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Ex-Temple doctor gets 7 years for billing fraud

A former official at Temple University's School of Medicine was sentenced Thursday to more than seven years in federal prison in connection with a $1.8 million fraudulent-billing scheme.

A former official at Temple University's School of Medicine was sentenced Thursday to more than seven years in federal prison in connection with a $1.8 million fraudulent-billing scheme.

Joseph J. Kubacki, 62, a pediatric eye specialist, was assistant dean of medical affairs and chairman of the ophthalmology department.

Prosecutors said Kubacki contended that he saw patients when he actually was out of town, and billed Medicare and private health insurers for care that was provided by resident doctors.

Kubacki also falsified patient charts by making notations indicating that he had consulted with patients who had been seen only by resident doctors, thus permitting him to bill insurers. Residents are paid salaries and are not permitted to bill insurers.

The indictment said the fraudulent-billing scheme began in 2002 and lasted until 2007.

Kubacki, whom a jury convicted in August of 150 counts of health-care fraud and related offenses, was taken into custody after the verdict.

Before sentencing, Kubacki told U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno that he took responsibility for his fraud but that he was not motivated by greed.

He implied that he had the best interests of the school in mind. He said that when he became chairman, he inherited a department that was "dysfunctional," $700,000 in the red, understaffed, and lacking adequate space and proper equipment.

Kubacki said he was under "tremendous pressure to turn it around."

"So I signed the charts to keep the department afloat. I could have made more money in private practice," he said.

Ronald H. Levine, an attorney for Temple, said, "Asking Kubacki to manage his department effectively provided him no license to defraud either insurance payers or Temple."

Levine said Kubacki "acted on his own and in defiance" of Temple's "repeated compliance training" about proper billing.

Kubacki's criminal misdeeds were "for his own personal benefit," Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Kyriakakis said. The fraudulent-billing scheme helped Kubacki collect tens of thousands of dollars in annual bonuses.

Prosecutors said they identified 31 private insurers and 215 people who made co-pays of $25 each on bogus bills for days that Kubacki was absent.

Robreno ordered Kubacki to make restitution of $5,445 to patients, pay more than $1 million to Temple, and pay a $15,000 fine.

There was no evidence that Kubacki's scheme harmed any patients.

Kubacki left Temple in November 2007 after an internal investigation and had been living in Destin, Fla., before the trial.