A Medical Device Daily

An Atlanta osteopathic doctor has been sent to federal prison for defrauding Georgia's Medicaid program.

U.S. District Judge Beverly Martin on Monday sentenced Aaron Hurowitz to two years and three months in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and fined him $60,000. He also was ordered to pay $375,000 in restitution to Medicaid.

He pleaded guilty to the charges on Jan. 5.

Hurowitz is the former owner/operator of Midtown Medical Center (Atlanta).

Between March 1997 and October 2002, Georgia's Medicaid program paid Hurowitz for services he claimed to give to patients. However, Hurowitz billed for services that were not provided; submitted claims for services at higher levels of reimbursement than supported by the services that were actually provided; and billed for medically unnecessary services, including numerous drug screens.

While Hurowitz was being investigated by the Georgia Department of Community Health and by the State Health Care Fraud Control Unit, he falsified medical records to try to hide his fraudulent billing practices.

"The Medicaid system is funded with federal and state taxpayer dollars to ensure that needy citizens have access to health care," said U.S. Attorney David Nahmias. Hurowitz "abused the government's trust to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Medicaid program. We . . . view healthcare fraud as a high priority, particularly when the ultimate victims are our taxpayers and the defendants are medical professionals entrusted to provide only adequate healthcare, but also to submit honest claims for their health care services."

In other court news: The law firm of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine (Denver) reported filing a lawsuit against Bausch & Lomb (B&L; Rochester, New York), the makers of the contact lens solution ReNu with MoistureLoc on behalf of Terry McMillen, a professional race car driver.

The suit claims that use of the ReNu with MoistureLoc caused him to suffer "serious, painful and permanent" injury to his eyes, requiring corneal replacement surgery.

On May 15, 2006, B&L issued a worldwide recall of the lens solution due to concerns that the product was linked to more than 100 cases of a fungal eye infection, fusarium keratitis. The product will not be re-introduced.

Then on April 13, 2006, the company withdrew the ReNu with MoistureLoc product from suppliers' shelves in the U.S. (Medical Device Daily, April 17, 2006). Additionally, a similar outbreak of fusarium keratitis occurred in Asia as early as 2005, prompting the company to pull the solution from shelves there.

In a statement in May 2006, the FDA supported the permanent removal of the ReNu with MoistureLoc product worldwide. Field officers of the FDA and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention have completed their investigation of the company's plant in Greenville, South Carolina, where ReNu with MoistureLoc was manufactured; various violations were found. Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong were also supplied ReNu with MoistureLoc from B&L's South Carolina Plant.

Seth Katz of Burg Simpson, said, "These cases present very serious, painful, and life-long injuries to the victims. We believe at the end of the day the evidence will demonstrate that the company knew about the problem but delayed in making a disclosure . . . "

The firm said it has filed lawsuits on behalf of others who contracted fusarium keratitis after using ReNu with MoistureLoc.