Dentist took tooth out on hoverboard!

A DENTIST being probed for diddling healthcare payments extracted a patient’s tooth while riding on a hoverboard, a court heard.

Patients testified at his trial that Seth Lookhart pulled gnashers without permission and unnecessarily sedated patients to maximise payments from the US Medicaid system.

But one video shown in court stunned the jury. It shows Lookhart pulling a sedated patient’s tooth while riding a hoverboard and then riding away and spinning around with his hands raised in the air.

A former employee told investigators in 2016 that Lookhart – who practised in Alaska – was increasing profits by performing more intravenous sedation than necessary.

Suspended

According to charges, he and his former office manager, Shauna Cranford, billed nearly $2million in intravenous sedation without proper justification during 2016.

Charges were filed in April 2017 and in June of that year the Alaska Board of Dental Examiners suspended Lookhart’s licences to practise dentistry and sedation.

Lookhart’s reimbursement totals for intravenous sedation accounted for nearly 31 per cent of the total payments for IV sedation across Alaska in 2016, according to Medicaid fraud investigators.

Ex-patient Joseph Smith testified that four of his teeth were removed without his permission.

Another patient, Nickolas Seifert, testified that Lookhart “created more problems instead of fixing them”.

Seifert said he went back for numerous visits and awoke from sedation on separate occasions to discover a crown had been placed on the wrong tooth and a loose filling had not been repaired, but instead a new filling was placed on a nearby tooth.

The case continues.