Last April, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of Dr. Ameet Vohra and his companies for fraudulently billing debridement services. On Friday, November 21st, 2025, the DOJ announced that Vohra Wound Physicians and its owner have agreed pay $45M to settle the fraud allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by knowingly causing the submission of claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary surgical procedures, for more lucrative surgical procedures when only routine non-surgical wound management had been done, and for evaluation and management services that were not billable under Medicare coverage and coding rules. In its complaint, the United States alleged that Vohra pressured, trained, and provided financial incentives for Vohra physicians to perform debridement procedures during as many patient visits as possible regardless of the patients’ needs.
The complaint also alleged that Vohra programmed its electronic health record (EHR) and billing software to ensure that Medicare was always billed for the higher-reimbursed surgical excisional procedure and to create false medical record documentation to support the scheme. The DOJ announcement included extremely strong language around manipulating EHRs to inflate billing. Under the settlement, Vohra will enter into a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) with the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services which is described in the press release.
Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/carolinefifemd/videos
The opinions, comments, and content expressed or implied in my statements are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of Intellicure or any of the boards on which I serve.
I believe this highlights the need for a national standardization of wound care education. Because we rarely get any evidence-based education in medical school and residency curriculum, it allows companies to train providers in a practice that maximizes profits. And there is no room in those companies for providers who question the education or guidelines provided.
Also we need some standards with defining the terminology. I sat through a workshop at AAWC on debridement with several very well-educated and nationally-recognized surgeons who disagreed on the definition of selective and excisional debridement. If I remember correctly, they disagreed on whether you billed based on the depth of the wound exposed tissue or based on the type of the tissue removed. When I brought up whether the debridement plane was in heathy or necrotic tissue all hell broke loose. Which led me to letting my intent be my guide. As if that isn’t a vast sea of gray.
This is what I’ve been saying. Tiger Biosciences and its subsidiary are the biggest ones behind all of the abuse going on.
Never blame the restaurant for your fat bodies.
They supply & try to push their products as profit of every industry is based on sales = profits.
The providers are stupid to use products where NOT NECESSARY
I agree