Trial of Eye Surgeon Accused of Medicare Fraud Goes to Jury

A North Hollywood ophthalmologist accused of defrauding the federal Medicare program through phony eye surgery bills was depicted by a prosecutor Thursday as a cheat who wanted more than the hefty sums he already earned honestly.

But a defense attorney told jurors in Van Nuys Superior Court that Dr. Alan R. Schankman, 44, is a pioneering eye surgeon who was being penalized for experimenting with techniques that other doctors were afraid to try.

If the jury, which began deliberations Thursday, convicts Schankman of all 36 counts he was charged with, he could be sentenced to seven years in prison, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Schuit.

Like his colleagues, Schankman routinely removed cataracts from elderly patients and filed legitimate bills with Medicare for those procedures, which were done in hospitals, Schuit said.

But the prosecutor said that unlike other surgeons, Schankman also routinely claimed to have performed a follow-up operation in his office--which Schankman called “relaxing wedge resections” but Schuit derided as “fictional.”

Ophthalmology experts called by the prosecution said that there was no such operation and that they could find no evidence of any follow-up surgery in the 30 patients whose cases were selected for prosecution.

Medicare officials testified that Schankman had collected about $1,600 each for 685 of the operations in a five-year period, a total of almost $1.1 million. Schankman had testified that the wedge resections brought in about 10% of his income--indicating a gross income of more than $10 million in the five-year period.

“He got the patient to sign a surgical consent form and then he cut a few stitches” left from the cataract surgery, then billed the government, Schuit said in closing arguments.

Defense attorney Harland W. Braun countered that the prosecution did not present “any concrete evidence that Dr. Schankman is not doing this surgery.”

Braun also contended that Schankman was being penalized for showing good results with his surgical procedures, but that because of the prosecution, no other doctor “is going to take a chance with this procedure.”

On the stand, Schankman said that prosecution experts could find no evidence of additional surgery because his incisions were in the same area as the cataract surgery and he did not use stitches.

He blamed his office workers for incorrectly billing the procedures as cornea transplants, which, according to expert testimony, is a conventional though uncommon procedure.