BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts doctor was charged Tuesday with defrauding health care benefits programs by billing for services that were not provided, federal prosecutors said.
Olarewaju James Oladipo, 57, of Canton, faces 11 counts of health care fraud, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston. Oladipo, an orthopedic surgeon, was scheduled to face a magistrate judge later Tuesday.
An email seeking comment was sent to his federal public defender.
Oladipo falsified medical records of patient visits to reflect examinations and services that were not performed for a period from January 2016 until December 2019, prosecutors alleged. He did so by using billing codes for more complex and therefore more expensive services that were not provided, a practice known as “upcoding,” prosecutors said.
He often billed for more than 60 patients per day and sometimes more than 90 patients per day, meaning that most visits could have only lasted about five minutes, prosecutors said. However, he allegedly used billing codes that typically corresponded to visits that would have lasted much longer, up to 45 minutes in some cases.
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