National Interventional Radiology Partners PLLC (NIRP) along with its founder and its CEO have agreed to pay to the United States $8,884,091 to resolve Federal False Claims Act (FCA) and Anti-Kickback Statute violation allegations, announced U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani. The settlement claims NIRP and Dr. Andrew Gomes, 48, Sugar Land, illegally paid physicians for referrals to clinics established to surgically treat patients with Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD), a circulatory disease which causes plaque build-up in the arteries. It most commonly affects the lower legs of elderly individuals. Beginning in 2015, Gomes established a number of clinics throughout Texas under the NIRP umbrella to surgically treat PAD. Gomes raised capital for these clinics from physicians who had medical practices that would provide a strong patient base for Medicare referrals including primary care physicians, doctors of podiatric medicine and family practitioners.
Gomes’ pitch to the investor physicians was that they could ensure high returns on their investment in each surgical center from referring significant numbers of patients for treatment. Gomes told the investing physicians that more patient referrals would lead to more revascularization surgeries and higher profits — which funnels back to the investing physicians as monthly dividends. Gomes also told the physicians that once the surgical centers were up, running and profitable, they could be sold which would create additional value for investors. Surgeries such as arteriograms, angiograms, angioplasties and atherectomies that revascularize the lower limbs of patients with PAD are highly compensated procedures.
