Patel case moves forward
Judge denies motion to end doctor's case

By Marsha Sills

A judge recently denied cardiologist Mehmood Patel's motions to suppress evidence collected from his office and throw out the government's federal government's health-care fraud case against him.
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Patel was indicted in 2006 on 93 counts of health-care fraud for billing health-care benefit programs $2.5 million for medically unnecessary procedures he performed between February 2001 and January 2004.

Patel's set to go to trial in August on the criminal charges.

Patel claimed that the statute of health-care fraud was unconstitutionally vague and didn't inform him of how the alleged actions constituted serious bodily harm.

Federal Magistrate Mildred Methvin found no grounds for Patel's claims, but did grant his request to strike language in the indictment that accused him of deprived patients of honest services because the indictment centers around Patel's actions of defrauding health-care benefit programs, not the patients.

Patel claimed that the search of his office in November 2003 was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. It was a complaint made to a fraud hotline by Patel's nurse, Neil Kinn, in 2002 that instigated the federal investigation. Kinn met with a federal agent a month later, but a warrant wasn't issued until Nov. 17, 2003.

Patel argued that any evidence received after Kinn's meeting should be suppressed because Kinn was working as an agent of the government and his Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

The records Kinn obtained were from a mobile cath unit that travels the state and used by other clinics.

Though Patel argued that the records were confidential and created at the request of his office manager, however, Kinn's testimony showed that a log of patients treated in the mobile cath unit were kept on the unit and accessible to other clinics.

Therefore, Patel had no expectation of privacy, Methvin stated.