Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Psychiatrist pleads guilty to $200,000 Medicaid fraud

As reported in the Examiner

A Baltimore County psychiatrist pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding Medicaid of at least $200,000, billing the state-administered system for as many as 19 hours of therapy in a single day when he actually worked a fraction of that.

Roman Ostrovsky, 49, wiped his eyes and got a pat on his back from his attorney as Baltimore County Circuit Judge John Turnbull sentenced him to a year of home detention and to pay $400,000 to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Ostrovsky brought a $250,000 cashier’s check to court, attorneys said, and is expected to pay the rest within two years. “I just feel very sorry,” Ostrovsky told the judge. “I failed my patients. I failed my family.”

Ostrovsky was solely in charge of the billing. For more than two years starting in January 2002, he charged Medicaid thousands of times for roughly 45-minute sessions with his patients, according to court documents.

His carefully maintained calendar revealed that many of those sessions only lasted 15 minutes, or that the patient never came in at all, the documents say. His license is still active, and isn’t set to expire until 2007, according to the state’s Board of Physicians.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I see he is still in business! He was the *psychiatrist* shortly before my son's suicide. I had been taking my son to see this *doctor* and he was in and out in 10 minutes. The day after my son's suicide I called Ostrovsky to tell him the bad news and his only reply was, "Are you going to SUE ME?" I googled this creep doctor and found he had been convicted of fraud. Why is he still in business in Maryland?