Rad owes Medicare nearly $3M for suspicious claims | Debate over teleradiology out-of-state taxes | Rads more likely to be sued

Jennifer Palmer died at age 34 after cancer spread to her bones, with her family subsequently suing a New York radiologist, alleging she missed sings on an MRI. 

Reports indicate the doctor frequently changed orders and completed alternate exams or procedures without providing clinical documentation to justify the changes. 

The California Franchise Tax Board had charged that the rad and his sole proprietorship could be combined to constitute a "unitary business," subject to state taxation.  

Anthem defended the policy in response to the lawsuit, contending patients shouldn’t have to worry about surprise medical bills when visiting in-network hospitals. 

About 38% of rads surveyed said they had defended against at least one lawsuit, with such specialists at a higher risk than others in internal medicine. 

The technologist, who was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma in 2023, says she previously took her concerns to leadership, but her claims were not taken seriously. 

“Radiologists should exercise caution when implementing...protocoling workflows that bypass independent radiologist review," one expert writes in the American Journal of Roentgenology. 

"This case reflects a troubling pattern in which payers, dissatisfied with IDR results, increasingly try to attack those outcomes outside the framework Congress created," Rad Partners says. 

The Mountain View, California-based company—which creates personalized models of the heart from CT scans—is taking rival Cleerly to court. 

Orchard Park, New York-based Southtowns Radiology Associates and eight of its doctors filed the suit against Gregory R. Ball, MD, PhD, on April 3.