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A prominent Arkansas psychiatrist is under state investigation for Medicaid fraud.
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Documents from state investigators indicate that Dr. Brian Hyatt billed Medicaid whenever possible.
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The documents said “at least some of the patients” were being held against their will under Hyatt supervision.
A ‘highly respected’ Arkansas psychiatrist held patients against their will in a hospital facility, refused to personally assess or verify them, then claimed they were unstable so he could fraudulently bill Medicaid to the US. highest possible rate, according to documents filed earlier this year by Arkansas state investigators.
As Insider previously reported, seven former patients sued Dr. Brian Hyatt and the Northwest Medical Center, where Hyatt oversaw the Behavioral Health Services Unit, alleging he entrapped them at the facility. Three of those patients said they weren’t allowed to leave until sheriff’s deputies arrived with a court order to escort them.
A search warrant filed in January by the Arkansas State Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Enforcement Unit documented allegations that Hyatt fraudulently billed Medicaid, Medicare and health insurance companies despite “the ‘lack of contact with patients’. The search warrant requested Hyatt’s cellphone records between January 2019 and May 2022.
Hyatt, an attorney representing him in a separate legal case, and his private practice did not respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
Hyatt’s billing practices were so extreme that they skewed data for the entire Medicaid program in Arkansas, according to the affidavit. Doctors typically bill one of three “medical codes” each day of a patient’s hospital stay: one indicating a patient is stable or improving, one indicating a patient is unresponsive adequate and one indicating that a patient is unstable or has “a significant complication”. “
According to the affidavit, 99.95% of ongoing hospital care claims for Medicaid patients in Hyatt’s custody were billed under this third code, which bills at the highest rate.
In the affidavit analysis of Arkansas’ top 10 billers for subsequent hospital care, Hyatt “billed more highest-code Medicaid recipients than any other physician billed for all of their Medicaid patients.” The affidavit noted that billing patients at an inappropriately high rate is a type of Medicaid fraud known as “upward coding.”
Northwest Health did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on the Medicaid fraud investigation, but previously told Insider that Hyatt had been an independent physician hired to oversee behavioral health patients at the hospital. hospital.
Hundreds of hours of footage showed no contact between Hyatt and patients, investigators said
The affidavit says Medicaid fraud investigators obtained two months of footage inside Northwest’s behavioral health unit and reviewed hundreds of hours so far. Investigators said they saw no instances of Hyatt entering a patient’s room or meeting a patient outside of their room.
Investigators wrote that on March 15, 2022, for example, Hyatt could be seen doing its rounds without ever leaving the hallway to enter a patient’s room. On that particular day, Hyatt had 74 patients in its care and completed rounds with an average of less than 20 seconds per patient, according to the affidavit.
“These allegations raise many questions. Patients have the right to know their attending physician. If Dr. Hyatt wasn’t their doctor, then who was? says the affidavit. “At least some of the patients in the unit were being held against their will and only a doctor could make the decision to impose a 72-hour detention.”
Under Arkansas law, facilities like Northwest can involuntarily detain patients for up to 72 hours if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others, provided they are evaluated by a doctor within the first 24 hours. Facilities must obtain a court order to detain patients beyond 72 hours.
According to the seven lawsuits filed by former patients, Hyatt had no legal authority to detain them at the facility against their will, even in cases where a 72-hour involuntary detention was implemented, since Hyatt or any other doctor had never evaluated them.
Northwest Health “abruptly terminated” Hyatt’s contract last May, according to the affidavit.
“We take our responsibility to provide a safe care environment for our patients and team members very seriously,” Northwest told Insider in a statement. “Last spring, we undertook a number of actions to keep our patients safe, including hiring new providers responsible for the clinical care of our behavioral health patients in early May 2022.”
Read the original Insider article
