Neurologist Is Sentenced to Treat the Poor

A former Palm Springs neurologist was ordered Monday to provide 3,000 hours of free medical care to residents of a poor urban neighborhood as punishment for bilking Medicare out of $120,000.

Dr. Isaac Sultan could have received up to 21 months in prison under a plea agreement with prosecutors, but Los Angeles federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian said “warehousing” him in prison for that length of time would serve no useful purpose.

Sultan, who now lives and practices in New York, pleaded guilty last year to engaging in an illicit scheme known as “upcoding.”

After seeing patients for five minutes or less, Sultan billed Medicare for examinations that normally take up to an hour, federal prosecutors said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jack Weiss pleaded with Tevrizian to change his mind and send Sultan to prison for some period of time.

“Your Honor is going to send precisely the wrong message to other medical providers who are out there today stealing money from the taxpayers of the United States,” he argued.

“I do want to send a message,” Tevrizian said, “but I do not want to waste the talents and skills of this doctor.”

The judge said he would leave it to federal probation officers to decide where Sultan performs his community service over a three-year period, though he specified that the facility must be in “an economically deprived, medically underserved urban area.”

Sultan also will have to spend six months under home detention and wear an electronic monitoring device, though he will be permitted to leave his house to work.

He also was ordered to repay the $120,000 that he admitted receiving through inflated billing.

“The government thinks that I gave you a break, that I was too light,” Tevrizian told the doctor. “I disagree. Now don’t let me down.”

Only a month ago, Tevrizian appeared annoyed with Sultan when the doctor moved in court to withdraw his guilty plea to four mail fraud counts.

Sultan, 54, contended at the time that he was pressured to enter a guilty plea by his defense lawyer and that he was confused as a result of taking the diet drug fen-phen.

Tevrizian refused to allow him to withdraw the plea, ruling that he entered his plea voluntarily and with full knowledge of the consequences.