NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Federal prosecutors sought a most jail sentence of almost 20 years for the CEO of Pain MD, an organization discovered to have given hundreds of thousands of questionable injections to sufferers, many reliant on opioids. It would have been among the many longest sentences for a well being care govt convicted of fraud lately.
Instead, he received 18 months.
Michael Kestner, 73, who was convicted of 13 fraud felonies final 12 months, confronted at the least a decade behind bars primarily based on federal sentencing pointers. He was granted the considerably lightened sentence attributable to his age and well being Wednesday throughout a federal court docket listening to in Nashville.
U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger described Kestner as a “ruthless businessman” who funded a “lavish lifestyle” by turning medical professionals into “puppets” who pressured sufferers into injections that didn’t assist their ache and typically made it worse.
“In the court’s eyes, he knew it was wrong, and he didn’t really care if it was doing anyone any good,” Trauger stated.
But Trauger additionally stated she was swayed by protection arguments that Kestner would wrestle in federal jail attributable to his age and medical situations, together with the blood dysfunction hemochromatosis. Trauger stated she had considerations about jail well being care after contemplating about 200 requests for compassionate launch in different court docket circumstances.
“The medical care at these facilities,” protection lawyer Peter Strianse stated, “has always been dodgy and suspect.”
Kestner didn’t communicate on the court docket listening to, aside from to element his medical situations. He didn’t reply to questions as he left the courthouse.
Pain MD ran as many as 20 clinics in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina all through a lot of the 2010s. While many docs had been scaling again their use of prescription painkillers as a result of opioid disaster, Pain MD paired opioids with month-to-month injections into sufferers’ backs, claiming the pictures might ease ache and doubtlessly reduce reliance on tablets, in accordance with federal court docket paperwork.
During Kestner’s October trial, the Department of Justice proved that the injections had been a part of a decade-long scheme that defrauded Medicare and different insurance coverage packages of thousands and thousands of {dollars} by capitalizing on sufferers’ dependence on opioids.
The DOJ efficiently argued at trial that Pain MD’s “unnecessary and expensive injections” had been largely ineffective as a result of they focused the incorrect physique half, contained short-lived numbing drugs however no steroids, and seemed to be primarily based on take a look at pictures given to cadavers — individuals who felt neither ache nor reduction as a result of they had been lifeless. During closing arguments, the DOJ argued Pain MD had turned some sufferers into “human pin cushions.”
“They were leaned over a table and repeatedly injected in their spine,” federal prosecutor Katherine Payerle stated in the course of the May 14 sentencing listening to. “Over and over, month after month, at the direction of Mr. Kestner.”
At final 12 months’s trial, witnesses testified that Kestner was the driving drive behind the injections, which amounted to roughly 700,000 pictures over about eight years, with some sufferers receiving as much as 24 directly.
Four former sufferers testified that they tolerated the pictures out of concern that Pain MD in any other case would have reduce off their painkiller prescriptions, with out which they could have spiraled into withdrawal.
One of these sufferers, Michelle Shaw, informed KFF Health News that the injections typically left her in a lot ache she had to make use of a wheelchair. She was outraged by Kestner’s sentence.
“I’m disgusted that all they got was a slap on the wrist as far as I’m concerned,” Shaw stated May 14. “I hope karma comes back to him. That he suffers to his last breath.”
Brett Kelman:
bkelman@kff.org,
@BrettKelman
Related Topics
src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″>