Opioid Strike Force Takedown Includes Charges Against Manchester Doctor and Tullahoma Nurse Practitioner

Attorney General William P. Barr and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar III, together with multiple law enforcement partners, on Wednesday announced enforcement actions involving 60 charged defendants across 11 federal districts, including 31 doctors, 7 pharmacists, 8 nurse practitioners, and 7 other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in the illegal prescribing and distributing of opioids and other dangerous narcotics and for health care fraud schemes.
On April 16, 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Dr. Harrison Yang, 75, of Manchester, Tennessee, with healthcare fraud violations.
This case was investigated by the FBI, HHS-OIG, DEA, and TBI.
U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey said, “Today is an example of how our office is working with our law enforcement partners in the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force to identify and prosecute dishonest medical professionals and others engaged in health care fraud schemes involving illegal prescription, distribution, possession, and use of opioids.”
The charges involve individuals contributing to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on medical professionals involved in the unlawful distribution of opioids and other prescription narcotics, a priority for the Department. According to the CDC, approximately 115 Americans die every day of an opioid-related overdose.

In a sperate case, Nurse Practitioner Jonathan White, 49, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was indicted on three counts of healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. According to the indictment, White and co-conspirators were employed by MedManagement Inc., which managed Pain MD located in Franklin, Tennessee. Pain MD operated pain and wellness clinics throughout Middle Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Between 2010 and continuing through 2015, the indictment alleges that White and two others provided services to patients, namely “Tendon Origin Injections,” which were neither medically necessary nor physically possible and provided medically unnecessary durable medical equipment and then submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE. These services were said to further the company’s business model by increasing revenues and to personally enrich Pain MD providers and executives. The indictment further alleges that White and the co-conspirators trained other providers on methods to increase productivity, including methods on how to control the patient and allow them to treat patients with such medically unnecessary injections and threatening to dismiss them as patients and stop writing prescriptions for narcotic pain medication if they did not comply. According to the indictment, White and others submitted more than $3.5 million in false claims to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE.