Memphis Gynecologist Device Reuse: The Same Instruments, Patient After Patient

The Memphis medical device reuse indictment accused the gynecologist who operated Poplar Avenue Clinic of billing Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary procedures performed with instruments that should have been discarded or properly reprocessed. For someone inside a practice, the telling comparison is between what was bought, what went into the procedure room and what the government paid for.

Federal prosecutors in Memphis announced the indictment on February 28, 2025. The practice was a women’s health clinic. In its January 8, 2026 account of the criminal verdict, the Justice Department reported that a federal jury found him guilty of device adulteration, misbranding and health care fraud. The department described fraudulent claims submitted by the physician and employees he directed for medically unnecessary hysteroscopies with biopsy using adulterated devices.

What the Device Reuse Indictment Alleged

The indictment tied the condition of the instruments to what the practice told Medicare and Medicaid. The indictment charged that the physician held devices under unsanitary conditions and reused them during gynecologic procedures between 2019 and 2024. He allegedly failed to tell patients that single-use or improperly reprocessed devices were being used on them.

The billing allegation had two parts. The practice allegedly billed as though the procedures were medically necessary and as though each procedure used a new or properly reprocessed device.

Reusable Hysteroscopes Still Needed Reprocessing

The Justice Department’s criminal-verdict account describes both single-use and reusable instruments in the practice.

The department reported that the Food and Drug Administration had cleared single-use hysteroscopes and graspers, as well as reusable hysteroscopes. The reusable instruments required the manufacturer’s reprocessing steps between patients. According to that account, the physician routinely skipped vital steps. The department also reported that he failed to label reprocessed single-use devices as reprocessed.

The manufacturer’s instructions governed the next use of those reusable instruments. Here, those instructions were part of the criminal case: the office kept putting the instruments back into service without the required processing.

The Purchases Behind the Procedure Volume

The criminal-verdict announcement reported more than 15,000 hysteroscopies with biopsy on 5,559 Medicare and Medicaid patients between September 2019 and April 2024. The physician and the advanced practitioners he supervised performed those procedures. The department also reported that he purchased fewer than 200 new single-use hysteroscopes.

Three of six single-use graspers of a particular type purchased in 2019 were still in use in the office in April 2024. Instruments meant to be used once and discarded had stayed in service for years.

These are the kinds of facts that purchasing and clinical staff can connect. Someone who handled the instruments may know whether an item left the room for disposal, went through the required reprocessing or returned for another patient.

How the Procedures Reached Medicare and Medicaid

The criminal-verdict announcement reported more than $41 million billed for hysteroscopy with biopsy and more than $4.8 million received from Medicare and Medicaid alone for that procedure. Women underwent unnecessary procedures with unsafe instruments, and taxpayers funded the bills.

In this case, the indictment described bills for procedures represented as necessary and performed with new or properly reprocessed instruments. The later verdict account described employees submitting the fraudulent claims at the physician’s direction.

The 2020 Journal of Forensic and Investigative Accounting review A Forensic Accountant’s Guide to the Most Potent Federal Laws Used Against Healthcare Fraud explains a useful distinction for civil cases: a payment request can misdescribe the goods or services supplied, or falsely represent compliance with conditions for payment. What the patient received and what the payer was told belong in the same account.

Can Single-Use Devices Be Reprocessed?

Yes. Some single-use devices can be reprocessed under FDA requirements. The Food and Drug Administration’s compliance guide on reprocessing treats firms and hospitals that reprocess them as manufacturers, with manufacturing, reporting, registration and labeling duties. Reprocessing carries responsibilities beyond cleaning an instrument for its next appointment.

The labels also describe different uses. A single-use device is intended for one use, or one patient during one procedure. A single-user device may be used repeatedly by the same patient. A reusable device must go through its required processing between uses. Those distinctions explain why the Memphis criminal account addressed both skipped reprocessing and missing labels.

What Evidence Is Needed to Prove Fraud?

It takes evidence connecting the instruments, their handling and the procedure to the bill for that care. Our whistleblower experts work through those connections with insiders, including who directed the practice and what staff were told to do.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

You Know What Returned to the Procedure Room

If you saw instruments returned for another patient while the practice billed for new or properly reprocessed devices, talk with our whistleblower experts. We build the case with you, bring in healthcare fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand device reuse and medical-necessity claims, and stay beside you throughout the case.