An Alaska physician was indicted on numerous charges alleging that he repeatedly billed the state’s Medicaid program for unnecessary tests he performed on patients’ urine samples, defrauding the program by over $9 million, state prosecutors said Thursday.
Dr. John D. Zipperer Jr., 50, ran over 1 million medically unnecessary tests on urine samples he submitted to a laboratory he owned in Tennessee, according to charges filed against him Dec. 20 in Anchorage Superior Court. A grand jury indicted him on fraud and theft charges after a hearing Wednesday, according to the Alaska Department of Law.
Zipperer denied the allegations during a phone interview Thursday and said he did not defraud Medicaid but instead administered urine tests on patients he was treating for addiction and pain management. He said his clinics took on high-risk patients because he wanted to see them improve. The urinary tests “weeded out the ones who didn’t want help and allowed the ones who did want help to have accountability and structure,” he said.
Zipperer had clinics in Wasilla, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Soldotna and Eagle River. He set up a lab in Tennessee to process urine samples and required patients to submit to urinary testing, which the December charges say he processed at his own lab.
He submitted the tests to Medicaid, other insurance companies or cash-paying patients for about $3,000 to $8,000 per sample, according to the charges. He was reimbursed about $9 million for laboratory testing during a nearly two-year span — over 10 times the combined total that all other providers in Alaska were reimbursed in that same time period, the charges said.
A cash-paying client complained to the state medical board after receiving costly bills for the urinary testing, according to the December charges.
Zipperer’s indictment this week comes after a years-long investigation involving numerous federal and state agencies. Zipperer said he believes the investigation was corrupt and has been uploading videos to YouTube that he said tell his side of the story.
Zipperer is scheduled to appear in court by telephone Friday. He is representing himself and is facing four felony charges of medical assistance fraud, two counts of scheme to defraud, one felony charge of first-degree theft, two misdemeanor counts of medical assistance fraud and a misdemeanor charge of bribery to conceal a crime.
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