London doctor convicted of implanting unneeded pacemakers sentenced to 3½ years, fined $50,000, told to repay $257,515

Image from MGN Online via WKYT-TV

A Kentucky doctor convicted of "implanting pacemakers that weren’t medically necessary in order to make money" was sentenced Oct. 30 to three years and six months in prison, fined $50,000 and ordered to repay insurance companies and taxpayer-funded health programs $257,515, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Dr. Anis Chalhoub, 60, is expected to appeal his April conviction and ask U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove to allow him to remain free while appealing. At sentencing in London, the judge told Chalhoub, “You’ve engaged in conduct that has harmed our community.”

Chalhoub was charged with implanted pacemakers into patients who didn’t need them between March 2007 and July 2011. He implanted about 230 pacemakers at the St. Joseph London hospital during that period, U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr. said in a news release.

The unneeded pacemakers “will adversely impact these patients’ lives as they age and may compromise their ability to seek certain medical treatments in the future,” Asst. U.S. Attys. Andrew E. Smith and Paul C. McCaffrey said in a sentencing memorandum.

"Former coal miner Mark Meadows, for instance, told Van Tatenhove the experience had helped doom his marriage of 30 years and eroded his trust in doctors," Estep reports, quoting him: “It’s a dirty low-down rotten shame.”

Chalhoub practiced at the hospital "during a period when the hospital and doctors there allegedly took part in performing hundreds of unnecessary heart procedures," Estep notes. "Saint Joseph Health Systems agreed in January 2014 to pay $16.5 million to settle allegations that it engaged in a scheme to pump up revenue by billing federally-funded health programs for unnecessary procedures from January 2008 to August 2011. That was before the company merged with two others in 2012 to form KentuckyOne Health."