The Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) is seeking more potential victims of a Newport Beach plastic surgeon accused of performing an unnecessary and harmful medical procedure on a patient so a health insurance company could be over-billed.
Dr. Jay W. Calvert, a popular cosmetic surgeon with offices in Newport Beach and Beverly Hills, could get up to six years and eight months in state prison with a conviction on the charges he faces.
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The 45-year-old is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 13 at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach on felony medical insurance fraud, manufacturing documents to support a fraudulent bill and perjury under oath.
The OCDA claims a man went to Calvert's Newport Beach office in 2009 for a rhinoplasty (a.k.a. nose job) and specifically stated he did want any other work done. Calvert is accused of not only performing the nose job but also other unnecessary procedures that caused long-term medical damage to the man.
Calvert allegedly did this so he could overbill the patient's health insurance policy, “manufacturing documents to support the fraudulent charges and overbilling [the patient's] insurance in excess of $40,000,” according to the OCDA, which further charges the doctor committed perjury while under oath during civil proceedings in August 2010, when the patient sued Calvert.
Now prosecutors fear there may be other victims and ask anyone who believes that could be them to call Supervising District Attorney Investigator Kathy Tomlinson at 714.648.3667.
Calvert, who received his medical degree from Cornell University, specializes in facial surgery, rhinoplasty, liposuction and body contouring. He's affiliated with Hoag Hospital, the VA hospital in Long Beach and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
He's also been involved with the biomedical engineering program at UC Irvine, certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and a member of the Rhinoplasty Society and the American College of Surgeons. Several online sites that rate physicians give Calvert generally high marks, and his Yelp page includes the following:
But there are complaints online, especially on The Ripoff Report, which, to be fair, also includes positive responses and claims his office works diligently to resolve disputes with patients.
Some have countered those positive words were planted by Calvert's office. He referred to himself on his blog in May as “a physician who deals with the Internet bringing misinformation to my patients on a constant basis.” He hasn't posted there since August.
I could find no complaints or disciplinary actions against Calvert on the California Medical Board website, which is very comprehensive. All I could find there was Calvert's views as an expert in an April 25, 2008, staff report to the board about the confusing regulatory landscape when it comes to spas that perform procedures like laser hair removals.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.