Best Doctors in America? Well, Take a Look at Our 'Top 10 Worst List' for 2017
Over the course of 2017's last week, a plethora of news sites will shout from the belfry all the "Best Doctors of the Year." In our view, it is far more of a service to let you know who the "worst" might be. So with no fanfare at all, here they are:
10. Doctor Xiulu Ruan, in Alabama, was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison and ordered to return the millions of dollars he and criminal doctor-partner, Doctor John Patrick Couch, stole. The doctor do-bad duo were found by investigators to have defrauded numerous insurance companies in a scheme they manipulated out of their pain management clinic in the city of Mobile. As an example, they wrote out more than 65,000 narcotic prescriptions in the year 2014 alone – more than 100 for every day the clinic was open.
9. Doctor Abdul Haq, from Ypsilanti, Michigan, confessed to Conspiracy to Commit Healthcare Fraud for his role in a $19,000,000 healthcare scheme. Haq admitted he was a co-conspirator to prescribing medically unnecessary controlled substances, including oxycodone.
8. Doctor Binh Minh Chung in Las Vegas was found guilty in April, on 11 felony charges against him, of sexually assaulting unconscious female patients. During his trial in May, Chung told jurors he had a "sleeping beauty fetish." He was sentenced to life in prison.
7. Doctor David Ming Pon, an ophthalmologist in Jacksonville, Florida, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for cheating Medicare out of nearly $10,000,000. Pon told nearly 600 patients they needed surgery to repair eye conditions they did not have. He would then fake the treatments he was billing for.
6. Doctor Fakhruddin Attar, age 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, were arrested in April at their clinic in Livonia, Michigan, near Detroit. They were charged with 3 federal crimes including Female Genital Mutilation and Conspiracy to commit a felony.
5. Doctor Jumana Nagarwala reportedly performed genital mutilation procedure on two 7-year-old girls at a clinic in Livonia. According to court documents, they were brought there by their mothers. In the criminal complaint, the 7-year-old girl was told she was brought to Detroit for a "special girls trip." The child victim also stated that she said she had to go to the doctor "to get the germs out." Upon a medical exam on April 11, a doctor determined that the child's genitals had been altered or removed.
4. Doctor Aria Sabit, a spine surgeon in Detroit, was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for performing fake and unnecessary operations. Sabit persuaded patients to undergo spinal fusion surgery, but diagnostic imaging revealed he never installed the hardware to achieve fusion.
3. Doctor John Francis McGuire in Escondido, California, was convicted in a jury trial in March on a total of 25 Felonies and Misdemeanor charges. He was originally charged with 30 different crimes, including Rape; Attempted Sexual Assault of an Unconscious Person; Aggravated Sexual Battery of a restrained person, and Sexual Acts on Patients,
2. Doctor Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon in Dallas, was sentenced to life in prison for maiming a woman in a spinal procedure. Duntsch was found guilty of aggravated assault and injury to the elderly. He had previously botched operations that killed two other patients, and left several others paralyzed.
1. Doctor Larry Nassar, former team physician for the Michigan State University gymnastics and USA Gymnastics Team, through four Olympics Games, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of criminal sexual assault of children under the guise of medical treatment of young athletes. Both the healthcare system and the MSU staff ignored the girls for decades.