On May 2, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced that the United States has filed a complaint under the False Claims Act (FCA) against James McGuckin, an interventional radiologist. The complaint alleges that McGuckin and his affiliated entities billed Medicare and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program for more than 500 claims for medically unnecessary invasive peripheral artery procedures from 2016 through 2019, and were reimbursed at least $6.5 million. The action was originally filed under the whistleblower provisions of the FCA by an interventional radiologist who worked with McGuckin and the affiliated entities.

McGuckin was previously sanctioned in 2015 by several states’ medical boards and Medicaid programs for performing unnecessary experimental vascular procedures on hundreds of patients to purportedly treat multiple sclerosis, which is not a vascular disease. He was also involved in an FCA settlement in 2018 as manager/owner of Vascular Access Centers, L.P., which performed and billed for unnecessary vascular procedures. Unnecessary invasive vascular procedures may increase patients’ likelihood of needing future procedures and put them at greater risk of leg amputations.