Nursing Home Wrongful Death

Gregory A. White, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, today announced that on January 12, 2006 a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against Jorge A. Martinez, M.D., age 54, of 3773 Mapleleaf Hill, Akron, Ohio, after a five-week trial. Martinez was convicted of 57 counts of drug distribution, mail fraud, wire fraud and health care fraud, including two counts of health care fraud resulting in death.

Martinez schemed to defraud the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies of $60 million, and received more than $12 million from the scheme. Martinez, a solo practitioner, ran pain management clinics in Boardman, Parma, Lorain and Akron, Ohio. He gave his patients – often more than 100 in a day – the same regimen of injections and Schedule II and II narcotic drugs.

By demanding that patients see him weekly, Martinez rendered them physically dependent, and in some cases addicted, to the drugs he prescribed. He then billed their insurance companies thousands of dollars for visits that lasted a few minutes. The visits consisted of an employee asking the patient which drugs he or she wanted, followed by Martinez’s insistence on the injections. The injections themselves were crude versions of simple shots known as trigger point injections, but Martinez billed patients’ insurance companies for multiple, complex epidural and nerve block procedures more commonly done in a hospital out-patient setting. Martinez also insisted that patients “donate” cash to his insurance malpractice fund.

The jury found that as a result of the illegal scheme, Martinez caused the deaths of Blair Scott Knight, age 35, of Ravenna, Ohio, and John “Jack” Lancaster, age 42, of Parma, Ohio. Both men died in 2001 after more than a year under Martinez’s care. Both had suffered work-related back injuries for which they had seen several doctors. Martinez prescribed OxyContin and gave steroid injections to both men beginning with their initial visits. He continued to prescribe increasing amounts of OxyContin and other drugs to them, even after he had reason to know they were abusing drugs. Knight died from an overdose of OxyContin on January 8, 2001, the last day he had seen Martinez and received from him an OxyContin prescription.
 
Lancaster last saw Martinez on September 5, 2001, after a 20-day painful withdrawal from drugs. Martinez, knowing Lancaster had abused heroin, prescribed Kadian, a Schedule II drug that has the same effect in the brain as heroin, according to the Government’s expert witnesses. Lancaster overdosed on multiple opiates after a visit in which he slept half the day in Martinez’s office, according to a witness. Martinez billed the BWC more than $5,000 for the visit. He was taken to a hospital emergency room 36 hours later, placed on a ventilator and transferred to an intensive care unit, where he stayed until his death a week later.