Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003 | 10:57 a.m.
The mother of a 35-year-old Henderson man charged with practicing medicine without a license may have helped her son commit the alleged fraud.
The Nevada attorney general's office includes a letter in court documents that Phyllis Ries wrote on behalf of her son, Andrew Elias Michael, to St. Luke Medical School falsely confirming he had completed a six-month radiology diagnostic clerkship at Meadows Diagnostic Medical Imaging Center in Henderson.
Michael was serving as president of Meadows Diagnostic at the time. Authorities allege he was passing himself off to employees as an established surgeon while in reality he was just taking correspondence classes through an off-shore medical school whose program is not accredited with the American Medical Association or the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners.
Authorities allege Michael also gave medical advice to staff and patients and supervised "potentially dangerous radioactive contrast (ink) injections on MRI patients," injections that require a physician's supervision.
His 2001 admission to medical school may also have been granted on fraudulent transcripts and degrees attained through another Internet-based school in Wyoming known to be a diploma mill, Chief Deputy Attorney General Gerald Gardner wrote in a past motion to raise Michael's bail.
Ries noted that she was the chief operating officer and director of facility education for Meadows when she wrote the letter to St. Luke.
Ries is the defendant's mother and "has zero qualifications to direct any medical education program," Gardner said in his motion.
Michael's mom also spelled "January" and "diagnostic" wrong in the certification letter.
She is not charged in the case, Gardner said, but she was "definitely an integral part of his businesses."
Ries also encouraged employee Gayle Raveling "to talk to Dr. Michael about (a proposed heart surgery) if I wanted comfort," Raveling testified to the grand jury.
Raveling said Michael looked over her medical records and, using a model of a heart, told her left coronary artery was 90 percent closed and she definitely needed the surgery. Her heart doctor had not told her that much, Raveling said. Michael then praised her surgeon, calling him a "good guy."
Raveling said she took it as a second opinion at the time, as she believed Michael's claim that he was an esteemed cardiothoracic surgeon, specializing in the heart and the lungs.
"So I got the great impression that not only did he know he was a great doctor, but to move forward with this procedure as well," Raveling said.
A Clark County grand jury indicted Michael in October, five months after his initial arrest for practicing medicine without a license in May. The grand jury transcripts document several instances of this act, but Gardner said the attorney general's office chose to treat all instances as part of an "ongoing offense rather than individual crimes."
At the time of the indictment, Michael was accompanying physicians on hospital rounds for cardiothoracic patients at a Lexington, Ky., hospital as a fourth-year medical student even though he had purportedly attended St. Luke Medical School for two years. The hospital, Central Baptist, dismissed Michael from rotations after Kentucky media reports about his pending criminal prosecution in Las Vegas led them to look at the indictment.
Ruth Ann Childers, a spokeswoman for Central Baptist, said nothing like this has ever happened in the 50-year history of the hospital.
The hospital received a letter of recommendation and a letter verifying Michael's enrollment from St. Luke and never had any reason to doubt he was a fourth-year student until the media reports.
Childers said Michael, like all other students accompanying hospital rotations, never did more than observe the physicians making the rounds.
"(Students) don't do patient care or patient procedures or any of those types of things," Childers said.
Michael was observing rounds in a pediatric clinic in Las Vegas when authorities arrested him in early November based on the indictment, Gardner said in court documents. It was the same charge he had been arrested for in May 2003.
Radiologists and other employees also testified before the grand jury that in addition to allegedly posing as a medical doctor, Michael said he had a doctorate in business administration, was a former Marine pilot with a current commercial license and was wrapping up work on a law degree -- all by the age of 34.
The surgical specialty Michael claimed takes at least 12 years to complete, radiologists said, and Michael did not even know things as basic as how to position himself to take a chest x-ray or read an x-ray.
"Things began to pile up where he did not know things that a surgeon/medical doctor should know," radiologist Douglas Howard testified. "And I just began to question in my own mind what was really going on."
Gardner wrote that what was "most disturbing" about Michael's conduct is that he supervised approximately a dozen ink injections for MRI and CT scan patients and refused to hire a radiology nurse because he said he could take care of any emergencies that might arise.
Deborah Dort, one of the radiologists who testified before the grand jury, said that although it is rare, some patients can have severe allergic reaction to the injections. That's one of the reasons a physician must be present. There is a risk of anaphylactic shock, heart attack or even death.
Another employee with Meadows' parent company, North American Medical Company, chief financial officer Marti Myers-Garver, said she knew Michael was not a medical doctor but told her he asked to be addressed as Dr. Michael because of his PH.D. in business.
"He would wear a stethoscope into the office, (to) project that he was a physician on a couple of occasions," Myers-Garver testified. "He had specifically told me at social occasions not to tell specific people that he was not an M.D."
Myers-Garver said no one ever asked her and she never told anyone he wasn't a medical doctor.
Practicing medicine without a license is a felony in Nevada punishable with a prison sentence of one to four years, Gardner said. Michael is currently out on $1,000 bail. The case goes to trial Feb. 23.
District Court Judge Valerie Vega denied the state's recent request to increase bail but did order Michael to report the indictment to any current or potential employer in the medical field and banned him from working anywhere that involves contact with patients seeking medical care.
Michael's defense attorneys, Bill Terry and Linda Novell, declined to comment. Both Michael and his mother were also unreachable.
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