Marietta chiropractor gets jail time

Published: 2009-05-06 13:53:09
Author: Atlanta Business Chronicle | March 13, 2009

Marietta, Ga., chiropractor Dr. William Stearns was sentenced late Thursday to five years in federal prison and fined $1.2 million for his role in a health-care fraud and money laundering scam.

In 2004, Stearns and two partners, chiropractors Steven Levine and Christopher Topel, ran three clinics in metro Atlanta under the name Comprehensive Care Medical Group (CCMG). Under Stearns’ direction, CCMG fraudulently billed Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Georgia for two separate back-pain procedures costing about $3 million.

Stearns and his partners fraudulently billed for a procedure known as Vertebral Axial Decompression (VAX-D) -- a non-invasive back pain procedure that uses a mechanical table to stretch a patient’s spine. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Georgia considers VAX-D to be investigational and not medically necessary, and made clear to health-care providers that it did not cover the procedure. The three were convicted of having lied to Blue Cross about what procedures they were performing in order to get paid for the non-covered procedure.

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