Donald Trump's pick for the U.S.'s next surgeon general is one of the directors of an urgent care center company which was recently accused of fraud, in a claim it has denied.
The president-elect has selected Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a practicing doctor and Fox News contributor, to take on the role which has responsibility for communicating health issues to the public, issuing health advisories and leading public health officials, as he pads out his cabinet and list of appointees.
Aside from her physician responsibilities, Nesheiwat is one of five directors of CityMD, a medical company which operates some 177 walk-in urgent care practices in New York and New Jersey.
In June, CityMD agreed to pay over $12 million to settle COVID fraud allegations brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing. CityMD denied the allegations in the suit at the time and it is not the only urgent care center that has faced DOJ action.
Newsweek contacted Nesheiwat and the Trump team to comment on this story.
In its suit, the DOJ, via the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, alleged that CityMD fraudulently obtained government reimbursements for COVID tests from February 2020 to April 2022 by submitting false claims to a COVID program for uninsured patients regardless of whether their patients had health insurance or not.
A CityMD patient called Stephen Kitzinger initially alleged the fraud in 2020 and will receive over $2 million of the settlement as a reward for informing the government of the case.
CityMD said at the time that it settled the case to avoid ongoing costs. In a statement a spokesperson said: "The recent settlement is neither a finding of liability nor an admission of wrongdoing, and CityMD denies the allegations. However, we settled this matter to avoid the cost and burden of prolonged litigation."
In December 2023, Total Access Urgent Care, a firm based in Missouri, paid over $9 million to settle a case with the DOJ. Federal prosecutors alleged that the company submitted false insurance claims for COVID testing between April 2021 and December 2021. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Missouri said that the company did not admit liability in the settlement agreement.
Meanwhile, CityMD is also facing a class action suit alleging that it disclosed its client's personal health information to Meta, Google, Microsoft and other third parties. This case is ongoing. A CityMD spokesperson told Newsweek it did not comment on pending litigation.
Aside from her role at CityMD, Nesheiwat is a regular Fox News contributor. She also has a vitamin brand plus a book coming out called Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine.
Her sister, Julia Nesheiwat, was Homeland Security adviser in the first Trump administration and is married to Florida Republican Mike Waltz, who the president-elect has nominated as national security adviser.
Meanwhile, Trump's other health picks include former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Health and Human Services Department. Kennedy Jr. has been widely branded as a vaccine skeptic due to previous comments he made about them. Earlier this month he told MSNBC, "I'm not going to take away anybody's vaccines. I've never been anti-vaccine."
Jay Bhattacharya has been nominated as head of the National Institutes of Health. He previously suggested in academic papers that increasing insurance premiums for obese people would mitigate the costs of treating obesity-related health conditions. Bhattacharya previously told Newsweek in response to the story: "I did not argue that the obese should pay higher premiums. Please read my papers more carefully."
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