deviated septum and polyps. deviated septum and polyps. what did the doctor recommend? surgery immediately. surgery. surgery asap. as consistent as these former patients say weinberger was with his diagnoses, suzette denning ton said he was quite flexible when billing insurance companies. it all depended on the amount the insurance company was willing to pay. it could be anywhere from $1500 to $16,000 per procedure. as much as $16,000 per procedure, 15 to 20 procedures a week. correct. in a good week, how much money do you think he took in? i do know that at one point for the entire business he was bringing in about $1 million a month. even a man with expensive taste, such as mark weinberger, could live large on a cash flow
was another patient ready to be seen. he definitely withdrew. suzette says that wasn t the only strange thing going on that summer. suddenly, shipments of camping gear began arriving at the weinberger clinic. one of his treatment rooms in one wing of the building was full of camping equipment. i really didn t see him as being much of a camper. he s more four seasons hotel type. right. but he was almost frantically packing it up. what kinds of equipment did he have? there were several backpacks. there were just bags that were stuffed with things that you couldn t see. and then there were the strange men with thick european accents that some employees reported seeing coming into the offices with briefcases to meet privately with weinberger. michelle later learned those men were diamond dealers from new york. i think he bought about maybe $500,000 worth of diamonds before he left. 500,000. uh-huh. and where did the diamonds
medications every day and had a 95% success rate. his technique was incredible. i ve done sinus surgeries for 18 years. never saw the technique that he used, and it was the benefit to the patients was amazing. weinberger s business model it seemed was based on the three-word slogan of salesmen everywhere volume, volume, volume. i think he measured a certain amount of his worth by how many procedures he was doing. of course, the fact that nearly all of weinberger s patients seemed to have the same problem and required the exact same surgery greatly simplified things. deviated septum and polyps. deviated septum and polyps. deviated septum and polyps. what did the doctor recommend? surgery immediately. surgery. surgery asap. as consistent as these former patients say weinberger was with his diagnoses, suzette denning
now had terminal cancer, and she was suing him for not diagnosing it sooner. michelle says that for mark the malpractice suit was more than just a blemish on his reputation. it was a blow to his vanity. and though michelle assured him of her love and support, she said she could feel her husband pulling away. i knew he was stressed out about the lawsuits, but i really believed in my heart it was something we could fight against. a few weeks later, it was michelle who was devastated and needed support when she suffered a miscarriage and had to be hospitalized. and he promised, he swore that he would be there before i went under anesthesia. and he insisted that he had to go into his office to take care of some things, and he didn t show up. and i was shocked. whatever mark weinberger was doing in the office those days was also a mystery to employees like suzette dennington, weinberger s top medical assistant at the sinus clinic. he started to be one of the first people in the of
and consulted with us on this story, mark weinberger was a nerdy kid from a wealthy new york suburb who was driven by sibling rivalry to outshine his brothers. mark figured, the way to be the apple of my parents eye is to do well in school. he went to the university of pennsylvania, then went to ucla medical school where he thrived. he could have established his ear nose and throat medical practice anywhere, but in 1996 he chose merrillville, indiana. it was close enough to chicago that he could live there and have chauffeurs drive him to his office every day. but most important, he could count on the air pollution in northwest indiana to provide a steady stream of patients with sinus problems. in northwest indiana where you re breathing in the pollution, you ve got high pollen and extreme changes in temperature, it s not unusual to see a high degree of patients who suffer from sinus problems. suzette dennington, weinberger s top medical assistant worked closely with