Ridiculous

The St. Petersburg Times yesterday had a fascinating feature on a Sarasota Dermatologist Michael A Rosin. In spite of being indicted on 25 charges of health care fraud, the man is still practicing. The Florida Board of Medicine also lists his license as clear.

Rosin is innocent till proven otherwise. Still why is Medicare still paying him for seeing patients. That should have been suspended immediately. This Doctor raises my ire, because of my own dermatology/skin cancer problems. He has been mistreating patients for years if the accusations are true. If found guilty, I hope Dr. Rosin spends the rest of his life behind bars.

Here is the link to this sickening story- http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/12/State/And_he_s_still_practi.shtml

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior CorrespondentPublished June 12, 2005

SARASOTA -

William Kapfer, an 88-year-old retiree, thought he was in good hands with Dr. Michael A. Rosin.

A physician since 1978, Rosin was among the most respected dermatologists in Sarasota. And he was one of just two with intensive training in Mohs microscopic surgery, a state-of-the-art procedure effective in curing the most common types of skin cancer.

Over a span of four or five years, Kapfer often found himself in Rosin's office undergoing Mohs surgery. So often that he began to wonder if he really had as many skin cancers as the doctor diagnosed.

"I'm a lay patient and you have to go by what somebody tells you - if he takes a sample and says it's cancer and you need to be treated, you accept that," Kapfer said. "However, the number of times he did that became rather large, and I began to get suspicious."

In April, Kapfer's doubts were confirmed: He was among dozens of elderly patients listed in a federal indictment that accuses Rosin of falsely diagnosing skin cancer and performing unnecessary surgery.

From 1996 through last June, the indictment says, Rosin schemed to "deceive his patients" into thinking they needed cancer operations so he could bill the Medicare program for their treatment. He is accused of illegally collecting at least $3.2-million in Medicare payments.

In one case, FBI agents found, Rosin based his diagnosis on a slide that contained chewing gum, not human tissue.

In another case, the FBI said, a lab technician decided to test Rosin by substituting a sliver of Styrofoam for a tissue sample. After examining the slide, Rosin told the patient that her cancer was "very aggressive" and that she needed surgery the next day.

Rosin, 54, would not comment for this story. At a hearing in April, he pleaded not guilty to criminal charges - 25 counts of health care fraud and 25 of making false statements - that could put him in prison for life. One of his lawyers, Greg Kehoe of Tampa, said the allegations are "absolutely not true."

"The work he did was proper in all respects," Kehoe said. If the government was so concerned about Rosin's practice, Kehoe added, why didn't it do something a year ago when it started investigating him?

Rosin is still performing surgery and is still in the Medicare program. Neither the Florida Board of Medicine nor the state Health Department has taken any action against him; prospective patients checking him out on the department's Web site would find that his license remains "clear/active."

"I think that's outrageous," said Kapfer's 80-year-old wife, Rosalie, who also underwent surgery by Rosin. "I don't understand why they don't close him down - it seems terrible having people cut up perhaps unnecessarily. He whacked us up good, we both have scars all over."