Florida doctors challenge Medicare fraud convictions

Tampa-area physicians are believed the first in the nation to face criminal charges for laboratory arrangements.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Nov. 19, 2001.

Two Florida physicians who believe that they were wrongly prosecuted for Medicare fraud are fighting back, challenging the evidence the government used against them in federal court.

St. Petersburg, Fla., family physician Michael Spuza, MD, and internist Ira Harvey Liss, MD, in late October filed papers in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida asking the judge to set aside guilty verdicts reached against them in an April 2000 jury trial. The request comes in a motion filed in the trial court.

The motion asks the judge to "vacate, set aside or correct" the sentence. It is separate from an earlier appeal the physicians filed with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In their court filing, the physicians say that the government held back information from them before trial.

They also charge that the government deliberately misused data during the trial to prove that they were referring patients. The doctors say the data did not accurately represent patient referrals.

At press time, the judge had not yet set a date to hear the allegations. But Dr. Spuza said he was optimistic that this precedent-setting case can be reversed.

"I hoped the truth would come out at the beginning of the case," Dr. Spuza said. "Unfortunately, we have had to wait for the truth to become available."

Drs. Spuza and Liss were each charged with and convicted of one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and five counts each of receiving kickbacks for Medicare referrals. They both could face jail time. [...]