Oldenburg, Germany

A 38-year-old male nurse has admitted killing 30 patients and trying to kill 60 more with drug overdoses because he was “bored” and wanted to show his CPR skills.

Prosecutors had earlier decided to limit the trial to just 3 killings to make the case against NIELS H easier to prove.

But a court-appointed psychologist told the court in the north-western city of Oldenburg the man admitted in their talks he had used overdoses of a cardiac drug to kill “about 30” seriously ill people from 2003 to 2005 at Delmenhorst Hospital.  Another 60 survived the injections.

The accused insisted he had not tried to kill anyone at other hospitals during his career or while he had worked as an ambulance crewman.

“I was bored”, he told police.

Prosecutors said his motive was to create intensive-care emergencies where he could impress and win gratitude with his talent for saving people from the brink of death.

His name has been withheld under German media privacy guidelines.

At the trial that began last year he has been charged with three murders and two attempted murders.

He is already serving seven and a half years in prison on a 2008 conviction for attempted murder.

A colleague caught him red-handed in the summer of 2005 as he injected a patient in intensive care with an overdose.

Her accusation set the series of cases going, but more deaths a decade ago only gradually emerged to reviews of patient files.

One doctor who gave evidence in September said he was a “passionate medic” who made a good impression on staff at the clinic.

“I found it strange that he was always on hand with patients were being resuscitated, often helping younger doctors with intubation  – inserting a breathing tube into a patient’s airways”, the doctor said.

“No one wants to believe that a colleague would rather kill patients instead of helping them”, Erich Joester, a lawyer for the clinic, said.

Newcastle, New South Wales

A male registered nurse allegedly murdered two aged care residents with a fatal drug overdose and tried to kill another woman using the same method.

Police from ‘Strike Force Correa’ arrested 27-year-old Lake Macquarie resident GARRY STEVEN DAVIS yesterday morning after a 14-month investigation into the alleged murders of Gwen Fowler, 83, and Ryan Kelly, 80, in October last year at the SummitCare Wallsend Aged Care Facility near Newcastle, New South Wales.

DAVIS, a nurse at the site until his employment was terminated in September, allegedly injected both Mrs Fowler and Mr Kelly with fatal doses of insulin. Neither of the two residents, nor 91-year-old Audrey Manuel, who survived an alleged attempt by DAVIS to kill her in an identical manner, required insulin as medication.

Wearing a blue T-shirt and shorts, DAVIS yesterday appeared briefly in Newcastle Local Court charged with two counts of murder and one of attempted murder. He did not enter pleas and did not apply for bail, which was refused.

Newcastle Police Chief Superintendent John Gralton said DAVIS had been a person “of particular interest for quite a lengthy period of time”.

Detroit, MI

An American oncologist faces up to 175 years in prison for a scam in which he reaped millions of dollars by putting patients on chemotherapy drugs they didn’t need, in order to defraud public and private insurers.

Dr Farid FATA, 49, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiring to receive kickbacks and one count of money laundering as the owner of a cancer treatment clinic and a diagnostic testing facility.

“Dr FATA…  admitted he put greed before the health and safety of his patients, putting them through unnecessary chemotherapy and other treatments just so that he could collect additional millions from MEDICARE,” said US Assistant Attorney- General Leslie CALDWELL.

“The mere thought of what he did is chilling.”

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation said FATA was swiftly arrested after agents were alerted to the scam in mid-2013.

FATA submitted approximately $225 million in claims to MEDICARE – the US federal-funded program in the US that provides health insurance to the disabled and people over 65 – between August 2007 and July 2013.

The claims included about $109 million for chemotherapy and other cancer treatments.

MEDICARE paid the fraudster $91 million, of which over $48 million was for chemotherapy and other cancer treatments.

Employees of FATA’s Michigan Hematology Oncology Clinic (MHO), which had six offices in the Detroit area, gave damning evidence of dangerous prescribing practices.

FATA had prescribed chemotherapy drugs for all end-of-life patients and for patients whose cancer was in remission, an oncologist employee testified.

FATA also ordered inappropriate dosages, such as 56 doses of rituximab over two years for a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patient where a normal course would be 12 doses over that period.

A nurse practitioner at MHO said FATA had a large patient volume of up to 50–70 patients per day but saw them for just a few minutes each, leaving possibly unregistered “foreign doctors” to perform examinations.

Another nurse practitioner said FATA falsified cancer diagnoses to justify cancer treatments and conduct PET scans at a diagnostic facility he owned. Those patients did not see the false diagnosis, but it was used to justify fraudulent billing to their insurer.

The nurse also said FATA twice ordered the administration of chemotherapy to patients with other serious conditions.  After a man fell and hit his head at MHO, FATA directed he receive chemotherapy before being taken to a hospital Emergency Room, where he died shortly after.

Pleading guilty in the Michigan Eastern District Court last month, FATA admitted prescribing and administering unnecessary chemotherapy, cancer treatments, intravenous iron and other infusion therapies to increase his billings to MEDICARE and private insurance companies.

He also admitted to soliciting kickbacks for referring patients to a hospice and home care service.

“It’s exceptionally distressing to see this kind of fraud committed by individuals in occupations that profess high ethical standards,” said Richard WEBER, chief of criminal investigation at the Internal Revenue Service, which took part in the investigation.

“When doctors commit fraud through their profession, it is not only a violation of the public trust but also a complete renunciation of their Hippocratic oath.”

FATA will face a statutory maximum penalty of 175 years when he is sentenced in February.

New York

The head of the outpatient surgery facility where TV comedian Joan RIVERS went into cardiac arrest during a routine procedure is no longer at the clinic.

A spokesperson for Yorkville Endoscopy yesterday said Dr Lawrence COHEN was no longer the facility’s medical director, nor is he performing procedures there.  The spokesperson did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Dr COHEN’s departure.

Miss RIVERS, 81, died on 4 September 2014 at Mount Sinai Hospital, a week after going into cardiac arrest.

A New York State health department spokesman has said “the whole matter” was being investigated.  The Medical Examiner’s Office is also investigating.

Sao Paulo, Brazil

A Brazilian fertility doctor who went on the run in 2011 after being sentenced to 278 years in jail for sexually assaulting his patients was captured in neighbouring country Paraguay on Tuesday, 19 August 2014, police said.

Dr Roger ABDELMASSIH, whose clients included football legend Pele, was arrested in 2009 over allegations he raped or sexually abused dozens of female patients, sometimes while they were under anaesthetic.

Convicted in 2010, he fled while awaiting an appeal.  ABDELMASSIH, whose medical licence has been revoked, will be deported to Brazil.

Melbourne:  A misplaced mouse click has been blamed for issuing death notices of more than 200 living hospital patients who had been discharged the previous day.

Erroneous death notices were generated for every patient discharged from AUSTIN HOSPITAL in Melbourne and the forms automatically faxed to each patients GP.

It occurred in the early hours of Wednesday, 30 July 2014.

The AUSTIN HOSPITAL has apologised and traced the problem to “human error”.

A computer file was saved to the wrong location, substituting the death notice for the patient discharge form.

“AUSTIN Health automatically notifies GPs when their patients are discharged from hospital,” its communications director said yesterday.

The fault was recognised within hours and all affected GP clinics were then immediately notified.

An investigation is underway after revelations almost 50,000 X-rays taken at public hospitals on the Gold Coast have not been properly checked leaving patients at risk.  The investigation will examine what Minister for Health Lawrence SPRINGBORG has called a ‘long-running failure of a system designed to pick up undiagnosed medical conditions’.

Minister Springborg ordered the investigation into the lapse, which involves 48,000 X-rays taken since 2013.

Yes, you read it right… 48,000, repeat 48,000!

He said he had been advised the problem was isolated to the Gold Coast, but the inquiry would look at checking procedures across the state.

External checks would be carried out, at least in the short to medium term, to make sure all X-rays taken at the Gold Coast University Hospital and Robina Hospital were properly checked, he said.

“Delays and backlogs in this system cannot be permitted,” he said in a statement.

The Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service Board says it is aware of at least two patients who suffered adverse effects as a result of the failure.

It said it was aware there were problems with the checking procedures, but the extent of it did not become clear until late last week.

Why not?

About 22,000 X-rays have been earmarked for priority review.

The board’s patient safety spokeswoman Colette McCOOL said board members were aware there was a problem with the process, and had ordered a report on the matter.  But the scope of the problem, and the huge backlog of tests not properly checked, had come as a shock.

“We’d been advised that it was an issue over the last six months or so, but the magnitude of it wasn’t realised until last Thursday,” she told reporters on Monday, 14 July 2014.

The board’s chief executive Ron CALVERT said previous efforts to fix the problem had failed.  “Our efforts to remedy the situation have stumbled. We make mistakes. It happens,” he said.

“Our job is to make sure when we make these mistakes we are open and transparent about it and we learn from it and improve.”

They don’t.  Too many mistakes Gold Coast Hospital!  Robina, you’re no better!  The bungling at the old hospital has been transferred to the new.

Mr CALVERT said any patients found to have secondary problems would be contacted.

Don’t bet on it!

In Queensland, all X-rays are required to be double checked by radiologists.

Who was checking the double-checkers then?

Where did these radiologists get their degrees, if at all?

Medical imaging companies have been accused of exploiting a Medicare loophole to charge patients and the government more for services.

The ABC has learned some companies are making vulnerable patients who need multiple scans return over a number of days.

The practice helps them avoid a Medicare billing regime where set fees are reduced for second and subsequent scans conducted on the same day.  Making patients return can save imaging practices as little as $5 or as much as half the standard cost of a scan.

It comes after the ABC revealed earlier in the year specialist doctors could be raking in millions of dollars by forcing patients back to their GP for a fresh referral each year.

But the imaging industry said sometimes there were legitimate medical or logistical reasons to ask patients to return on different days.  Charging at the higher rate also gave them more capacity to bulk-bill patients.  However, in cases where practices do not bulk-bill, it results in the maximum gap payment for patients.

Consumer advocates said asking patients to make unnecessary repeated visits was a waste of time and money.

“If it’s not medically relevant … then this could be a significant cost burden on the Australian health system and one that requires review,” Consumer Health Forum chief executive Adam Stankevicius said.

Government spending on imaging has risen more than 40 per cent in the past five years and makes up about 10 per cent of the Medicare budget.  The patient gap charges, the difference between the cost and the Medicare rebate, are also up with the average imaging gap now $88.

Patients billed for cancelled appointments

Medical advocate Lorraine Long says the imaging industry has many poor practices.

The Medical Error Action Group founder has personally been bulk-billed twice for appointments she made but later cancelled.

“There’s obviously a pattern that when you make an appointment they obtain your Medicare number, then they bill Medicare whether you turn up or not,” Ms Long said.

She said she frequently saw evidence of “double-dipping” by medical practices.

In some cases, patients were bulk-billed for clinicians they never saw or billed for visits they never attended.

“I think it’s conniving more than rorting.  Because I’m seeing it right across the board,” Ms Long said.

“I’m not just seeing it in Sydney, I’m seeing it across Australia, and I see a lot of Medicare patient history reports that have that view.”

Patients encouraged to report fraud

A Department of Human Services spokeswoman said the department had compliance activities to address inappropriate practice and fraudulent activity.

“Any changes to Medicare would need to be considered by the Department of Health,” she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-10/medical-imaging-companies-accused-of-exploiting-loophole/5588212

A nurse who allegedly murdered 2 elderly patients and assaulted a third after two of them made complaints against her at a northern NSW nursing home, police allege.