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| AG’s Office claims Recovery Center operating rogue clinic |
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2/16/2018
By Tom Marshall
Senior Advocate writer
The Recovery Center in Mt. Sterling is part of a group of alleged “rogue” drug treatment clinics under investigation by the Office of Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear.
In addition to its location here, The Recovery Center has clinics in Jackson, Paintsville, Hazard, Richmond, Frankfort and London.
The local clinic is located at 1140 Levee Road.
It is a nondescript office located behind Central Kentucky Corrugated Specialists in the rear of the old Hobart Manufacturing building.
The AG’s office previously conducted raids at the Jackson, Paintsville, Hazard and Richmond Recovery Center clinics.
Terry Sebastian, a spokesman with the attorney general’s office, confirmed the operation is under criminal investigation, but said he couldn’t comment further.
A person at the Mt. Sterling Recovery Center promised to pass along a request for comment to company officials from the Advocate, but there was no return call.
The AG’s office filed a lawsuit in Breathitt County (where The Recovery Center is based) last Friday alleging Medicaid fraud, harmful business practices and illegal distribution of an addictive drug, according to a release.
The lawsuit names the four owners of the The Recovery Center with allegedly illegally prescribing buprenorphine or suboxone—a treatment for opioid addiction—to thousands of Kentucky Medicaid patients, the release said.
Allegations are that the Recovery Center in Breathitt County illegally profited from Kentucky’s Medicaid program by falsely claiming it offered patients legally required medical advice and individualized treatment with each prescription.
“In our lawsuit we are calling these so-called clinics what they are—pill mills,” Andy Beshear claims in a release. “The owners are strictly operating for profits and couldn’t care less about the health and safety of our families and neighbors who are struggling with addiction. It’s time they pay for their actions. Thankfully Kentucky has suboxone clinics who are working hard to help treat our people, but The Recovery Center isn’t one of them.”
The lawsuit claims The Recovery Center carried out its illegal activity for nearly three years—April 2015 through February 2018.
The release notes that a clinic is required by law to provide individualized treatment that includes steps to decrease dosages over time. The Recovery Center in Jackson, according to the release, was reportedly billing Medicaid for spending 15 minutes with each patient in order to diagnose and prescribe, which “is mathematically impossible given the number of prescribing physicians in the clinics.”
For example, the lawsuit claims that one business day in 2017 at the Jackson Recovery Center clinic, the owners wrote 136 suboxone prescriptions to Medicaid recipients.
All 136 prescriptions were for the exact same dosage, the lawsuit claims.
This activity, Beshear claims in a release, is similar to the opioid pill mills state officials targeted back in 2012.
“Now we are seeing a treatment for addiction being the cause of addiction due to the reckless behavior of clinic owners like those who run The Recovery Center,” he claims.
The Recovery Center posts a statement about its mission on its website.
“At Recovery Center, our mission is to address the drug epidemic that is sweeping the country and, more acutely, our region by providing necessary assistance to those individuals in the grips of the devastating cycle that is opioid addiction. We aim to meet this goal by responsibly and compassionately administering a federally-approved prescription medication, which has been used effectively in the treatment of opioid dependence,” the statement reads.
“Stated simply, most people have known or loved someone that has struggled with an opioid addiction; the pain an addict hopes to evade with opioids is only momentarily subdued, and is then spread outward among family and friends as they are left to cope with the emotional and financial desolation inherent in supporting a loved one with an opioid dependence,” the statement adds. “We are dedicated to easing this pain, one individual at a time, as we offer the tools that will pave the way to a new and more productive life, opioid-free.”
The Recovery Center is in no way affiliated with the Odyssey Counseling Center.
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