Illinois Doctor Gets 10 Years Prison For Fraud, Lying To Patients

I think most of us have the reasonable expectation that we can trust our doctor or doctors to be people that we can trust to tell us the truth and do or recommend what's best for us and our health.

Polling information even backs that up. Of the five most trusted professions in America, a Gallup poll from November of 2024 shows that doctors come in at number five:

1. Nurses
2. Grade school teachers
3. Military officers
4. Pharmacists
5. Medical doctors

Even though doctors still rank highly in the trust department, public confidence has been on the decline over the last five years (gee, I wonder why), to where America's confidence in doctors has reached its lowest level since the mid-1990s.

Things like what recently happened with a Hoffman Estates, Illinois doctor certainly aren't going to help.

The Doctor, Who Owned And Operated An OB/GYN Clinic In Hoffman Estates Pled Guilty To Scamming Medicaid And Private Insurance While Lying To Her Patients About Their Conditions

According to a release from the United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois, here's what happened:

• Mona Ghosh owned and operated Progressive Women’s Healthcare, S.C., a medical office in Hoffman Estates, Ill., specializing in obstetrics and gynecology services. From 2018 to 2022, Ghosh submitted and caused her employees to submit fraudulent claims to Medicaid, TRICARE, and numerous other insurers for procedures and services that were not medically necessary.
• Tests included endometrial ablations and biopsies, ultrasounds, vaccinations, laboratory blood tests, and tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Some of the procedures were performed without patient consent.
• Ghosh also fraudulently overstated the length and complexity of in-office and telemedicine visits and submitted claims using billing codes for which the visits did not qualify in order to seek higher reimbursement rates.
• Ghosh prepared false patient medical records to support the fraudulent reimbursement claims.

Ghosh pleaded guilty last year to two counts of health care fraud. Last week, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution.

Bilking Medicaid And Insurers Is Bad Enough, But What She Did To Her Patients Was Far Worse

During a hearing in May, some of Ghosh's former patients read victim impact statements about having unneeded and unwanted procedures that caused some patients permanent infertility.

ABC7Chicago.com:

"Not just me, but everyone she took that right away from. I wasn't done having kids, and she took it from me," Katie Hart said.

"At least she will be in prison, and I will be living free. She can no longer harm anybody, and that the main thing to do no more harm to any more of these women," Christie said.

WGNTV.com:

A total of 17 women spoke during the federal sentencing hearings. Several women shared that they went to Ghosh for a routine pap smear, or cervical cancer screening, and were told results were abnormal. Fearful that they could have cancer, they agreed to get a biopsy.

Witnesses said while they were sedated, Ghosh performed other procedures instead, including ones they said have affected their fertility.

“Under anesthesia, without my consent, she gave me an endometrial ablation,” one woman said.