‘Blatantly fraudulent.’ Owner, doctor sentenced in health fraud at Kentucky pain clinic
A Kentucky chiropractor convicted of healthcare fraud has been sentenced to two years and six months in federal prison.
A judge also ordered Timothy Ehn, of Union, in Northern Kentucky, to pay a total of $3.7 million in restitution, according to a news release from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office
A doctor who worked at the clinic, William Lawrence Siefert, 70, was sentenced to one year and six months in prison and ordered to pay $1.9 million in restitution according to the release.
Ehn, 51, owned the Northern Kentucky Center for Pain Relief and Siefert was the medical director.
Federal authorities charged that they took part in a scheme to bill Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance plans for medically unnecessary urine drugs tests on patients receiving opioid pain drugs.
A jury convicted Ehn on charges of conspiracy and healthcare fraud. Jurors convicted Siefert, of Dayton, Ohio, of healthcare fraud.
The clinic billed for some tests conducted on a machine that wasn’t working properly, according to the court record.
The jury acquitted both men on a charge of conspiracy to illegally distribute pain drugs and found Siefert not guilty on nine charges of illegally distributing drugs.
The “blatantly fraudulent” testing program at the clinic was so pervasive that some employees quit, prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum.
Ehn’s attorney said in a sentencing memo that Ehn maintains his innocence and plans to appeal, while Siefert’s lawyer said he believed the tests he ordered were in his patients’ best interest.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning sentenced Ehn and Siefert on April 11.
The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — Office of Inspector General investigated the case.
