Feds arrest fifth doctor in Sacred Heart Hospital kickback case
BY KIM JANSSEN Federal Courts Reporter kjanssen@suntimes.com April 18, 2013 3:32PM
Updated: April 19, 2013 3:36PM
Federal investigators arrested a fifth doctor Wednesday evening in their ongoing probe of the West Side’s Sacred Heart hospital.
Dr. Kenneth Nave was nabbed at a Miami airport, a day after four of his colleagues were charged with taking kickbacks from hospital owner Edward Novak to refer cases to Sacred Heart.
Nave — who’d previously been stripped of his prescription-writing powers for earlier wrongdoing — allegedly used another doctor’s name and license to get around the ban, illegally prescribing drugs to more than two-dozen of Sacred Heart patients following his hire in September last year.
His medical license was indefinitely suspended Thursday by the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation.
According to a federal affidavit, Novak instructed Nave to “keep a low profile” once he discovered he’d been illegally prescribing drugs.
Novak also allegedly joked to a hospital administrator that records showing how Sacred Heart credentialed Nave to work “had disappeared.”
Novak is additionally accused of — but has yet to be charged with — encouraging his surgeons to perform unnecessary procedures on patients to scam Medicare and Medicaid out of cash, according to a federal affidavit.
