William VanWhy said he was emotionally overwhelmed when he visited the mental health ward at Northwest Medical Center in Arkansas last year. Four days later he was still in the locked ward, desperate to get out.
“I had no medical care at all,” said Van Why, 32.
Mental illness patients in Arkansas can be held against their will for 72 hours if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others. However, to store more, the provider must petition the court and obtain the consent of a judge.
No petition was filed in Van Why’s case, and his partner, with the help of a lawyer, was eventually able to obtain a release order from the court.
A few hours later, the sheriff’s deputy entered the hospital with orders in hand and Van Why’s husband by his side. In the elevator, they run into his ward nurse.
“I’m glad he’s out of the hospital,” the nurse said, according to body camera footage obtained by NBC News. “Don’t repeat that.”
VanWhy was released after about 20 minutes. “Oh my god, you saved my life,” he told the lieutenant, body camera footage shows.
The unit’s leader at the time, Dr. Brian Hyatt, was one of Arkansas’ most prominent psychiatrists and chairman of a panel disciplining physicians. But now, he’s under investigation by state and federal officials on charges ranging from Medicaid fraud to wrongful imprisonment.
Court records show Van Why’s release is the second time in two months that a patient has been released from a Hyatt ward only after a sheriff’s deputy showed up with a court order.
“I think they had a plan to hold people for as long as possible, claim insurance for as long as possible, then kick them out the door, and then put someone else in bed,” VanWhy’s attorney Aaron Cash said.
Van Why and at least 25 other former patients sued Hyatt, alleging: they were held against his will by his unit For days, sometimes weeks. And the office of Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, according to a search warrant affidavit, accused Hyatt of committing insurance fraud by charging Medicaid with the “highest severity code of any patient,” alleging that it treated rarely seen patients.
As the lawsuits piled up, Hyatt continued as chairman of the Arkansas Medical Commission.but he resigned from the board of directors in late May after Drug Enforcement Administration officials executed a search warrant at his private clinic.
“I am not resigning because of my misconduct, but so that the board can continue its important work without delay or disruption,” he said in the letter. “I will continue to defend the false allegations being made against me where appropriate.”
Springdale’s Northwest Medical Center “abruptly terminated” its contract with Hyatt in May 2022, according to the attorney general’s search warrant affidavit.
In April, the hospital agreed to pay $1.1 million in a settlement with the Arkansas Attorney General’s office. Northwest Medical Center failed to provide sufficient documentation to justify the hospitalization of 246 patients in Hyatt wards, according to the attorney general’s office.
As part of the settlement, the hospital denied wrongdoing.
“Hospital personnel believe they have complied with Arkansas law in all respects, which rely heavily on the assessment of the patient’s treating physician, including decisions related to involuntary involvement,” Northwest Health spokeswoman Amy Morrell said in a statement.
“While it is not our custom to comment on pending litigation matters, we can share that last spring, in early May 2022, we took many steps to ensure patient safety, including hiring a new healthcare provider to provide clinical care for behavioral patients,” Morrell added.
Hyatt, 50, has not been charged with the crime. Neither he nor his lawyers responded to multiple requests for comment.
However, his legal team issued a statement. arkansas business last month.
“Dr. Hyatt continues to plead not guilty and denies the allegations against him,” part of the statement said. “Despite a successful clinical career, Dr. Hyatt has been the target of vicious and systematic attacks on his character and service. He looks forward to defending himself in court.”
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin declined to comment. “There are no additional details we can provide at this time,” he said.
Charlie Robbins, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas, said the execution of the search warrant “is an important step in the long-running ongoing investigation.”
“Given the fact that this investigation is still ongoing, I will refrain from further comment,” he said.
Huge Medicaid Payments
A graduate of the Arkansas School of Medicine, Hyatt was appointed medical director of the Behavioral Health Division at the Northwest Medical Center in January 2018.
According to the Arkansas Attorney General’s search warrant affidavit, the number of beds increased from 25 to 75, and claims to Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance soared.
A report prepared by the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office said Hyatt was getting paid $1,367 per day. At the same time, he ran his own private practice, Pinnacle Premier Psychiatry, in the town of Rogers, about 40 miles away, according to the attorney general’s office.
The allegations he filed show that he performed daily face-to-face evaluations with patients at the hospital.
However, the former employee came forward in April 2022 and told state investigators that Dr. Hyatt was on the floor with the patient for “only a few minutes each day, and Dr. Hyatt had no contact with the patient,” the affidavit says.
According to a report prepared by the attorney general, investigators reviewed 45 days of surveillance footage from the facility and concluded that Hyatt entered or interacted with patients’ rooms only 17 times, for less than 10 minutes total.
“Dr. Hyatt has never had a conversation with the majority of patients undergoing treatment,” the affidavit states.
Shannon Williams, 52, said she was one of those patients.
Harrison’s nurse, Williams, was dealing with her grandmother’s death when she learned that her brother had died of the coronavirus while abroad. The news pushed Williams, who herself served in the COVID-19 unit, into what she described as “crisis mode.”
She was taken to a hospital emergency room about 90 minutes from Springdale in February 2021. Her medical records show that she was transferred to the Hyatt ward the next morning after her doctors determined she was in danger (Williams claims she never had suicidal thoughts).
Williams said that upon arriving at the unit, he was unwillingly stripped and injected with a sedative.
“It was scary,” said Williams.
Medical records show she was detained for five days despite asking to be removed.
“It was like being in prison,” said Williams, a mother of three. “It was a nightmare. They threatened to give me more time if I cried.”
Hyatt’s Medicaid claims dwarf those of other Arkansas psychiatrists, according to the search warrant affidavit.
From January 2019 to June 2022, Medicaid paid over $800,000 for Hyatt properties.
“Dr. Hyatt is a clear outlier and his claims are high enough to skew the average for a given code across Arkansas’ Medicaid programs,” the affidavit states.
Medicaid uses a code system to determine how much to pay providers. Patients with the highest codes require more care and are therefore billed higher.
It is common for newly admitted patients to come in with the highest severity code, suggesting that the person is unstable and having serious problems, and then progress to lower codes before being discharged.
But affidavits say 99.95% of Hyatt’s Medicaid claims were made on the most expensive code.
“According to allegations submitted by Dr. Hyatt and the non-physician health care workers working under his supervision, none of the patients undergoing treatment in the Behavioral Ward at Northwest Medical Center improved at least by the date the patient was released,” the affidavit states.
ridicule email
Before representing VanWhy, Cash had a strange exchange with Hyatt over another patient.
In January 2022, Cash faxed the hospital demanding the immediate release of his client, a patient named Carla Adrian Caceres.
According to a lawsuit filed in January 2023, Adrian Caceres had arrived at the unit the day before and vehemently insisted that he leave.
Adrian-Caceres’ mother went to the hospital to pick her up, but was told that her daughter would not be released, according to the complaint. The following morning, Hyatt responded to Cash by email, saying it neither confirmed nor denied that Adrian-Caceres was in his unit.
“The facility has received unreasonable demands and defamatory comments about someone you claim to be on the premises as a representative,” Hyatt said in an email included in Adrian-Caceres’ court filings.
Hyatt said it would only check if she was there if Cash asked the customer to sign a “disclosure form.”
Four hours later, Mr. Cash responded with a court order seeking the release of Mr. Adrian-Caceres.
Cash issued a court order to Adrian-Caceres’ mother, who took it to the hospital, but the hospital still refused to release her daughter.
There, Cash received a second court order, and the judge ordered the sheriff’s office to enforce the order, he said.
According to Sheriff’s Office documents obtained by NBC News, a sheriff’s deputy visited the facility with Adrian-Caceres’ mother to secure his release.
The next morning, Hyatt sent Cash an email mocking the college he attended.
“I think that’s what we teach at Poteau Junior College … I’m sorry … Carl Albert State University and Northeastern State University,” Hyatt said in an email.
He instructed Cash to contact an attorney. “You won’t find his name on your ‘college’ yearbook,” he wrote.
When Mr. Cash was contacted by Mr. VanWhy’s husband two months later, he didn’t bother to release the patient himself.
“This time I went straight to the sheriff,” Cash said.
Cash said the patients he spoke to were adamant that they received virtually no care while in the Hyatt wards. These people are vulnerable and often in serious need of help and treatment, he said.
“Some people needed help,” Cash said. “And what they got hurt.”
This article was originally published NBC News.com
