The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today that Michael Kestner, 72, of Nashville, was found guilty in federal court of running pain clinics in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Over the course of eight years, Kestner fraudulently billed federal health care programs approximately $35 million by administering medically unnecessary procedures to opioid-dependent patients to boost profits, the DOJ stated.
The clinics, under the name Pain MD, aggressively billed millions to Medicare and other insurers, according to the department.
Despite having no medical credentials, Kestner pressured nurse practitioners and physician assistants at his clinics to perform multiple back injections on nearly all patients seeking opioid treatments, according to court documents.
Patients who refused these injections risked being denied treatment and facing withdrawal symptoms from their opioid medications, as outlined in the court filings.
The injections were consistently billed as Tendon Origin Insertion (TOI) procedures, despite most patients not being diagnosed with tendon pain.