Huge settlement for Houston doctors over concurrent billing for heart surgeries

HOUSTON (KIAH) — The FBI says three surgeons at Baylor Saint Luke’s Medical Center “gamed” with patient care during complicated open-heart surgeries.

According to the FBI, a whistleblower came forward claiming that three doctors delegated key aspects of surgery to unqualified medical residents.

The investigation began in August 2019, when Dr. Joseph Coselli, Dr. Joseph Lamelas and Dr. David Ott – three heart surgeons at St. Luke’s – engaged in the practice of running two operating rooms at once and failed to complete the surgery. timeout,” which is a time when the surgical team would pause and identify risks to avoid any errors.

Medicare regulations determine when teaching physicians can leave the operating room for any operation, no matter how complex.

Federal investigators say surgeons routinely ran multiple operating rooms at once and left one operating room to go to another.

Saint Luke’s, Baylor College of Medicine and Surgical Associates of Texas PA agreed to pay a record $15 million to settle the claims. The whistleblower will receive more than $3 million of that sum due to the False Claims Act.

“Patients have entrusted their lives to these surgeons – submitting to operations where a missed cut means the difference between life and death,” said United States Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani. “Apparently, the patients did not know that their doctor was leaving for another operating room. This agreement reaffirms the importance of Medicare’s requirements governing the presence of surgeons and ensuring that no physician – no matter how large or successful – can circumvent the rules.

The settlement does not include an admission of liability.