A USA TODAY analysis revealed that some of Medicare’s top-earning specialists are in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, and that they share thousands of patients in volumes much higher than the norm. In hundreds of cases, patients saw multiple pain specialists on the same day, shuffling between therapists who billed Medicare for tens of thousands of procedures. The analysis found that six practitioners in Brooklyn all regularly saw the same patients, often treating each person dozens of times. Medicare paid the six a total of nearly $15 million in 2012.
