Indian Doctor To Pay Rs 117 Cr In Fine: Here’s Why!

In what could be considered an extremely shocking incident, an Indian doctor has been mandated to pay around ₹117 crore in the USA for a heinous medical procedure that he had followed for many years.

Indian-origin urologist Dr. Jitesh Patel and his Atlanta-based practice, Advanced Urology Inc., have agreed to pay $14 million (approximately Rs 117 crore) to settle federal allegations that they defrauded major US government healthcare programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE.

The settlement resolves two separate lawsuits filed in 2018 and 2019 under the False Claims Act, which accused Patel and his clinic of billing federal programs for medical procedures that were either never performed or had no medical justification.

The allegations paint a picture of a practice deliberately structured to inflate revenue at the expense of patients and taxpayers alike.

Whistleblowers, a former employee and a former physician at Advanced Urology, alleged a range of troubling practices.

These included implanting permanent sacral nerve stimulators in patients without first testing whether they would benefit from the device, performing unnecessary bladder scope procedures on patients placed under general anesthesia, and conducting electromyography tests on nearly every new patient despite the procedure being rarely used in standard urology care.

The practice also allegedly ordered thousands of unnecessary ultrasound tests and billed for a complex surgical procedure involving an incision when only a simpler dilation was actually carried out.

The two whistleblowers will collectively receive around Rs 24.6 crore from the settlement. Federal investigators said the scheme placed profit above patient welfare and diverted limited healthcare resources from those who genuinely needed care. The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations, and no formal determination of liability has been made.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​