Metro

Dentist napped while underling performed surgeries: lawsuit

He snored while they bored.

A drowsy Brooklyn dentist lazily watched movies and took extended naps in his office while an unlicensed underling performed major dental work on hundreds of oblivious patients, a former employee charges in a Brooklyn federal lawsuit.

And while he dozed, Dr. Isaak Grinman allegedly delegated his work to a college student who was studying to become a dental hygienist beginning in 2010, his former office manager claims.

“Even when defendant was physically present in the office, he spent most of his time watching movies or sleeping,” Paul Zukowski claims in the suit.

Grinman even had the assistant, Alexsey Bubchykau, perform root canals that often weren’t necessary to maximize profits, the fired Zukowski alleges in his whistleblower lawsuit.

“Plaintiff often heard Grinman snoring in his office while Mr. Bubchykau was drilling on patients or performing root canals,” Zukowski claims.

“From approximately March 2012 to present, Mr. Bubchykau performed almost all the molar fillings and root canals for patients at Greenpoint Dental Plaza P.C. without any direction or supervision by a licensed dentist,” the suit states.

Grinman frequently went home early to hang out with his wife and went on extended vacations while the unqualified surrogate drilled into mouth after mouth, according to the suit.

Zukowski claims that Grinman couldn’t even face the tiresome prospect of attending a continuing education class required to maintain his dental license and dispatched his wife to sign him in to the class instead, the suit states.

Grinman created a “substantial and specific danger to public health and safety by having individuals who are not licensed as dentists perform drillings, fillings, root canals, and other dental procedures on hundreds of patients,” the suit states.

The doctor repeatedly billed Medicaid and private health-care plans for work conducted by the fake dentist repeatedly, Zukowski claims.

Zukowski — who worked as an office manager and often a translator for Russian and Polish speaking patients — finally confronted his boss about the unnecessary procedures and was told to change his perspective, he claims.

Grinman reminded him that “patients don’t know what we’re doing inside their mouths,” according to the suit.

“Why are you doing this,” he asked his boss during a confrontation. “You have a license to think about.”

As for the allegedly bloated billing practices, Grinman again offered up his cold rationale. “It’s not what we did, it’s what we can bill,” he said, according to the suit.

Tired of Zukowski’s objections, Grinman abruptly fired him and kicked him out of the office, the suit states.

Zukowski’s suit claims that Grinman violated whistleblower laws. He is seeking unspecified damages.

No one was at the dental office on Wednesday, and a woman who answered the phone at the dentist’s home said she wasn’t aware of the lawsuit and hung up.