Time now for our Reporter's Notebook segment.

I'm Emily Sisk, and I'm here with Taylor Essex of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

And we're here to talk about a lengthy report on addiction recovery care.

It's a drug rehabilitation center here in Kentucky, and there are some allegations of fraudulent billing.

So, Taylor, just to open us up.

Tell me, you know, what is addiction recovery care and how prevalent is it in the realm of drug rehabilitation in the state?

Yeah.

Hi.

Thanks so much for having me.

I'm really glad to be on.

So addiction Recovery Care, started in Louisiana, in eastern Kentucky in 2010 with their first and or Karen's Place.

And that was really in the height of the heroin epidemic, ongoing drug epidemic in Kentucky.

And they have grown steadily since that time.

But they became Kentucky's largest, rehabilitation center with at 1.40 centers, 40 plus centers across the state.

And looking into our border states to expand their coverage area.

They really became kind of the the poster child here for helping, those who really have struggled, especially in eastern Kentucky, but across the Commonwealth with, substance use disorder.

So in the piece that you did and this was written by you and Alex Christo, you know, years of reporting that you all did on this, and you got to talk with former clients and employees of Addiction Recovery Care, also known as or kind of the abbreviation there.

And so what do you all found out?

It's that there was hundreds of millions of dollars billed to Medicaid, and some folks said that there was some false billing.

So tell me about that.

What was being billed and why is it believed that some of that was fraudulent?

Yeah.

So, two of the primary codes that were being billed, specifically as it relates to addiction recovery care or are are psychoeducation and peer support services.

And so I won't go into explicitly the breakdown of those, but those are the two primary codes that people were really honing in on.

And so with this dramatic increase of the ability to bill for certain codes after Covid happened, because there was a big focus on getting people into recovery.

You know, the ability to bill Medicaid so more folks could get treatment really expanded.

So there was this really good intention of like, let's get these folks help.

Some of these employees said that they were allegedly instructed to, bill for services that essentially were not taking place to try and make up for services.

Maybe that they didn't have the opportunity to offer that day because they were so expansive and so big.

So that was just one example of what we were told was there was essentially, allegedly this directive of, okay, make up for the lost time bill for something that maybe didn't happen, or Bill for something, that maybe did happen, but say it happened for a longer period of time.

In the time that we have remaining.

Just want to know, where does this stand now?

Is still in operation?

Is there any possibility or any thoughts that they might be held responsible for these allegations of fraudulent billing?

Yeah, so remains to be seen.

Work is still in operation today and they are still actively billing Medicaid and Medicare, which makes up more than 80% of their clients.

So they are still operating on a much smaller basis.

As we've seen, there's been layoffs.

There's been closures of a lot of their facilities.

But they do still remain, operating.

And then finally, in terms of any kind of, any kind of conclusion we may see, they have they are still being investigated by the FBI.

There is that draft unsigned settlement with the Department of Justice at the federal level, and then ongoing lawsuits regarding, tax dollars that they believe they're still owed those parties.

So there's a lot of still moving pieces.

And unfortunately, yeah, there will be still more to to come, I think in terms of what will happen next, not only again, just with art, but how we establish oversight in the recovery industry while helping this vulnerable population.

Certainly.

Well, we will keep following.

And if you keep reporting, which I'm sure you will, maybe we'll have you again to discuss further updates.

Taylor six with the Herald Leader.

Thank you so much for breaking this down for us.

And folks can check out your full report at the Herald-Leader website.

Right?

Yes.

That's correct.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.