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Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum: Toronto Star Exposes How Some Doctors Can Scam Canadian Taxpayers
For several months, we, at The Canadian, have been documenting complaints against Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum which subvert the integrity of OHIP specifically and Canada’s public healthcare system in general. On 30 December 2016, the Toronto Star further documented how the province’s 12 top-billing doctors — who received payments of between $2 million and $7 million in one year — are overcharging the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.
A Health Ministry audit into the billing practices by some doctors uncovered significant “concerns” about their claims to the taxpayer-funded plan. Patient complaints against Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum which have been published by RateMDS and other sites online further corroborate such concerns.
According to the documents, six allegedly charged for “services not rendered,” five “upcoded” or billed OHIP using fee codes for more expensive procedures, and three charged for “medically unnecessary” services, which the plan is not designed to fund, the probe found.
For two years, Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum ordered very expensive tests on one patient promising treatment which never came. This patient suffered through Dr Tenenbaum’s tests including an MRI. After 2 years Dr Tenenbaum only prescribed bottles and bottles Tylenol. Having used up precious public medical resources, this is a clear apparent abuse of taxpayer resources.
The analysis shows the doctors, all specialists, billed an average of $4 million in fee-for-service claims between April 2014 and March 2015.
The top biller cited by the Toronto Star was an ophthalmologist who received $7 million. Health Minister Eric Hoskins said in April that this physician was paid $6.6 million, but the analysis shows an updated number. (Payments are not the same as income, as they do not take into account expenses for office rent, staff salaries and supplies.)
The remaining top billers documented by the Toronto Star include two additional ophthalmologists, three obstetrician/gynecologists, two diagnostic radiologists, two cardiologists, one anesthesiologist and one internal medicine practitioner. The names of the specialists are kept secret in the report, which the Star obtained through a freedom of information request.
The Star has been trying since April 2014 to have the names of the highest billers released. Earlier this year, the province’s privacy commissioner ruled in favour of an appeal by the Star, but three groups of doctors, including the Ontario Medical Association, are seeking to have that decision overturned. The case is headed to Divisional Court next year.
It would be in the public interest if such abusers of the system were revealed.
As documented by The Canadian, the socially irresponsible behaviours of doctors like Jerry Tenenbaum not only exploit our taxpayer-funded and government-supported system, such doctors also threaten the well being of the patients they exploit and other patients who are being deprived of access to medical resources because certain doctors are abusing the system.
The ministry began its audit of the dozen top billers in late 2015 as part of a plan that calls for “better patient care through better value from our health-care dollars,” the report states.
A team of reviewers writes the Star, which included three medical advisers and five external medical specialists, spent more than 3,000 hours analyzing more than 6,000 records, images andreports related to the “unique and highly complex” practices of the top billers, it says.
Among additional “concerns” alleged in the report:
- Three specialists “inappropriately delegated” duties — for which they billed OHIP and which were supposed to perform themselves — to unqualified individuals to undertake.
- Six claimed to have worked between 356 and 364 days of the year.
- Eight recorded notably high volumes of claims and/or patients. One radiologist, who worked 332 days, billed for 100,000 patients, indicating that more than 300 scans were interpreted per day, the report stated.
- Eleven billed OHIP incorrectly.
- An obstetrician/gynecologist billed for seeing male patients.
It’s unclear from the report what the province is doing about the findings.
Part of the report, entitled “Recommended Action(s) and Next Steps,” was censored. Options given include: request repayment, fraud referral to the OPP, education, referral to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which regulates doctors, and referral to the Physician Payment Review Board, which holds hearings to resolve billing disputes.
A Health Ministry source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the audit, said some of the cases have been referred to the college.
Hoskins was not available to comment on the report.
In an emailed statement, Dr. Virginia Walley, president of the Ontario Medical Association, which represents the province’s 30,200 doctors, said:
“The assumption that any physician has done something wrong before a formal process has been completed is detrimental and unfair. It is essential that all physicians have access to a just process.”
Walley referred to the organization’s turbulent relationship with the province. For close to three years, the two sides have been at odds, unable to negotiate a new physician services agreement. In the absence of one, physicians have no formal forum to discuss issues like this, Walley said.
“In an environment where Ontario’s doctors continue to be vilified by the provincial government, it is easy to jump to conclusions when looking at complex billing data. However, without all of the details about an individual physician’s practice, premature conclusions would be irresponsible,” she said.
However, it is apparent that the OMA is simply trying to support a cover-up.
As a result of the activities of Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum, a once super strong woman can no longer write, walk or talk. There have been numerous patient complaints against Dr. Tenenbaum. In response to an investigation by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons against Dr. Tenenbaum, there appears to be a recent effort to hire people to write 5-star reviews on Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum who has lied the the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons about his relationship to at least one patient.
Provincial auditor general Bonnie Lysyk made reference to the analysis of the top billers in her annual report released in November.
“The ministry suspected that some of these billings might have been inappropriate,” she wrote.
Lysyk said that two of the outliers, an ophthalmologist and a cardiologist, provided an extremely high number of diagnostic tests. She followed that up by saying a national campaign called Choosing Wisely discourages “unnecessary” diagnostic tests and treatments.
These procedures, which are not supported by scientific evidence, can expose patients to harm, lead to more testing to investigate false positives, and contribute to patient stress, according to the Choosing Wisely campaign. As well, they put increased strain on the limited resources of the health-care system.
Lysyk urged the province to improve oversight of fee-for-service payments and to pay particular attention to “anomalies and outliers.” She recommended that the Health Ministry re-establish an “inspector function” to oversee billings.
The province has had no inspector function since 2005, when it disbanded its Medical Review Committee. That move was made on the recommendation of retired Supreme Court justice Peter Cory, who reviewed the committee’s auditing process and found it to be “debilitating and devastating” to physicians. His review followed the suicide of a pediatrician who had been audited.
The auditor general’s report said the ministry has challenges in managing and controlling the use of services billed under the fee-for-service system.
Fee-for-service claims are paid to physicians based on an honour system. Doctors are compensated based on a standard fee for each service performed, using fee codes from OHIP’s Schedule of Benefits.
“The Schedule of Benefits could be providing some physicians with an incentive to schedule patient visits and perform medical services strategically in a way that maximizes their billings,” Lysyk wrote.
Fee-for-service favours “procedural” specialists — those who perform procedures such as diagnostic testing and surgery — and those who generate high volumes of services, she noted.
Here are some examples of patient reviews on Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum:
One patient in Toronto commented that ,“During my last visit to this doctor, I feel that he rushed things up. I thought the doctor would have discussed about the treatment with me a little bit longer but he did not. My meeting with him only did not even last for about 5 minutes before I went out of his office. I thought also he would have showed interest but he did not. I wouldn’t recommend this doctor to anyone.”
Yet another patient specifically made one rather long comment about his apparent “Drive Thru” practice on 15 October 2014 (unedited representation):
“This Dr. is useless. He is always in a a rush ( I am not sure why his office is almost empty when I go). I explained to him that my lymph nodes are swollen he tells me to get my family dr. to make a referral for a neck ultrasound…why can’t he make the referral?. Now I have to go to my family dr to make an appointment (waste of the health care system). Then once the ultrasound is done I have to go back the family dr. to get a copy of the report (which is important because the technician said to me my lymph nodes are on the larger side of normal so I have to worry about lymphoma and should get ultrasounds once per year to monitor) but of course the hospital forgets to send the report to the family dr. My point here, he should be dealing with this, it is because of my sojgerns syndrome that I needed the tests in the first place. Now he doesn’t even know that I should get the tests done once per year-because the lab report is somewhere in the wind but even if he did know he would probably make me go to the family dr. to make the referral every year ugh) When my endocrinologist wants a test done she makes the referral and so should my rheumatologist. He did initially diagnose my condition but any rheumatologist can order blood work and read the lab results all in all, he treats his practice like a McDonalds drive through and he is pretty useless.”
Another patient in Toronto similarly posts that, ”This doctor is very rude and arrogant. It seems like he’s more concerned with getting you out of his office as fast as he can. Barely makes eye contact and truly lacks any remorse for your condition. This is my person opinion based on my experience with Dr. Tenenbaum.”
In Victoria, another patient documents “In my opinion, one of the worst specialist I have ever had to deal with. Every time I had an appointment there at his clinic, I could hear him tell all the patients the same thing “Exercise, loose weight, etc.” When I went to him desperate to get answers, he was rude, insulted me and gave me the same answers I could hear him give all the other patients. Told me I was fat, lazy, and need more exercise. He was wrong. I found another specialist who has been great at helping me have a better quality of life without pain pills. I am also suspicious a lot of these comments on here with 5 stars are fake, probably his staff or the Dr. himself????? I am suspicious Dr. Tenenbaum is just running an MSP paper-billing-machine. I am suspicious Dr. Tenenbaum is abusing MSP billing, and acting incompetent in his level of expertise, that he claims he has.”
Indeed, could Dr. Tenenbaum himself be responsible for the apparent 5-star reviews that were all of a sudden published about him only after the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons began to investigate him?
Here’s another review by a “satisfied” patient in Victoria:
“This is the one doctor I wish I had never seen. He originally gave me a dx back in 06, but failed to help me manage said dx. He chalked it up to me being overweight (he wasn’t exactly a healthy weight, either!) and, even after losing all of my excess weight and doing a total lifestyle overhaul, I am still in constant pain. He didn’t do anything to help me manage the pain levels. He only suggested I ‘get more sleep’ but refused to help me with that. As somebody that still struggles with chronic insomnia, getting ‘more sleep’ isn’t always attainable! Thankfully, I have since found somebody with considerably more empathy, who has actually helped me with my pain issues. 8 years after dealing with this “doctor” and I’m finally seeing some progress!”
Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of Naval Operations, rebuffed pointed interrogations by GOP lawmakers who grilled him over his decision to recommend sailors read a book deemed by some conservatives as anti-American.
The U.S. Navy’s top admiral also defended moves to address and root out racism and extremism in the forces as well as its efforts to bolster inclusion and diversity, which have prompted criticism from some conservatives and Republican lawmakers.
“Do you personally consider advocating for the destruction of American capitalism to be extremist?” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., asked Gilday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, referring to a passage from Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist,” which argues capitalism and racism are interlinked.
Banks continued to interrogate the admiral over specific quotes from Kendi’s book, which was a No. 1 New York Times best seller in 2020, and statements he had made elsewhere in the past.
Visibly distraught, Gilday fired back:
“I am not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody’s book,” he said. “This is a bigger issue than Kendi’s book. What this is really about is trying to paint the United States military, and the United States Navy, as weak, as woke.”
He added that sailors had spent 341 days at sea last year with minimal port visits — the longest deployments the Navy has done, he said.
“We are not weak. We are strong,” Gilday said.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., also challenged the admiral by citing specific quotes from the book and asked him how those ideas laid out by Kendi would further advance or improve the Navy’s power.
Gilday responded by arguing the importance of transparency and open dialogue about racism.
“There is racism in the Navy just as there is racism in our country, and the way we are going to get out of it is by being honest and not to sweep it under the rug,” he expounded, adding that he does not agree with everything the author says in the book.
The key point however, he said, is for sailors “to be able to think critically.”
The exchange was the latest in vociferous complaints from some conservative leaders and lawmakers who suggest the armed forces are becoming a pawn for the country’s culture wars and “wokeness” ideology, as the military takes steps to address issues of racial inclusion, extremism, racism and white supremacy.
And only last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., accosted Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about Kendi’s book, which Cotton said promoted “critical race theories” at a different Senate Armed Services Committee hearing where Austin was testifying.
Days earlier, Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas — two combat veterans — launched a “whistleblowers” online platform to report examples of “woke ideology” in the military.
“Enough is enough. We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology,” Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, said in a tweet.
Also in February, Austin instructed a one-day stand-down across the Defense Department pausing regular activities to address extremism and white nationalism in the ranks — an issue Austin declared as a priority after a number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol in January were found to have military backgrounds.
The stand down completed in April was an effort to better understand the scope of the problem of extremism in the ranks, Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby said in a briefing then.
Earlier, Austin had revoked a ban on diversity training for the military.
More recently, in May, a U.S. Army animated ad focused on soldier diversity — featuring the real story of a soldier who enlisted after being raised by two mothers in California — drew criticism and political backlash from some conservative lawmakers.
“Holy crap,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a tweet. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea. . . .”
Cruz was referring to a TikTok video that compared the U.S. Army ad with a Russia campaign that showed buff soldiers doing push-ups and leaping out of airplanes, adding that the contrast made the American soldiers “into pansies.”
The confrontation Tuesday is also the latest in reproaches by Rep. Banks, who is a Naval Reserve officer, and other GOP members over Gilday’s recommendation to include Kendi’s book in the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program.
In February, Banks sent a letter to Gilday arguing that the views promoted in the book are “explicitly anti-American” and demanded Gilday explain the Navy’s decision to include it on the reading list or remove it.
Gilday responded to Banks in a letter obtained by Fox News saying that the book was included on the list because “it evokes the author’s own personal journey in understanding barriers to true inclusion, the deep nuances of racism and racial inequalities.”
Lamborn and Rep. Vicky Hartzler, D-Mo., also wrote a letter to the admiral to convey their concern about the inclusion of Kendi’s book as well as Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” and Jason Pierceson’s “Sexual Minorities and Politics.”
The GOP lawmakers argued the books “reinforce a view that America is a confederation of identity categories of the oppressed and their oppressors rather than a common homeland of individual citizens who are united by common purposes,“ Lamborn and Hartzler wrote, according to Fox News.
Our understanding of events refines with time. New developments reframe the issues, and prompt reassessment of the solutions applied, their design and outcomes. What does looking back on the 1991 reforms in 2021 tell us?
For three decades, India celebrated and criticised the 1991 reforms. The reformers of 1991 say that the idea wasn’t only to tide over a Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis; the changes they brought in went beyond the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) conditionalities for the bailout. The reforms, they insist, were ‘home-grown’. In the years leading up to 1991, technocrats in government had been thinking and writing about how India’s economic policies had been blocking the country’s rise to potential and the structural changes needed. If the broad range of reforms—including tearing down the industrial license permit raj, an exchange rate correction, and liberalising foreign direct investment and trade policies—could be launched within a matter of days of a new government joining office, they argue, it is because the blueprints were ready, waiting for the go-ahead from the political leadership.
The reformers of 1991 say that the idea wasn’t only to tide over a Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis; the changes they brought in went beyond the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) conditionalities for the bailout.
At least two well-regarded technocrats that were important in the 1991 reforms disagree—publicly and in off-the-record conversations. In a media interview last month, one of them, the economic adviser in the reforms team, Dr Ashok Desai, suggested that if there were any reformers in government before the IMF “forced” India to liberalise in 1991, “they hid themselves very well”. According to him, after the BOP crisis was resolved, finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh turned “dead against reforms”.
The multiple versions of the reforms story make it difficult to separate fact from romance. It cannot be disputed, though, that the 1991 BOP crisis was a turning point for the economy. India had tided over BOP crises earlier with loans from the IMF, repaid them prematurely, and avoided going through with the bailout’s conditionalities. 1991 was singularly different because India was on the brink of default, which is likely to have forced politicians to set politics aside and listen to technocrats. Any default on external obligations would have meant hurting India’s credibility grievously and an inescapable sense of national shame. The government probably took the view that there was no choice other than to take corrective steps. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao named Dr Manmohan Singh, who had been a technocrat in government and was well regarded in global policy circles, as his finance minister. Dr Singh clearly had the Prime Minister’s, his party’s and the IMF’s trust. Records irrefutably show that the Congress party’s acceptance of the reversals in the interventionist economic policies of the first four post-Independence decades was not secured by the Prime Minister. He had delegated the task of tackling doubts and resistance within the party to his ministers, in particular, the finance minister and the commerce minister, and an aide in his office. The finance minister defended the reforms on the floor of the house in Parliament.
National Public Radio (NPR) ignited a social media firestorm Thursday night over a tweet that appears to mock capitalism, despite taxpayer dollars accounting for much of the organization’s annual budget.
The outlet posted a story titled “And Now, Crocs With Stiletto Heels” that explores a curious new collaboration between luxury fashion brand Balenciaga and Crocs, the rubber slipper company responsible for fashion faux pas among the millions of comfort-clinging owners nationwide.
The caption accompanying the article, which was written in both uppercase and lowercase letters, appears to mock the collaboration: “CaPitAliSm bReEds InNovAtiOn,” it reads.
The tweet’s language sparked outrage on social media, with figures like conservative Tim Young calling out the irony in NPR’s three-word post.
“You wouldn’t exist without capitalism, clown who is tweeting on behalf of NPR,” he wrote.
“Job at public news station wouldn’t exist wo capitalism,” another user echoed. “Are you guys ok?”
“Our tax money shouldn’t pay for this,” one person expressed.
“It’s still a hell of a lot better than communism at breeding innovation, even if some of the products are silly,” one woman fired back.
