Doctor who ran Cape drug clinics suspended

April 12--The state Board of Registration in Medicine has temporarily suspended the license of a Brookline doctor who operated several drug treatment offices on the Cape and Islands.

The board summarily suspended the license of Dr. Punyamurtula S. Kishore at its Wednesday meeting after finding he posed an "an immediate and serious threat to the public health, safety and welfare."

The board said Kishore closed clinics in 2011 without notifying patients in advance.

"It's a temporary action," Katherine Dudich, interim general counsel at the state Board of Registration in Medicine, said.

Kishore has the right to appeal the suspension to the Division of Administrative Law Appeals within seven days of the decision.

Kishore also is facing a Medicaid fraud charge on allegations he bribed the owner of sober houses with $597,000 in insurance kickbacks to send patients needing urine screens to his treatment centers.

Kishore operated a 30-office chain known as Preventive Medicine Associates Inc.

In 2011 he was ordered to surrender his passport because he is considered a flight risk.

An Indian national in the United States as a permanent resident, Kishore was the target of a grand jury investigation led by Attorney General Martha Coakley's Medicaid Fraud Division.

His case is ongoing, according to the attorney general's office. Grant Woodman, a spokesman, said the next court date is May 19 for a motions hearing in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston.

Coakley alleges that Kishore orchestrated a kickback scheme that funneled drug screening business from sober houses to his laboratories, which then billed government-funded MassHealth for the services.

Investigators say Kishore's partner in a fraudulent "urinalysis contract" was Damion Smith, president of the Fresh Start Recovery Coalition Inc.

The case led Coakley to file legislation that would prevent this type of fraud in the future. The legislation is currently in the fiscal year 2015 House budget.

Kishore's chain of clinics included offices in Sandwich, West Yarmouth, Falmouth, Barnstable, Wareham and Vineyard Haven. The sudden closings left hundreds of patients in the lurch, including patients who relied on shots of Vivitrol that stop the user from getting high on opiates.

The state Board of Registration in Medicine alleges that Kishore "closed a number of outpatient clinics without notifying patients in advance of these closings and without providing these patients with any information as to alternatives for the continuity of their care or access to their medical records," a board press release states.

Attempts to reach Kishore were unsuccessful.

Kishore, who specializes in addiction medicine, has held a Massachusetts physician's license since 1974. In 2012 the board disciplined him for inappropriately filing four temporary involuntary hospitalization applications for the purpose of drug testing.

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