Doctor avoids jail for £150,000 invoice fraud Mental health GP diverted NHS funds to private company
AN award-winning Midland mental health GP who defrauded the NHS by diverting £153,000 into his private company has avoided going to jail.
Both Dr Ian Walton, 59, and senior commissioning manager Lisa Hill, 51, exploited positions of trust for commercial purposes by submitting false invoices.
They were told by Judge Paul Farrer QC sitting at Birmingham Crown Court that they had acted “arrogantly and dishonestly”.
However, the judge accepted that they were not motivated by greed but by a “misguided” desire to provide mental health services.
Walton, of Stourbridge Road, Wombourne, Wolverhampton and Hill, of Stourbridge Road, Hagley, Stourbridge, who had previously admitted a charge of fraud, were each sentenced to two years suspended for two years.
They were also each ordered to do 200 hours unpaid work, pay £76,800 compensation and £7,500 costs.
The court heard that Walton had a practice in Tipton and was a senior physician concerned with mental health while Hill was employed as a senior commercial manager for Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group.
They were also associated with a mental health charity called Primehe and a private company, Walton Hill Associates, which provided training for GPs.
Sam Brown, prosecuting, said the pair applied for funding which should have gone to another sector of the NHS dealing with treating patients over the busy winter period.
The fraud was discovered after concerns were raised about the “unhealthy” relationship between the CCG, Primhe Associates.
In passing sentence Judge Farrer described the way funding was distributed could be best described as complex and at worse “chaotic.”
He said that meant that the process relied on the trust of those applying for funding and could be dishonestly exploited.
He said Walton and Hill had failed to reveal their connection with Walton Hill Associates.
“That money should never have been paid and human error lack of proper scrutiny were self evident.
“Your decision to divert this money to GP training was both arrogant and dishonest.
“You were both in positions of considerable trust and you acted in breach of that trust.
“The victim of the fraud is an arm of the NHS and inevitably the effect of your actions is to erode confidence in a vital public service.” and Walton Hill