Press Release  Former Owners of Taunton-Based Mental Health Centers To Pay $940,000 to Masshealth in Settlement

BOSTON — Today, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced that Taunton-based Northeast Health Services, LLC (Northeast) and its former owners, Robert A. Conway and Wallace W. Varonko have agreed to pay $940,000 to MassHealth. The settlement resolves allegations that Northeast caused fraudulent claims to be submitted to MassHealth by failing to ensure that certain clinicians received appropriate supervision from a licensed clinician. 

MassHealth pays for mental health services provided to MassHealth members by qualified clinicians and counselors who are subject to certain licensure and supervision requirements. Mental health centers that employ those rendering mental health services must comply with core supervision requirements set out in applicable regulations. 

“As we urgently address the mental and behavioral health crisis facing our state, our office will continue to enforce the highest possible standards of care among mental health providers to ensure vulnerable residents are receiving these critical health care services from trained professionals,” said AG Campbell.  

This settlement is part of the broader efforts of the AG’s Office to safeguard high-quality mental and behavioral health services for MassHealth members. In July 2022, the AG’s Office secured a guilty plea from Nicole Kasimatis, the owner and operator of Fortitude Counseling and Recovery Center in Quincy, for billing MassHealth and private health insurers for substance use disorder and/or mental health services she did not perform; Kasimatis was sentenced to three to four years in state prison.  

In June 2022, Pathways of Massachusetts, a former Massachusetts outpatient behavioral health provider, and Molina Healthcare, Inc., its former corporate parent, agreed to pay $4.6 million to resolve allegations that they submitted fraudulent claims to MassHealth for behavioral health care services provided to patients by unlicensed and improperly supervised staff members. In October 2021, in the largest-ever settlement of its kind, a private equity firm and former executives of South Bay Mental Health Center, Inc. agreed to pay $25 million for allegedly causing fraudulent claims to be submitted to MassHealth for mental health services provided to patients by unlicensed, unqualified, and improperly supervised staff at clinics across the state. 

The AG’s Office has also supported efforts to address the mental and behavioral health crisis in Massachusetts with its Mental Health Diversionary Services Grant program. The $2.9 million grant program, started last year, supports nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts that provide services that divert patients in need of urgent mental health care to access treatment without needing to go through a hospital’s emergency department. Diverting patients into appropriate treatment alternatives helps to allay the ongoing mental health boarding crisis at Massachusetts hospitals and inpatient facilities. 

This case was handled by Deputy Division Chief Kevin Lownds, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Jones, Senior Healthcare Fraud Investigator William Welsh, and Investigator Julia Galvao of the AG’s Medicaid Fraud Division, with substantial assistance from MassHealth.  

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Division receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling $5,542,963 for Federal fiscal year 2023. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $1,847,641 for FY 2023, is funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

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