California Vascular Surgeon Agrees to Pay Over $6.7 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations

On May 6, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a California physician practice and its owner physician agreed to pay more than $6.73 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by submitting false claims for medically unnecessary vascular intervention procedures on Medicare beneficiaries.

According to the press release, for a period of approximately eight years, the defendant physician performed medically unnecessary dialysis access interventions, including angioplasty and stent procedures. The physician allegedly scheduled interventions on a routine basis, without waiting for complications to present, and frequently repeated procedures on patients every few days or weeks despite that the procedures were not effective and did not result in any clinical benefit. This included one Medicare patient who received over forty stents over a seven-year period, including during a period when the defendant physician had informed the patient that he did not need dialysis.

The DOJ also alleged that the defendant physician performed medically unnecessary peripheral artery disease interventions, including on patients who had only mild or no stenosis and who had only minor symptoms. “Although patients complained of pain only in one leg, he performed procedures on both legs and then repeated procedures on both legs every few months.” The defendant physician also told patients that if they did not receive the procedure, their legs would need to be amputated, when, in fact, there was little risk of amputation for mildly symptomatic peripheral artery disease. The DOJ stated that the procedures in question did not qualify for treatment under accepted standards of medical practice; overstated the degree of stenosis to make the procedures appear to meet generally recognized medical standards when, in fact, they did not; falsely documented patient symptoms and conservative therapy measures in medical records to justify the procedures; and performed procedures in excess of accepted standards of medical practice.

The settlement was the result of a whistleblower lawsuit filed under the qui tam provisions of the FCA. The “whistleblower” was Lincoln Analytics Inc., which is an entity that aims “to improve the health care system through data analytics and research.” The entity will receive $976,000 as part of the resolution.

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