Arenowned cardiologist, Richard Paulus spent 21 years treating thousands of patients in eastern Kentucky. King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland even put his name on the front of its heart center. But in 2015 Dr. Paulus was indicted by federal prosecutors, accused of putting stents into the coronary arteries of people the government said didn’t need them.

Concerned about the quantity of coronary-stent procedures performed at King’s Daughters, federal prosecutors hired a pair of doctors to review Dr. Paulus’s old cases....