Published Monday, March 14, 2011 11:19 PM MST

http://www.havasunews.com/articles/2011/03/15/news/doc4d7eee78bf322061097482.txt

Attorney General Tom Horne announced Friday a Golden Valley-based doctor, Albert Yeh, surrendered his medical license in Arizona and Nevada and must pay about $700,000 in restitution to the state’s health care system for orchestration of prescription drugs and money laundering.

The penalties are linked to Yeh’s guilty plea Jan. 31, to three counts of felony fraudulent schemes, felony illegal control of an enterprise, and felony money laundering.

The plea requires Yeh to permanently surrender his Arizona medical license, according to a press release issued by Arizona Attorney General’s Office. As a result, Yeh has also permanently surrendered his Nevada medical license. He doesn’t hold any other medical licenses in the U.S.

On March 11, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Susan Brnovich sentenced Yeh to serve 2.5 years in prison, followed by five years probation. Yeh is also ordered to pay $683,038 in restitution to Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS. Furthermore, in a related forfeiture matter, Yeh agreed to forfeit property seized valued at $2 million, the press release said.

Yeh operated a pain management clinic one day per week in Golden Valley from January 2006 to February 2009 where he systematically victimized the state of Arizona through massive fraudulent billing. He admitted it was solely to make as much money as possible, according to the AG.

Yeh’s strategies included shortened patient visits; dangerously increased patient loads of as many as 150 a day; inflated charges during billing; employing an unlicensed physician assistant; and providing patients with pre-signed prescriptions for narcotics.

The shortened visits were achieved by forgoing the routine check of a patient’s vital signs, lack of medical exams, and a computer program designed by Yeh that would automatically enter false information on a patient’s chart to save time.

The measures translate to Yeh and his staff not knowing if patients were having adverse reactions to medications or experiencing other medical problems that should be factored into determining correct treatment of a patient.

Then, Yeh submitted claims to AHCCCS that showed he had conducted all the patient visits, including those conducted by the unlicensed physician assistant. Yeh also inflated the charges on the bills by claiming he provided a higher level of medical service that what actually occurred, resulting in a higher-than-allowed payment from AHCCCS, according to the release.

To get the patient’s to return, the follow-up visits were deemed refill visits centering on doling out the pre-signed prescriptions.