetta?
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