An alleged Medicaid scam is being investigated in which an Arkansas psychiatrist is being accused of holding people against their will while billing Medicaid for exorbitant sums.
The Arkansas Attorney General’s office is investigating Dr. Brian Hyatt, who is being sued by at least 26 people who claim they were held in his unit at Northwest Medical Center, according to the Daily Mail.
Allegations against Hyatt include billing Medicaid for treatments that were never given.
“You’re trapped in this facility, you’re told you can’t leave, you don’t know what your rights are, and now they’re cutting off your communication to the outside world and any hope of rescue or help,” Monte Sharits, an attorney who has a client suing Hyatt said, according to Insider.
“It was a house of horrors. It’s a nightmare for them,” Sharits said.
Insider reported that staff would “coerce, threaten, and sedate patients to keep them in the facility and would frequently revoke phone privileges to keep them from communicating with relatives or attorneys.”
It reported that one individual claimed Hyatt wrote 45 pages of notes about her and called her “unkept and unstable,” even though she claimed he never met her.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office accused Hyatt of billing Medicaid at “the highest severity code on every patient” even if he barely saw them, a search warrant affidavit said.
A report prepared for the office said that although Hyatt claimed to conduct daily in-person evaluations with patients, an April 2022 claim from a whistleblower said Hyatt only breezed through for “a few minutes each day and that Dr. Hyatt had no contact with patients,” according to the affidavit.
“I think that they were running a scheme to hold people as long as possible, to bill their insurance as long as possible before kicking them out the door, and then filling the bed with someone else,” Aaron Cash, a lawyer who represents patient William VanWhy, who was kept in the facility until a court order freed him, said, according to NBC
Top Arkansas psychiatrist accused of keeping patients against their will in huge Medicaid scam: ‘Like a prison’ #drbrianhyatt https://t.co/xgi7hYs8q7
Should Hyatt lose his medical license?— Eerie News (@EerieNewsToday) July 24, 2023
Over 45 days of video, investigators found that Hyatt only had about 17 patient interactions for a grand total that did not top 10 minutes, the report said.
“Dr. Hyatt never had even a single conversation with the vast majority of patients under his care,” the affidavit said.
“According to the claims submitted by Dr. Hyatt and the non-physician providers working under his supervision, no patient being treated in the behavioral unit located at Northwest Medical Center ever got better, at least not before the day of the patient’s release,” the affidavit said
Cash told NBC about an interaction with Hyatt over Karla Adrian-Caceres, for whom Cash battled to pry loose from the facility in 2022, according to a lawsuit she filed in January 2023.
“Our facility is in receipt of your silly demands and libelous commentary regarding someone you claim to represent who is purportedly within our facility,” Hyatt emailed the lawyer as forms were being filed to release the woman.
After she was released, another email arrived from Hyatt.
“I guess this is what they teach at Poteau Junior College…sorry…Carl Albert State and Northeastern State University,” Hyatt wrote.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
