Iowa chiropractor fined $1,000 for role in alleged billing scheme

State regulators have fined an Iowa chiropractor $1,000 for his role in an alleged scheme to defraud Medicare and other insurers.

The Iowa Board of Chiropractic alleges that in June 2024, Taylor Vanden Wynboom entered into a civil settlement with the federal government “relating to certain billing practices” at his former chiropractic practice, Nova Integrated Health of Ankeny.

The settlement resolved the civil matter with no admission of liability by Wynboom, the board alleges, but resulted in Wynboom agreeing to pay $52,000. The board records do not indicate whether that payment represents a civil penalty or restitution.

The board recently charged Wynboom with failing to notify it within 30 days of any judgments or settlements, and with engaging in unethical conduct or practices that are harmful or detrimental to the public.

Wynboom and the board recently agreed to resolve the disciplinary case with a settlement agreement that calls for Wynboom to pay a $1,000 civil penalty and complete 15 hours of educational training on ethics, plus 15 hours of educational training on the proper billing and coding of patient services.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch was not able to reach Wynboom at his current clinic, the Vero Health Center in West Des Moines.

‘Get paid $$ by insurance and Medicare’

Wynboom was one of several medical providers who in 2020 sued a Florida company called the National Billing Institute. Wynboom and his co-plaintiffs accused the company of “engaging in a widespread scheme to defraud Medicare” while handling their billing for certain services.

According to that lawsuit, a company called Resonant Specific Technologies, or RST, developed a medical device called Sanexas — an electrical stimulation device approved by the FDA for use in treating neuropathy and chronic pain.

The lawsuit asserted that due to “the relative novelty” of the Sanexas device, RST referred medical providers who were its potential customers to the National Billing Institute for assistance in billing Medicare and other insurers for their use of the device on patients. RST’s marketing materials allegedly showed medical providers they could collect as much as $583,000 in annual revenue from using the device, the lawsuit claimed.

In addition, the lawsuit asserted that the National Billing Institute claimed to have developed a proprietary method of billing Medicare for Sanexas treatments that included multivitamin injections.

According to the lawsuit, the institute’s promotional brochures allegedly stated, “GET PAID $$ BY INSURANCE & MEDICARE FOR RST SANEXAS TREATMENTS! … Do you want to drastically increase your revenue while helping your patients ease their chronic pain? Do you want to get reimbursed for your services up to $7,500 from insurance companies?”

Wynboom and his co-plaintiffs alleged the institute “upcoded” their billing for treatments, in part by billing for ingredients not included in the multivitamin injections and by billing for services never delivered.

Later, the lawsuit claims, Wynboom’s Ankeny clinic, Nova Integrated Health, was held liable for more than $100,000 in billings to Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Court records show the National Billing Institute denied any wrongdoing and in 2022, the claims against the company were dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.

Earlier this year, the Oklahoma attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against the Neuropathy Treatment Clinic of Tulsa and its owner, James Linn, alleging they ran a multiyear scheme to defraud Medicaid.

The attorney general’s lawsuit claims that Linn and Michael Evans, the founder of the National Billing Institute, “set up a billing scheme that assigned incorrect codes to the Sanexas treatments, such as codes for physical therapy, so that the treatments could be billed to Medicare and commercial insurance.”

Linn and the clinic have denied any wrongdoing. The National Billing Institute is not named as a defendant in the Oklahoma lawsuit.