‘Like a nightmare’: Psychiatrist held patients against their will in insurance scam, lawsuit claims

An Arkansas psychiatrist is being accused of holding multiple patients against their will as part of an insurance scam, according to a recent lawsuit filed by 26 former patients, NBC News reported.

Dr. Brian Hyatt, 50, is under investigation by state and federal authorities after he was accused of falsely imprisoning potentially hundreds of patients to commit Medicaid fraud.

Some alleged that the psychiatrist held them against their will for weeks. One of those former patients, 52-year-old Shannon Williams, described her experience under Hyatt’s care as a “nightmare” after being held for five days despite her requests to leave the facility.

“I was terrified,” Williams told NBC News. “It was as if I was in a prison.”

“It was like a nightmare. If I cried, then I was again threatened with more time,” she added.

Aaron Cash, an attorney who represented some of Hyatt’s former patients, told the outlet, “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.”

Cash explained that despite a court order, Hyatt’s hospital refused to release a patient named Karla Adrian-Caceres in January 2022. Cash was only able to get his client released after he obtained a second court order that was enforced by the sheriff’s office.

According to an Arkansas attorney general’s search warrant affidavit, 99.95% of Medicaid claims made by Hyatt came in at the most expensive code. Hyatt’s clinic received over $800,000 from Medicaid from January 2019 to June 2022, the affidavit reported.

“Dr. Hyatt is a clear outlier, and his claims are so high they skew the averages on certain codes for the entire Medicaid program in Arkansas,” the affidavit stated. “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.”

Additionally, after reviewing the hospital’s surveillance footage over a 45-day period, investigators discovered that Hyatt interacted with patients 17 times for a total of less than 10 minutes.

“Dr. Hyatt never had even a single conversation with the vast majority of patients under his care,” the affidavit stated.

Hyatt, a former Arkansas State Medical Board chairman, stepped down in May after the Drug Enforcement Administration executed a search warrant at his private practice.

In a letter, Hyatt insisted that he was “not resigning because of any wrongdoing” but to allow the board to “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,” he wrote.

Hyatt’s contract with Northwest Medical Center in Springdale was also “abruptly terminated” in May 2022, NBC News reported.

Hyatt has not been charged with a crime.

Northwest Medical Center failed to provide sufficient documentation to justify the hospitalization of 246 patients and agreed to a $1.1 million settlement with the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office in April. However, the hospital denied any wrongdoing.

A Northwest Medical Center spokesperson stated, “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.”

“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,” the spokesperson added.

Hyatt did not respond to a request for comment, NBC News reported.

“Dr. Hyatt continues to maintain his innocence and denies the allegations made against him,” Hyatt’s attorneys told Arkansas Business last month. “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.”

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