A top Arkansas psychiatrist has been accused of holding two dozen patients against their will for days and weeks as part of an $800,000 Medicaid scam, lawsuits claim.
Dr. Brian Hyatt, 50, faces suits from at least 26 victims who claim they were held for days, and sometimes weeks, in his unit at Northwest Medical Center.
‘They sent in four nurses, techs and they each grabbed my arms and my legs and held me down on my stomach and shot me up with a sedative,’ one victim who was held for five days claimed.
The once-prominent psychiatrist is being investigated by the Arkansas Attorney General’s office for allegedly running an insurance scam where he claimed to treat patients he rarely saw and then billing Medicaid at the ‘highest severity code on every patient’ to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hyatt has since resigned from his position as chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board and was ‘abruptly terminated’ from his position at the hospital — but denies wrongdoing. Northwest Medical Center also denied any malpractice.
Dr. Brian Hyatt, 50, faces lawsuits from more than two dozen patients who claim they were held for days, and sometimes weeks, in his unit at Northwest Medical Center.
Investigator reviewed surveillance footage that allegedly showed Hyatt skipped patients’ rooms while he was on the floor, despite filing an abundance of Medicaid claims saying he met with them face-to-face
The Arkansas State Attorney General claims he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from his Medicaid claims
Hyatt, a graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, was named the medical director of Northwest Medical Center’s behavioral health unit in January 2018.
Under his leadership, the number of beds expanded from 25 to 75, and the claims to Medicaid and Medicare surged — earning him $1,367 each day, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged.
Hyatt was also running his own private practice, Pinnacle Premier Psychiatry, in the town of Rogers, Arkansas, which is about 25 miles away from the hospital.
However, investigators claim Hyatt would submit claims to federal agencies for reimbursement and indicated he conducted daily face-to-face evaluations with patients at the hospital.
By April 2022, a former staff member came forward and told state investigators Hyatt was only on the floor with patients ‘a few minutes each day and that Hyatt had no contact with patients,’ an affidavit obtained by NBC News says.
Investigators then reviewed 45 days of surveillance footage from the hospital and determined that the doctor only entered a patient’s room or interacted with a patient 17 times — for less than 10 minutes total.
‘Dr. Hyatt never had even a single conversation with the vast majority of patients under his care,’ an affidavit said.
Still, from January 2019 through June 2022, Medicaid paid out more than $800,000 to Hyatt’s unit.
‘Dr. Hyatt is a clear outlier, and his claims are so high they skew the averages on certain codes or the entire Medicaid program in Arkansas,’ the affidavit said.
The federally-funded health insurance for Americans in poverty uses a coding system to determine how much it would pay providers, with the highest codes billing at the highest rates because those patients require more care.
The state Attorney General’s office now says 99.95 percent of the claims Hyatt’s unit sent to Medicaid came in at the most expensive codes.
‘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 claims.
Hyatt was named the medical director of Northwest Medical Center’s behavioral health unit in January 2018. The hospital has denied any malpractice, despite abruptly firing him
Willian VanWhy, left, was allegedly locked in the psych unit for four days last year against his will, before his husband, Cameron Tryon, and his lawyer got a court order demanding his release
In an apparent effort to keep the scam going, many of Hyatt’s former patients say they were being held for days or even weeks against their will.
Under Arkansas law, mental health patients can be held against their will for 72 hours if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.
To keep them any longer, a medical provider must file a court petition and get a judge’s consent.
But in at least two cases, NBC News reported, a patient was only released from Hyatt’s care after a sheriff’s deputy showed up with a court order.
Northwest Medical Center could not provide sufficient documentation that justified the hospitalization of 246 patients who were held in Hyatt’s unit, the state Attorney General
‘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 representing several of Hyatt’s former patients, claimed.
Cash said he first became involved in the case in January 2022, when he sent the hospital a fax demanding the immediate release of his client, Karla Adrian-Caceres, who had arrived at the psych unit the day before and was clamoring to leave.
After Cash sent the fax, Adrian-Caceres’ mother went to the hospital to pick her up, but was allegedly told her daughter would not be released.
The following morning, Hyatt allegedly sent an email to Cash, saying he would neither confirm nor deny that Adrian-Caceres was in his unit.
‘Our facility is in receipt of your silly demands and libelous commentary regarding someone you claim to represent who is purportedly within our facility,’ the email, which is included in Adrian-Caceres’ suit against the doctor, read.
Hyatt allegedly added he would only check to see if Adrian-Caceres was in the unit if Cash got his client to sign a ‘release of information order.’
The lawyer responded about four hours later with a court order demanding her release.
Still, the hospital allegedly refused to release her, prompting Cash to get a second court order — which the judge ordered the sheriff’s office to enforce.
Eventually, a deputy went to the facility with Adrian-Caceres’ mother and secured her release.
The next morning, Cash claims, Hyatt once again emailed him mocking the colleges he attended.
Then, when Cash learned of another former patient, William VanWhy, who was locked in the psych unit for four days last year, he decided to once again help.
He discovered that no petition was ever filed in VanWhy’s case to keep him locked up, and he worked with VanWhy’s partner to petition for his release.
A few hours later, a sheriff’s deputy walked into the hospital with the court order in his hand and VanWhy’s husband at his side.
When they got to the elevator, surveillance footage obtained by NBC News showed, they bumped into a nurse who confided: ‘I’m glad he’s getting out. Don’t repeat that.’
Shannon Williams claims she was held for five days despite her requests to leave
‘It was as if I was in prison,’ said Williams, a mother of three. ‘It was like a nightmare. If I cried, then I was again threatened with more time.’
In another case, Shannon Williams was in a ‘crisis mode’ as she was struggling with her grandmother’s recent death when she learned that her brother had died from COVID overseas.
She ended up in an emergency room about 90 minutes from Northwest, but the next morning, she was transferred to Hyatt’s unit after a physician ruled that she was a danger to herself.
‘They sent in four nurses, techs and they each grabbed my arms and my legs and held me down on my stomach and shot me up with a sedative,’ Williams said of her arrival at the psych unit.
She claims she was held for five days despite her requests to leave.
‘It was as if I was in prison,’ said Williams, a mother of three. ‘It was like a nightmare. If I cried, then I was again threatened with more time.’
Cash now said all the patients he has spoken to were adamant that they received virtually no care while they were being held in the unit. Several of those patients, he noted, were vulnerable and in need of therapy.
‘Some of them did need help,’ Cash said. ‘And what they got was hurt.’
Hyatt has not been charged with any crime.
Hyatt has not been charged with any crime, and he insists he did nothing wrong; ‘I will continue to defend myself in the proper forum against the false allegations being made against me.’
Hyatt has insisted he has done nothing wrong, writing in his letter resigning from the Arkansas State Medical Board in May: ‘I am not resigning because of any wrongdoing on my part, but so that the Board may continue its important work without delay or distraction.
‘I will continue to defend myself in the proper forum against the false allegations being made against me.’
In a statement to Arkansas Business last month, his lawyer said: ‘Dr. Hyatt continues to maintain his innocence and denies the allegations made against him.
‘Despite his career as an outstanding clinician, Dr. Hyatt has become the target of a vicious, orchestrated attack on his character and service. He looks forward to defending himself in court.’
Northwest Medical Center officials also deny any malpractice — despite terminating Hyatt’s contract in May 2022, and agreeing to a $1.1million settlement with the Attorney General’s office in April.
‘We believe hospital personnel complied in all respects with Arkansas law, which heavily relies on the treating physician’s assessment of the patient, including in decisions related to involuntary commitment,’ Spokeswoman Aimee Morrell said in a statement to NBC News.
‘While it is not our practice to comment on pending litigation matters, I can share that last spring, we undertook a number of actions to ensure our patients’ safety, including hiring new providers responsible for the clinical care of our behavioral health patients in early May 2022.’
