The situation your facing is serious. More serious then you probably realize right now. But understanding how the system actualy works is the first step toward fighting back effectively. And fighting back is still possible, if you act now.
The Four-Front War You Didn't Know You Were Fighting
Most Long Island physicians have absolutly no idea how many agencies can simultaneously investigate them for the same underlying conduct. When a complaint lands on someone's desk - whether its from a dissatisfied patient, a hospital administrator concerned about prescribing patterns, a suspicious pharmacist who noticed something unusual, or a federal auditor reviewing billing records - that complaint doesn't stay in one place. Information flows between agencies. One investigation spawns another. Databases get searched. Names get flagged. And suddenly your dealing with a coordinated assault from multiple directions while still thinking you're handling a single, manageable problem.
The New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct recieved 8,829 complaints against physicians in 2021 alone. That's not a typo. Nearly nine thousand complaints in a single year against physicians licensed in New York. And OPMC moved forward with disciplinary proceedings on more then half of them. The agency has investigators across the state. They have field offices positioned strategically, including one in Central Islip - right here on Long Island - specifically set up to handle cases in Nassau and Suffolk counties. This isn't some distant Albany bureaucracy that only knows about your existance from paperwork. There watching local physicians constantly. They know the patterns. They track the data. When something triggers attention, they act.
Heres the part that stops most doctors cold when they first hear it. In New York, a criminal conviction - ANY criminal conviction - automaticaly constitutes professional misconduct under Education Law Section 6530(9)(a).
Most doctors have never heard of this statute. Until its too late.
Take a moment to read that statute if you haven't. It doesn't say conviction of a crime related to medicine or the practice thereof. It doesn't say conviction of a felony involving patient harm or professional negligence. It says conviction of a crime. Period. Full stop. A DUI conviction from a weekend trip to the Hamptons triggers the same automatic misconduct finding as a healthcare fraud conviction involving millions of dollars. A tax evasion plea triggers the same automatic misconduct as a drug distribution conviction. And once that conviction exists - once you've plead guilty to anything, even a misdemeanor, even something completly unrelated to your medical practice - you dont get a hearing to argue whether you actually did something that should affect your license. The only question OPMC addresses at that point is what penalty you should recieve.
Think about what this means in actual practice. A physician gets arrested for something that has absolutly nothing to do with their work as a doctor. Maybe its a DUI after a holiday party. Maybe its a dispute with an ex-spouse that escalated. Maybe its a tax situation where they relied on bad advice from an accountant. They hire a criminal defense attorney who does exactly what criminal defense attorneys are trained and paid to do - negotiate the best possible outcome in criminal court. That attorney, using all their skill and experience, secures a plea deal: no prison time, maybe just probation and a fine, the client walks out of the courtroom thinking they dodged a bullet. What that attorney didn't mention - because criminal lawyers often genuinly don't understand this - is that the plea deal created a conviction. A conviction that gets reported to OPMC within days of entry. Hospitals are legally required to report physician convictions within 30 days. Other healthcare professionals - your own colleagues - are legally required to report fellow practitioners they suspect of misconduct. Failure to report is itself defined as misconduct under New York law. The reporting web ensures that OPMC finds out about every conviction, every time, without exception. You cannot keep things quiet. The system is designed specificly to prevent that.
The consequence cascade starts immediatley once the first domino falls. Federal charges trigger DEA registration review. DEA registration concerns lead to OPMC investigation. OPMC disciplinary action affects hospital privileges. Loss of privileges terminates insurance company contracts. Contract termination makes it impossible to bill for services. Inability to bill means the practice closes. Each domino falls automatically once the first one tips over. You don't get to argue with each agency seperately. You don't get to explain that the criminal matter was minor or unrelated. The cascade operates on its own logic, and stopping it requires understanding how all the pieces connect.
Meanwhile, hospitals have there own mandatory reporting obligations. Colleagues have there own legal duties. Insurance companies have there own notification requirements. Everyone in the system who touches your case becomes another potential source of information flowing to agencies you haven't even thought about yet.
How Your Criminal Defense Strategy Can Destroy Your Medical License
Criminal defense attorneys are trained to do one thing exceptionally well: keep clients out of prison. Everything in there training, there experience, and there professional incentives points toward that single outcome above all others. When a physician hires a criminal lawyer, that lawyer evaluates the case through one lens and one lens only: what result minimizes incarceration risk? This approach makes perfect sense for most criminal defendants. If your a non-physician facing criminal charges, avoiding prison is indeed the primary objective and evrything else is secondary. For physicians, this single-minded focus is a disaster waiting to happen.
Heres where it gets ugly. A skilled criminal defense attorney negotiates what they genuinly believe is a favorable outcome - perhaps a plea to a lesser charge that carries no prison time whatsoever. The physician is relieved. Enormously relieved. They call there spouse with the good news. They start to imagine life getting back to normal. The case is over. Except its not over. Not even close. That plea deal, favorable as it appeared in criminal court, created a conviction on the record. Under New York law, that conviction automaticly triggers OPMC disciplinary proceedings through what's called a "referral proceeding." The physician will recieve a notice - maybe weeks later, maybe months - informing them that OPMC doesn't need to prove misconduct occurred. The conviction already established misconduct as a matter of law. The only issue before the board is what punishment fits. The criminal lawyer who genuinly believed they "won" the case may have just cost the physician their ability to practice medicine for the rest of there life. And the worst part is they might never even realize they did it.
The cooperation trap makes everything significantly worse. Physicians are trained throughout there education and careers to be helpful, responsive, and transparent. When investigators ask questions, the natural professional instinct is to explain, to clarify, to demonstrate through detailed responses that nothing improper occured. This instinct that serves doctors well in clinical settings becomes self-destructive in investigative settings. Statements made to OPMC investigators can be used in criminal proceedings. Statements made to DEA agents can be shared with federal prosecutors. Information flows freely between agencies that are all technically investigating the same underlying conduct from different angles. What looks like professional cooperation - the kind of responsiveness that every medical board emphasizes - becomes self-incrimination. A physician trying to clear there name with thorough explanations ends up creating evidence that prosecutors use to build there case against them.
OPMC has a weapon in its arsenal that most physicians dont know exists until its used against them: summary suspension. If the agency determines that a physician poses an "imminent threat to public health or safety," they can suspend the license immediately without a hearing. No advance notice. No opportunity to present your side of the story first. No chance to gather evidence or prepare a defense. You go to work Monday morning, maybe see a few patients, and discover that afternoon that you can no longer legally practice medicine. The hearing comes later - weeks or months later - but by then your reputation is destroyed, your practice is collapsing under its own weight, your referral sources have moved on, and your fighting from a position of devistating weakness rather then strength.
This is overwhelming. Of course it is. You went to medical school because you wanted to help patients and contribute something meaningful, not because you wanted to become an expert in navigating multi-agency investigations and administrative law. But heres the thing that matters - you dont have to navigate this maze alone, and you absolutly dont have to make the same mistakes that destroy most physicians who find themselves in your situation.
What Long Island Doctors Need to Do Now
The physicians who preserve both their freedom and there professional licenses share one characteristic that distinguishes them from those who lose everything: they got coordinated defense in place before making any statements to any agency, before accepting any plea offers no matter how attractive, before responding to any investigative inquiries no matter how routine they seemed. They understood early - or someone helped them understand - that winning on one front while losing on the others isn't victory at all. Its just disaster postponed, not prevented.
Medicare and Medicaid exclusion is where this reality becomes most brutal and most permanent. When HHS-OIG excludes a healthcare provider from participation in federal healthcare programs, that provider cannot practice in any setting that accepts federal insurance. Stop and think about what that actually means in practical terms. Virtually every hospital in America accepts Medicare. Virtually every clinic, nursing home, urgent care center, and medical practice of any size accepts Medicaid. Exclusion doesn't just limit your career options or force you to be more selective - it effectivly ends your ability to practice medicine anywhere in the United States. You can't get hired because no institution will risk their own billing relationships by employing excluded providers. You can't start your own cash-only practice because no hospital will give you privileges, no insurance company will credential you, no colleague will refer to you. The minimum exclusion period is five years, but the collateral damage - the destroyed reputation, the lost relationships, the career gap - is often permanent even if you're eventually reinstated. Exclusion is sometimes actualy worse then prison because at least prison has a definite end date and doesn't follow you into every professional interaction afterward.
Coordinated defense means having legal representation that understands all four fronts simultaneously and can evaluate every decision across all of them:
- Criminal proceedings in state or federal court. The sentencing implications alone can be career-ending
- DEA registration issues - and trust me, prescription monitoring programs catch more then most doctors realize
- OPMC investigation. The disciplinary hearing process moves faster then you'd expect
- Federal program exclusion at HHS-OIG. This is the one most attorneys miss entirely
Every decision on one front must be evaluated carefully for its impact on all the others. A statement that helps your position in criminal court might devastate your OPMC defense later. A cooperation strategy designed to satisfy DEA investigators might create federal prosecution exposure you didn't anticipate. A plea deal that avoids prison might trigger automatic license revocation. The moving pieces interact in complex ways that no attorney specializing in just one area can fully anticipate or address.
Long Island physicians face particular considerations that make coordinated defense even more important. The Eastern District of New York handles federal healthcare fraud prosecutions for Nassau and Suffolk counties, and that district has been increasingly aggressive in pursuing healthcare cases. The OPMC maintains a dedicated field office in Central Islip specifically for Long Island matters, staffed with investigators who know local practice patterns. Federal investigators, state prosecutors, and administrative enforcement agencies all have established presence in this area. If your under investigation or facing charges, chances are high that multiple agencies already know about the situation and are already sharing information between themselves. There side is already coordinated. The question is whether yours will be.
The time to act is now. Not after you've already talked to investigators and said things that can't be unsaid. Not after you've accepted a plea deal and created a conviction that triggers automatic misconduct findings. Not after OPMC has already scheduled your hearing and the process has built its own momentum. Every day you wait without proper representation is a day when agencies are building cases, gathering evidence, and preparing positions while you're operating without complete information about what your actually facing.
Call Spodek Law Group at 888-997-4071. The four-front war has already started whether your ready for it or not. The only remaining question is whether you'll have coordinated defense in place before the next domino falls, or whether you'll be scrambling to catch up after the damage is already done. The physicians who keep their licenses are the ones who got serious about defense before it was too late. Don't let another day pass without understanding exactly what your up against and exactly what needs to happen to protect everything you've worked to build.
