Post by Joanna on Jul 21, 2018 8:38:22 GMT -5
Doctor Misdiagnosed Cancer, Administered Unnecessary Chemotherapy
What could be worse than being diagnosed and treated for cancer and later finding out your doctor lied and you never had it to begin with? A Michigan office manager risked his career to expose a doctor who gave chemotherapy to patients who did not have cancer.
Farid T. Fata, M.D. (above), unnecessarily treated more than more than 500 patients at a Detroit-area cancer center. In the latest episode of the CBS series Whistleblower, host Alex Ferrer talks to the former office manager who stepped forward to expose the man responsible. “I couldn’t believe ... what was in front of me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” says George Karadsheh, who took a new job in 2011 as an office manager for Dr. Fata’s rapidly expanding oncology practice in suburban Detroit.
But within two years, one of the other oncologists and two nurse practitioners announced they were leaving. When Karadsheh confronted the oncologist and asked why he was leaving, the doctor said Dr. Fata was diagnosing cancer in patients who didn’t have it and treating them with chemotherapy.
Robert Sobieray was referred to Dr. Fata by his back surgeon. “I heard he was one of the best there is,” he said. Dr. Fata did a bone marrow biopsy. “Two weeks later, he [Fata] turned around and said, ‘You’ve got multiple myeloma. ... It’s a blood cancer or bone destroying disease,’” Sobieray added.
He began monthly chemotherapy infusions. “I’d become weak, sick to my stomach, tired all the time. … I couldn’t walk anymore,” Sobieray explained. “The chemotherapy ... eventually destroyed all my teeth.”
Finally, Sobieray went to see a different oncologist and what the other doctor said was like a bombshell. “He says, ‘I’ve seen both biopsies. There’s nothin’ that says that you had cancer anywhere in there,’” Sobieray continued. “I was shocked. It was worse than hearin’ that you have cancer.”
“I was determined to have this doctor stop harming people,” Karadsheh asserted. His head spinning and believing he might have a strong case, he contacted an attorney he knew who handled whistleblower cases.
“We’ve heard a lot of strange stories about fraud. But that one was beyond fraud. It was cruel. It was criminal. It was risking people with poison,” said attorney David Haron.He wasted no time and called the Department of Justice. “Without a doubt, this is the fastest and most intense lawsuit I’ve ever handled in this area,” he added.
George Karadsheh was willing to put everything on the line. “My job was at stake. My livelihood,” he explained. “Even my own personal safety. I wasn't looking at the patients anymore as being treated. I looked at it as a burning building with people inside. … I had to make it stop and I had to make it stop quickly.”
How did Fata get away with something like this for so long without anyone knowing? As Alex Ferrer explained on CBS This Morning: “In private practice, doctors have little to no oversight. He would provide the chemotherapy in his office – so it was even more unlikely that he would be caught. On the rare occasion he did go to a hospital, it was before 6 a.m. or after 11 p.m., so no one was questioning his medical decisions.” Ferrer called it the perfect fraud and was based on greed. “In a short amount of time, Fata subjected over 500 patients to unnecessary treatment.”
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Farid T. Fata, born in Lebanon in 1965, was a hematologist/oncologist and the owner of Michigan Hematology-Oncology, one of the largest cancer practices in the state of Michigan. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he submitted $34 million in fraudulent Medicare claims for his unnecessary cancer treatment. Five hundred fifty-three (553) victims were identified, but prosecutors noted there could have been more, given that Fata 17,000 patients were treated at seven different locations.
Arrested in 2013, Fata pled guilty to charges of health care fraud, conspiring to receive kickbacks and money laundering. In July 2015, he was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison. He sobbed at sentencing and begged for mercy.
At a restitution hearing in January 2017, Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press, reported the federal prison in North Carolina hadn’t been kind to Fata and described him as “bald, thin and looked a little frail – an ironic resemblance to the many patients he pumped with chemotherapy when he knew they didn’t have cancer.”
Among the angry victims at the hearing was Patty Hester, 62, of Clarkson, a former emergency room technician, whom Fata treated with unnecessary iron infusions after diagnosing myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) – a precursor to leukemia. She was actually suffering from nothing more than anemia. She said she hadn’t realized Fata had mistreated her until the FBI showed up at her house and told her. She eventually learned that Fata falsified her bone-marrow test results. “He was torturing me so he could get money,” insisted Hester, who suffers from chronic hair loss and gum tissue problems. “We really don’t know what he was putting in our system,” she added.
Though he pled guilty, recently Fata claimed he was pressured into the guilty plea of misdiagnosing people and over-treating them even though he didn’t believe he was guilty. He says his lawyer convinced him that he would lose at trial and it would be in his best interest to plead guilty for which he would receive a 20-year sentence instead of life. He is asking that his 2014 conviction be overturned and that he be granted a new trial.
Sources: CBS News, July 20, 2018; Tresa Baldas, The Detroit Free Press; and the U.S. Department of Justice.
