Newsday: Court complaint: Deer Park surgeon fraudulently copied and pasted language in dozens of operative reports

By: Robert Brodsky

A Deer Park orthopedic spinal surgeon copied and pasted dozens of operative reports verbatim over a four-year period for a range of patients involved in home, workplace and car accidents, according to new court filings. 

The legal filings ask the state Office of Professional Medical Conduct to investigate whether to suspend the doctor’s medical license.

The filings, submitted as part of litigation involving a couple that claimed they were injured in a roof collapse inside their Brooklyn apartment, are bringing fresh attention to surgeries performed by Dr. Alexios Apazidis, a Harvard-educated surgeon now with Total Spine and Sports Care on Deer Park Avenue.

The operative reports in question include 24 patients, ranging in age from 19 to 61, on whom Apazidis allegedly performed spinal surgeries between 2020 and 2024, court records show. So-called operative reports detail a surgical procedure and are part of a patient's medical record. They are used for future patient care, billing, and potential legal challenges. The reports generally include information about the patient, the surgical team, the procedure itself, and any complications.

Apazidis, who also has an office in Westbury and lives in St. James, is also accused of copying and pasting identical operative report language for 10 lumbar surgeries, records show.

"It is alleged that Apazidis knowingly and falsely manufactured the contents of the operative reports," court filings state. "He did so knowing that some would be used in litigation and transmitted ... to opposing counsel and to the courts as a necessary step in his scheme and artifice to defraud. He was, after all, to be paid on a lien, which necessarily requires a recovery in the litigation."

While the nature of the injuries vary — from workplace falls to car crashes — more than 800 words of highly technical language in each of the multipage operative reports authored by Apazidis are identical in structure, findings, descriptions and language, differing only in the patient’s name, the procedure date, their cervical spine level and the size of the hardware implanted during the surgery.

"We've placed the evidence before the court and have full confidence that both the judiciary and the Office of Professional Medical Conduct will handle these concerns appropriately," said Dan Johnston, a Melville-based attorney who filed the complaint on behalf of an insurance provider involved in the Brooklyn couple's case. Apazidis performed spinal surgeries on both of the alleged victims in the Brooklyn case in 2022, records show.

Apazidis, a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon, who, in addition to his Deer Park practice, is affiliated with New Jersey-based Precision Pain & Spine Institute, declined to comment on the complaint, said Joshua Sussman, his Manhattan-based attorney.

The complaint asks a Brooklyn state Supreme Court judge to refer Apazidis’ conduct to OPMC for an independent review and to determine whether to suspend the doctor’s medical license.

The Office of Professional Medical Conduct did not respond to requests for comment.

The bulk of the surgeries occurred when Apazidis was affiliated with Total Orthopedics and Sports Medicine between 2020 and 2023. Total Ortho, which has four locations in Nassau County, did not respond to requests for comment.

It's not the first time Apazidis has been accused of misconduct.

In 2015, the doctor had his medical license suspended for 36 months and was fined $50,000 after admitting to allegations of "negligence" and "incompetence," according to state Health Department records. The suspension was stayed, however, meaning that Apazidis was permitted to continue practicing while on probation after paying the fine.

Apazidis admitted to improperly prescribing a compounded topical gel containing ketamine, a powerful anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects, to dozens of patients. He also failed to use an official New York State prescription when distributing the medication and inappropriately prescribed oxycodone without meeting with or evaluating a patient, records show.

For many of the 24 spinal surgeries, Apazidis filed sworn statements saying that the operative reports, which were relied on as part of litigation, settlement negotiations and medical funding arrangements, were truthful and accurate, court records state.

"The public has a right to expect that physicians who generate sworn operative reports for use in court do so based on individualized patient care, not on pre-written templates detached from clinical reality," a court filing states. "The patients themselves have the right to expect that their safety is not needlessly compromised, and their care not predetermined, so as to falsely inflate injury cases brought before this court."

Meanwhile, the justification for several of the surgeries performed by Apazidis was contradicted by other medical providers and by diagnostics records, court filings state.

For example, an independent medical evaluation of one of the surgeries performed by the physician concluded: "I am at a loss to explain the surgery performed by Dr. Apazidis," records show.

In another case, the director of radiology at Nassau University Medical Center, where many of the spinal surgeries were performed, reviewed the films of a 22-year-old patient on whom Apazidis performed spinal surgery. The radiology director said he disagreed with Apazidis’ assessment, arguing there was no disc herniation found with the patient.

NUMC, the East Meadow public hospital, was recently taken over by the state.

The top leadership at Total Orthopedics, who have been named in multiple lawsuits alleging they provided unnecessary surgeries to individuals involved in staged accidents, also operates the Orthopedics Department at NUMC. Total Ortho has denied the lawsuit claims.

Newsday previously reported that the State Workers’ Compensation Board rejected a renewal application by Dr. Vadim Lerman, Total Ortho’s associate director of spine surgery, that allowed him to seek reimbursement for the treatment of injured workers, accusing him of "billing irregularities," inadequate medical record-keeping and performing "highly invasive" surgeries without medical justification.