San Diego

A company that once contracted to perform emergency room services at Scripps Memorial Hospital was fined $25,000 Monday by a federal judge after pleading guilty last month to one count of Medicare fraud.

Emergency Care Medical Group Inc. received the fine from U.S. District Judge William Enright. Also on Monday, Enright dismissed charges against the firm’s owner, Dr. Robert Eggold, 39, who now practices medicine in Yuma, Ariz.

Assistant U.S. Atty. George Hardy said the charges represented “quite an extensive fraud” in false billings to the Medicare program.

Hardy said he didn’t have an estimated amount of the fraud, as the Medicare program did not pay very many of the false billings.

“The deceit was there; the loss was not,” said Hardy.

Eggold was indicted by a federal grand jury in December on 44 counts of defrauding Medicare patients and private insurance companies. He was accused of inflating charges for emergency room services and billing some patients for care that was not provided.

The charges stem from a spot audit of emergency room billings at Scripps, which was conducted last fall by federal authorities.

Eggold had served for 10 years as the physician in charge of emergency room doctors at Scripps before resigning in September, 1985, after the allegations of overcharging surfaced.