Patients at greater risk of amputations after doctor’s unnecessary procedures, feds say

Many patients are at “greater risk of leg amputations” after their Pennsylvania doctor provided invasive and medically unnecessary procedures as part of a $6.5 million insurance scam, according to federal authorities.

The U.S. is now suing Dr. James McGuckin and his affiliated practices in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania under the False Claims Act. This lawsuit was originally filed by another doctor under whistleblower provisions.

Prosecutors allege that the interventional radiologist, of Radnor, gave his patients “medically unnecessary invasive peripheral artery procedures in patients’ legs” between Jan. 1, 2016 and Dec. 31, 2019, according to a May 2 news release.

McGuckin and his practices then billed Medicare and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, authorities said, and received at least $6.5 million in reimbursement for over 500 claims.

McClatchy News reached out to McGuckin through one of his practices and is awaiting a response. He did not have a defense attorney listed in public court records as of May 3.

The vascular procedures McGuckin provided to patients included angioplasty, atherectomy and stent placements, according to court records filed in 2018. Many of the patients had “minimal to no clinically significant symptoms.”

“Each procedure requires puncturing the skin and inserting devices into and through the arteries in patients’ legs,” authorities said in the news release. “As the relevant standards of care indicate, unnecessary invasive vascular procedures may cause harm to patients’ health, including increasing their likelihood of needing future procedures, and putting them at greater risk of leg amputations.”

But many of the patients were “treated under the pretense that doing so would ‘save the leg’ from amputation,” prosecutors said.

To give his patients these procedures, prosecutors said McGuckin “would go to wide reaching lengths, such as driving and giving rides to patients to ... facilities at no cost.”

Authorities said McGuckin also had the doctor who first filed the lawsuit give patients intravascular ultrasound image segmentation when it wasn’t needed.

McGuckin compared the ultrasounds to an “ATM,” according to the complaint.

This lawsuit follows an earlier settlement involving McGuckin, authorities said. In the settlement, which resolved multi-million dollar lawsuits in New York and Louisiana, McGuckin “admitted that his entities regularly scheduled, performed, and billed for vascular procedures ‘even though the patients presented without any documented evidence that they exhibited a need for therapies.’”

This story was originally published May 3, 2023 at 8:26 AM with the headline "Patients at greater risk of amputations after doctor’s unnecessary procedures, feds say."