A former D.C. physician was convicted by a federal jury Friday on 11 counts of healthcare fraud, having wrongly charged Medicare millions of dollars for joint and nerve treatment.
Frederick Gooding, 71, of Wilmington, Delaware, first worked as a medical practitioner in Delaware from 1996 to 2013. He obtained a concurrent license to operate in the District of Columbia in 2012.
In 2010, the Delaware medical board sanctioned Gooding. It suspended his license for six months with two years probation for performing medical injections to treat neck pain without the use of medical imaging equipment.
Gooding was also prohibited from administering the neck injections.
In July 2012, Gooding renewed his D.C. license with the understanding that he could not perform neck injection procedures. In February 2014, those restrictions were lifted.
From January 2015 to August 2018, Gooding raked in more Medicare reimbursement money for five injection and nerve destruction procedures meant to treat joint and back pain than all other providers in D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, according to a federal indictment.
Multiple procedures that Gooding claimed to provide required medical imaging equipment that he did not possess — but Gooding filed claims for reimbursement anyway, according to the Justice Department.
Documents were falsified to make it appear that the procedures had been performed as described in the billing.
Other procedures Gooding sought reimbursement for included medicine injections into patients’ spines and the removal of fluid from patients’ joints, neither of which were medically necessary.
Gooding billed Medicare $12.7 million from January 2015 to August 2018, receiving $3.6 million from those claims, according to documents.
Gooding is scheduled to be sentenced June 26 and faces up to 10 years in prison for each of his 11 counts of healthcare fraud, according to the Justice Department.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.