Guilty Pleas Result in Loss of Chiropractic Licences
After pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud a health beneficiary program under 18 U.S.C. §§371 and 1347, two Jacksonville health care providers lost their licenses to practice chiropractic recently. Doll v. Dept. of Health; Schoenborn v. Dept. of Health.
According to the facts found by the administrative law judge, Dr. Doll: (1) caused or allowed claims to be filed with Medicare and other health care benefit programs for diagnostic ultrasound and nerve conduction velocity studies even though he did not contribute his professional expertise to the performance of the tests; and (2) caused or allowed claims to be filed with Medicare and other health care benefit programs for the professional component of MRI tests even though the MRIs were actually read and interpreted by qualified radiologists who were paid by Dr. Doll's company.
The legal issue involved in Dr. Doll's case was whether his 2003 guilty plea in federal court was sufficient justification to revoke his license under §456.072(1)(c), Fla. Stat. (2003), which provides for disciplining a licensee who is "convicted or found guilty of, or entering a plea of guilty or nolo contendere to. . . a crime. . . which relates to the practice of. . . a licensee's profession." The First DCA rejected Dr. Doll's argument that the crime to which he plead guilty did not "relate to" the practice of his profession.
