CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — Chesapeake Regional Medical Center (CRMC) has been charged with healthcare fraud and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. as well as interference with government functions after a federal grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday.
Previously: 10 On Your Side Investigates: The Patients v. Perwaiz
The hospital, as alleged in the indictment, gave privileges to Javaid Perwaiz from 1984 until he was arrested in 2019, even after knowing he had been terminated at another hospital for performing unnecessary surgeries, and that, in 1996, he was convicted of two federal felonies.
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From 2010 to 2019, the hospital allegedly received about $18.5 million in reimbursements from healthcare benefit programs for surgical and obstetric procedures that Perwaiz performed at the hospital.
“After Dr. Perwaiz was convicted of performing irreversible hysterectomies and other medically unnecessary surgeries on women, we continued to investigate the role that [Chesapeake Regional Medical Center] played,” said Jessica D. Aber, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a statement. “As alleged in the indictment, Dr. Perwaiz did not act alone in this conspiracy to needlessly sterilize and otherwise harm women. The grand jury found … that [the hospital] was complicit in this horrifying scheme to place profits over patient care.”