Indian-origin Dr Sanjeev Kumar jailed for 20 years for medical malpractice in Tennessee.
Indian-origin gynecologist Sanjeev Kumar has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after he was found guilty of adulterating medical devices and committing health fraud. US Attorney D Michael Dunavant said no punishment is enough for what Dr Kumar, the Tennessee physician, did for years, but the 20-year sentence will send a strong message. In January, Dr Kumar was found guilty of 18 counts of adulteration of medical devices, 16 counts of misbranding medical devices and 6 counts of health care fraud.Dr Kumar used same hysteroscope on several women’s vaginaKumar, a Mayo-trained gynecologic oncologist who operated Poplar Avenue Clinic, a women’s health clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, used the same hysteroscope on several women.”The hysteroscopy with biopsy is an in-office procedure where a hysteroscope is inserted into the vagina, pushed through the cervix, and into the uterus. A grasper or pipelle is then inserted through the hysteroscope to take a sample of the endometrial lining of the uterus. The procedure is used to diagnose endometrial cancer. The FDA cleared several single-use hysteroscopes and graspers, as well as reusable hysteroscopes to complete these procedures. The single-use devices were to be used once and then discarded. To correctly disinfect the devices cleared for reprocessing, Kumar had to strictly follow manufacturer instructions,” the DOJ document said. “Kumar routinely failed to subject the reusable devices to vital reprocessing steps between patient use thereby endangering patient safety. The single-use devices, even if they had been correctly reprocessed, had to be labeled as such, and Kumar did not label them. Kumar used adulterated medical devices in more than 15,000 hysteroscopies with biopsy procedures on Medicare and Medicaid patients between September of 2019 and April of 2024,” it said.But while he was not using the new hysteroscopy, he continued billing those. “Kumar billed more than $41 million for the hysteroscopy with biopsy procedures between September 2019 and April 2024. He netted more than $4.8 million for this procedure from Medicare and Medicaid alone. That amount does not include any hysteroscopy with biopsy procedures performed on patients with private health care insurance,” the court document said.“This defendant used his medical license to target a vulnerable population of women seeking treatment in extremely personal and intimate procedures. He was motivated by greed, disregarded clear medical risks, and caused significant physical and psychological harm to his victim-patients. No punishment is enough to achieve justice in this horrific case, but we hope that this 20-year sentence will send a strong message of deterrence while holding Kumar accountable for his crimes,” Dunavant said.During the trial, Dr Kumar defended what he did and said he disinfected those devices, but the government did not like the way he cleaned those devices though the process is approved by CDC. Many other doctors perform the same disinfecting methods, the defense said, adding that gas sterilization methods can’t be performed in the doctor’s chamber and Dr Kumar used a different high-level disinfection.
