Cardiologist is investigated for charging Medicare $18m in one year

The US Department of Justice has joined two whistleblower lawsuits against the country’s top billing cardiologist, Asad Qamar of Ocala, Florida, for charging Medicare for unnecessary interventions for peripheral vascular disease.

The suits, filed under the False Claims Act, accuse the doctor, and his Institute for Cardiovascular Excellence, of intervening in almost every patient who is scanned for peripheral vascular disease.

It would be “statistically impossible to medically support the number of interventions for which Dr Qamar and ICE billed for in 2010-11,” one lawsuit contends. Of $18m (£12m; €16m) in Medicare payments that Qamar received in 2012—the second highest amount paid to any physician in the country—$13m was …