Texas dentist to serve 4 years, pay $1.8M for Medicaid fraud

A dentist in Amarillo, TX, has been ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution and spend 50 months in prison after being found guilty of defrauding the Texas Medicaid program out of more than $1 million.

U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson also ordered Michael David Goodwin, DDS, owner of Goodwin Orthodontics, to serve three years of supervised release to ensure that he pays the restitution and barred him from participating as a dentist in the Medicaid program when he is released from prison, according to a report in the Amarillo Globe-News.

Dr. Goodwin was indicted last year on 11 counts of healthcare fraud. The indictment alleged that from January 2008 through March 2011, Dr. Goodwin devised a scheme to defraud the Texas Medicaid program by billing for more than $2.6 million for services he claimed he provided, when in fact some of the services were not medically necessary or dental assistants provided those services when no dentist or orthodontist was present to supervise. As a result of this scheme, Medicaid paid more than $1.5 million for claims filed by Dr. Goodwin.

As part of his scheme, according to the indictment, Dr. Goodwin practiced orthodontic dentistry approximately two weeks each month in Amarillo and approximately two weeks each month at another office in Indiana. To maximize the number of Medicaid patients seen, employees regularly scheduled more than 100 patients per day and intentionally scheduled large numbers of Medicaid patients for days when Dr. Goodwin was out of town.

To accommodate the large volume of patients, lawmakers allege that Dr. Goodwin directed dental assistants to perform impermissible acts, including comprehensive examinations, diagnoses, and treatment planning for Medicaid patients when he knew that only licensed dentists were permitted to perform those acts.

Last year authorities seized $244,235.67 from five JP Morgan Chase commercial and personal bank accounts associated with Dr. Goodwin, his wife, and his business. In 2011 they seized $108,083 from the business.

In February of this year, Dr. Goodwin pleaded guilty to a single count of healthcare fraud.

Federal authorities have filed court motions to dismiss indictments against his wife Patricia Yolanda Goodwin and Annette Hastings, the office manager at Goodwin Orthodontics, according to court records.