Alaska doctor charged with Medicaid fraud over lab tests

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) –
Alaska prosecutors have filed medical assistance fraud charges against a doctor who they say ordered unnecessary laboratory tests and billed Medicaid for them. Prosecutors say Dr. John Zipperer Jr. defrauded the Alaska Medicaid program by performing more than 1 million unnecessary lab tests on patients’ urine samples at a lab he owned in Tennessee. Online court documents do not list Zipperer’s attorney and he did not immediately respond to a phone request for comment. Prosecutors say Zipperer was reimbursed nearly $9 million for lab testing from 2013 through August 2015. Prosecutors say he also refused to cooperate with a state audit as required by law.