Niagara eye doctor charged with fraud

Police have charged the former head ophthalmologist at the Niagara Health System following an investigation into alleged billing fraud.

The Ontario Provincial Police this week charged Dr. Andrew Taylor, 53, with fraud over $5,000 and uttering a forged document.

Taylor is set to appear in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines on July 22.

According to the OPP’s antirackets branch of the health fraud investigation unit, the investigation is ongoing and involves billings that were submitted to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Taylor owned and operated Lasik Provision Niagara, a laser eye surgery clinic on Morrison Street, and was the head of ophthalmology at the NHS until he resigned in 2017.

His licence to practise was revoked by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 2018 after the college found the physician had engaged in “disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional conduct,” by “billing patients for medical procedures that were not performed and instructing others to create, alter or otherwise manipulate

medical records related to such procedures.”

“The committee had no doubt the Dr. Taylor’s misconduct was premeditated,” the college decision reads. “Ultimately, all dishonest billing is a betrayal of the honesty and integrity expected of the physician in the patient-physician relationship. The public must be confident not only in the clinical skills of a practitioner, but in the honesty of a practitioner to bill correctly for services rendered.”

Taylor, a Toronto resident who worked primarily in Niagara, appears in the Toronto Star's database of top billing doctors in Ontario. He ranked number 72 in 2011-12 for billing OHIP $1.6 million.