Witness: Lazzerini laughed at waiting patients

May 16-- May 16--CANTON Dr. Frank Lazzerini looked out the window at the long line of his patients waiting to get prescriptions refilled, remarked that they were waiting for him and laughed, his former billing assistant testified in his trial Wednesday.

Beverly Hines said, "We had a lot of patients, and they were lined up outside. ... They were out there waiting and (Lazzerini) would be enjoying looking out the window."

Samuel Kirk, an assistant Ohio Attorney general, asked, "He was laughing?"

"Yes," she said, clarifying that Lazzarini was laughing at his patients.

Hines testified the doctor would often arrive at the practice an hour after the first patient was scheduled.

And if patients complained about the long wait, he would dismiss some from the practice, she said. He would then replace with new patients, for whom he could claim higher Medicaid reimbursements for first-time appointments. Hines said Lazzerini also dismissed patients who failed his urine screen tests. He might dismiss 50 patients a week, she said.

Lazzerini faces 264 felony charges including aggravated drug trafficking, Medicaid fraud, illegal processing of drug documents and involuntary manslaughter.

Hines worked for Lazzerini from December 2012 until he fired her in November 2014. She said he accused her of adjusting billing codes without his permission.

The billing assistant said she once flagged his insurance reimbursement requests for several nursing home patients he saw because they lacked a diagnosis code in the paperwork.

"Just make them all dementia," Hines said Lazzerini told her.

"No, I can't do that," she recalled saying.

Hines said Lazzerini consistently billed Medicaid for the highest reimbursement rates that were not justified by the short periods of time he spent with each patient, which she called unusual. When she told him that he couldn't be billing such high rates for only a 15-minute appointment, he became irate, said he was the doctor and said he was documenting his patients' visits, Hines said.

Hines testified that the attitude of Lazzerini, who once complimented her work, changed and he would tell the staff that they would not get their holiday bonuses because Hines was not collecting enough money owed.

Under cross examination by Lazzerini's attorney Brian Pierce, Hines said she did not review patient records nor was in the exam room when Lazzerini met with patients. And that she had no reason to believe he wasn't documenting patient visits.

Another former patient

A former patient of Lazzerini, a woman in her 30s who was a former pharmacy tech, testified that neither the doctor nor his staff counseled her on the risks of taking Norco, a potentially addictive pain medication that Lazzerini prescribed for her for more than 10 months. She saw Lazzerini in 2015 for treatment of a chronic condition that caused pain and fatigue. The woman said she often had to wait more than an hour in his waiting room, and then he would meet her for about five minutes.

"Most of the the time he seemed to be rushed, and it seemed he was walking out the door when I was still trying to talk and ask questions," she said. The former patient said that he agreed to her request to increase the dosage of the Norco and later to change to Percocet when an emergency room doctor prescribed that for her to treat dental pain.

Under questioning by Lazzerini's attorney Donald Malarcik, the woman said she was not one of the patients referred to in the indictment of the doctor. She was seeing him for a legitimate medical issue, he had referred her to specialists but she saw only a cardiologist.

She said when she tried to stop taking the Norco, she experienced withdrawal symptoms where "I felt I was going to die" and like "an elephant was sitting on my chest."

Stark County Common Pleas Judge Kristin Farmer has ordered that the identities of Lazzerini's former patients not be disclosed outside the courtroom.

Dr. William Murphy, a radiologist at Mercy Medical Center, testified that the hospital's radiology department set a strict limit on the number of X-rays Lazzerini could order. He felt Lazzerini was ordering an excessive number for young patients and that posed an unacceptable radiation risk and risk of cancer. However, he said while the hospital and the radiologists got more insurance or Medicaid reimbursements if more X-rays were ordered, Lazzerini did not get a share of those payments.

Testimony is expected to resume Thursday morning.

Reach Repository writer Robert Wang at (330) 580-8327 or [email protected].

On Twitter: @rwangREP

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