A health care provider who referred to as himself the “leg saver” is shutting down his vascular clinics in Michigan, the place he carried out 1000’s of profitable procedures which have come beneath scrutiny for being pointless and probably harmful.
The physician, Jihad Mustapha, was featured in a New York Instances investigation final yr concerning the elevated use of the procedures, which have harmed sufferers whilst they’ve enriched docs and the system corporations that promote the merchandise they use.
Earlier this month, sufferers acquired a letter from the employees of Dr. Mustapha’s clinic, Superior Cardiac & Vascular Facilities, informing them that the enterprise, which has clinics in Grand Rapids and Lansing, was closing and advising them to seek out new docs. The letter, which didn’t define the rationale for the closing, mentioned that Dr. Mustapha had already begun working at a observe in Ocala, Fla. His accomplice and nephew, Dr. Fadi Saab, is relocating to a cardiology observe in Dearborn, Mich., the letter mentioned.
Dr. Mustapha and Dr. Saab didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Dr. Mustapha is a outstanding participant in a booming business that targets the roughly 12 million People with peripheral artery illness, through which plaque builds up in arteries, clogging the circulate of blood. He was paid a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars} by system producers to conduct medical trials, practice different docs and discuss their merchandise, based on a federal database of business funds to docs.
The quantity of one in every of these procedures, referred to as the atherectomy, has greater than doubled up to now decade, based on an evaluation of Medicare cost knowledge.
Dr. Mustapha and Dr. Saab collectively billed Medicare for greater than 2,600 atherectomies between 2018 and 2021, the Instances evaluation discovered. These procedures earned their clinics nearly $18 million from Medicare alone.
State well being authorities discovered that Dr. Mustapha carried out dozens of pointless procedures on sufferers, together with some who finally misplaced their legs. And an insurance coverage firm, Blue Cross Blue Protect of Michigan, reported that 45 folks had misplaced limbs after remedy at his clinics over 4 years.
In response to The Instances’s investigation final yr, Dr. Mustapha and Dr. Saab defended their remedy of the significantly sick sufferers who they mentioned shaped the majority of their observe. Dr. Mustapha mentioned the overwhelming majority of the folks he treats have “distinctive outcomes.”
After The Instances printed its article, Dr. Mustapha sued one of many vascular surgeons who had reported his practices to the state’s licensing board. Within the defamation lawsuit, Dr. Mustapha mentioned he misplaced his malpractice insurance coverage protection and “sure medical privileges” at two Michigan hospital programs. His lawsuit, which remains to be pending, additionally mentioned he “struggled to keep up relationships” with insurers like Aetna, Blue Cross and Cigna.
