A physician in Pasco County, Fla. has been charged with perscription fraud for illegally dispensing controlled substances and in two cases of billing Medicaid for the purchases.
Attorney General Charlie Crist said investigators allege that Dr. Satyanarayana Rao Korabathina illegally dispensed controlled substances out of his New Port Richey practice to two undercover investigators with the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and one undercover detective with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
Korabathina, 54, was investigated by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office as part of an on-going effort to curb Medicaid provider fraud.
On eight separate occasions, undercover investigators with the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Sheriff’s office visited Korabathina’s practice requesting pain medication prescriptions. Korabathina wrote prescriptions to the investigators, two of whom posed as Medicaid recipients, for Hydrocodone, Alprazolam, and Oxycodone, all controlled substances. He never ordered any laboratory tests or examinations to verify that the pain medication he was prescribing to the investigators was medically necessary.
“Good doctors determine the problem before prescribing a remedy,” Crist said. “The public is put at risk when narcotics are dispensed at random.”
In addition to illegally prescribing controlled substances, Korabathina allegedly billed Medicaid for at least two of the visits, claiming he performed medically necessary, Medicaid reimbursable procedures.
Korabathina is charged with prescription fraud and medicaid fraud. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The case is being prosecuted by the Pasco County State Attorney’s Office.
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