Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1143172
10 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com July 15–August 12, 2019 ON THE QUICK Nursing & Healthcare News Rx for Sex NP faces 15-count federal indictment N urse practitioner and aspiring reality TV star Jeffrey W. Young, Jr., RN, NP, was recently charged with abusing his authority to prescribe controlled sub- stances "to obtain money, notoriety and sexual favors." "Rock Doc" Busted With his motorcycle, tattoos and piercings, Jeff Young looks more like an opening act for ZZ Top than a family nurse practitioner. Although he co- owns and operates clinics in Jackson, Tenn., Young — who calls himself the "Rock Doc" — also writes rock and rap songs about his "haters" and seeks to launch his own reality TV series. A federal indictment filed in April paints a darker picture of Young's "untraditional" life and clinical practice, charging that he inappropriately prescribed opioids and other con- trolled substances for profit; "to promote his television pilot and his podcast; and to have sex with women, including women who were his patients." In a subsequent motion filed in May, prosecutors further alleged that Young "regularly and cavalierly traded prescrip- tions for sex — sometimes even showing his employees cell- phone photos of himself engaging in sex acts at his PreventaGenix clinic immediately after the fact." Young is also charged with six counts of unlawfully pre- scribing controlled substances to a pregnant patient. Still LIcensed! After pleading not guilty to these charges, Young was initial- ly released on bond. However, on May 20, a federal judge revoked his bail at the request of prosecutors, who called Young a "sexual predator" and a danger to his community. Federal trial attorney Andrew Pennebaker also sharply criticized the Tennessee Board of Nursing's "inexplicable" decision to allow Young to retain his license and prescribing authority after placing him on probation last November for "violation of drug statutes." Young's attorney, Claiborne Ferguson, conceded that some of the evidence prosecutors have presented might be deemed "unsavory," but maintains that there is "nothing necessarily illegal about having sex with a patient." Young is currently in jail while awaiting trial. WN Pain Clinic NPs Busted Feds charge NPs with healthcare fraud T hree other Tennessee nurse practitioners are also in hot water, charged with healthcare fraud for allegedly using high-pressure tactics, medically unnecessary procedures and fraudulent insurance claims to boost revenues. High-Pressure Sales Tactics Imagine if your boss emailed you every day to demand that you per- form more billable procedures; sent other clinicians to coach you on how to convince patients to consent to additional costly servic- es; and threatened to fire you if your numbers didn't measure up. It sounds more like a used car lot than a healthcare facility, but federal prosecutors say that was the atmosphere at PainMD, a three-state network of pain clinics based in Tennessee. A federal indictment, unsealed in April, alleges that the owners of PainMD's parent company, MedManagement Inc. (MMi), pushed clinical staff to increase "productivity" by "providing more and more services, without consideration of whether those services were medically reasonable and necessary." Insurance Fraud Advertised as "interventional" pain clinics, PainMD regularly used trigger-point injections (TPIs) to treat myofascial pain. While such injections are a fairly common treatment modality, the indictment accuses three PainMD nurse practitioners — Brian Richey, Daniel Seeley and Jonathan White — of using medically unnecessary TPIs "to unlawfully enrich themselves and their employers." Those NPs, who are charged with healthcare fraud and conspir- acy, allegedly pressured patients to consent to the injections using tactics like threatening to cut off patients' prescriptions for nar- cotic painkillers. The indictment further alleges that defendants deliberately miscoded the injections as tendon origin injections (TOIs) — a dif- ferent procedure — to get around insurer coverage limits for TPIs. Lawsuits Filed The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sued MMi in November for allegedly filing $3.3 million in fraudulent Medicare and TRICARE claims by miscoding TPIs as TOIs. CMS also sus- pended the clinics' Medicare and TRICARE provider status pend- ing trial. MMi strenuously denies these charges and earlier this year filed defamation lawsuits against a former employee and a former patient who made similar allegations to the Nashville Tennessean. WN N U R S I N G H A L L O F S H A M E Editor's note: In the April 29 issue, we wrote about RaDonda Vaught, the Tennessee nurse charged in the wrongful death of Charlene Murphey. It turns out Vaught isn't the only nurse in her region in trouble with the law.