Wisner Gary (Gary Wisner)

Biography

2022: Got 7 years in prison for unnecessary X-rays

In early September 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a seven-year prison sentence for a San Joaquin County orthopedic surgeon for repeated fraud under Medi-Cal and Medicare programs.

From 2012 to 2016, Gary Wisner deceived Medi-Cal and Medicare by prescribing excessive and medically unjustified X-rays to his patients. In June 2022, Wisner was convicted of 10 criminal counts of health insurance fraud and was also sentenced by Sacramento Superior Court to seven years in prison.

Gary Wisner

In November 2016, representatives from the California Department of Justice, the Division of Fraud in Medi-Cal Programs and Elder Abuse (DMFEA), were notified by several government agencies of suspected fraud by Wisner in overbilling Medi-Cal and Medicare. Gary Wisner managed a medical clinic in Lodi, where 26 thousand patients were under his care. During the DMFEA investigation into Wisner's alleged misconduct, investigators randomly selected a dossier of five Medi-Cal patients and five Medicare patients. These 10 dossiers formed the basis of 10 felony charges for which Wisner was convicted.

The DMFEA investigation found that Wisner ordered X-rays even during routine office visits and X-rays of several parts of the patient's body, regardless of whether it had anything to do with the patient's health condition. Over the course of about four years, the evidence gathered showed that Wisner subjected 10 individual patients to hundreds of unnecessary X-rays at his clinic.

The investigation was made possible through cooperation with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office and the California Department of Insurance. Gary Wisner is also the subject of an independent criminal complaint filed by the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office for worker compensation fraud.^[1]

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