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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — An Elizabethtown medical practice and two owners have agreed to a $3.7 million settlement in a case stemming from a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged false billings for chemotherapy patients, federal authorities said Tuesday.
Federal and state officials contend that Dr. Rafiq Ur Rahman and Dr. Yusuf K. Deshmukh billed for unnecessary evaluations and, along with their practice, Elizabethtown Hematology Oncology, extended chemotherapy times so they could improperly bill Medicare, Medicaid and other government health care programs, the U.S. attorney's office in Louisville said.
Attorneys for Rahman and Deshmukh did not immediately return phone messages left after hours Tuesday at their offices.
Some of the allegations were included in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by another physician, Dr. Ijaz Mahmood, who will receive more than $280,000 in the settlement.
Bowling Green attorney John Caudill, who represents Mahmood, said his client was in the same practice but left in 2011, when he brought the whistleblower action, and now practices solo.
Caudill said the case was about more than money.
"These are cancer patients," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday night. "Some of them are terminal. Some of them have months to live. In some respects, you took the most important thing they had. You took their time."
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