Pain
According to a sign on the office door, Georgia Pain Physicians Clinic of Calhoun, located at 185 Professional Court off of Curtis Parkway, has closed its doors effective Aug. 10, 2016. The Calhoun clinic was owned by Dr. Robert E. Windsor, an Atlanta-area physician who owned at least five locations in Georgia and at least one location in Kentucky.
Patients have reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Public Affairs Office in Atlanta to find out why the clinic has closed and what they should do now for their pain treatment.
“We are getting a lot of calls about several of his clinics closing but he has not reached out to us to give us a reason why he’s closing his clinics,” said Public Affairs Officer Robert Page with the U.S. Attorney’s Public Affairs Office for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division about Windsor.
Page noted that, from phone calls he’s received from patients in any of Windsor’s five Georgia clinics that closed late last week-Calhoun, Ringgold, Gainesville, Forest Park and Marietta- that no one from the clinics are responding to requests on what current patients should do to get treatment. According to Page, he is also receiving calls from patients as far away as Kentucky, informing him that Windsor has closed a clinic there. Patients are requesting what to do to get their medical records.
In late March 2016, Robert Windsor, based in the Atlanta area, plead guilty to healthcare fraud for filing claims for surgical monitoring services he did not perform.
At the time, U.S. Attorney John Horn told the media, “Windsor put patients at risk by passing the surgical monitoring work he was paid to perform to an unauthorized medical assistant and then lied about it. This doctor’s scam left patients without a qualified physician monitoring their neurological health during surgery and cheated other healthcare providers out of over $1 million.”
According to Horn, Windsor entered into a contract with American Neuromonitoring Associates, P.C., based in Maryland, to provide intra-operative monitoring services, which includes monitoring a patient’s nerve and spinal cord activity during surgery to reduce potential adverse effects to the patient.
According to Horn, the contract stated that Windsor would provide real- time monitoring services for patients in surgery via an online platform with technologists in the operating room and that Windsor was responsible for providing a final monitoring report on each surgery. ANA and its sister company would bill patients
afterward, along with healthcare benefit programs such as private health insurance companies, for the monitoring services. Windsor was paid a fee for each surgery monitored.
Between January 2010 and July 2013, Windsor assigned the monitoring to a medical assistant who impersonated Windsor by using his login credentials, according to court documents. The assistant was not a doctor and was not permitted to perform the monitoring work under the contract with ANA.
The investigation concluded that after collecting reimbursements from insurance, ANA paid Windsor over $ 1.1 million for monitoring services he did not perform.
Windsor pled guilty in late March before U. S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg. Windsor has yet to be sentenced; according to Page, he hopes sentencing will happen by November, preferably early Fall.
For now, any patients who wish to obtain additional information for new medical care has to do so by Thursday, Aug. 25.
The letter on the clinic door, dated Aug. 10, 2016 and signed by GEORGIA PAIN PHYSICIANS, advises patients that it is important to “make arrangements as soon as possible to select a new physician to make sure you receive uninterrupted medical care.” It also advises patients to contact their medical plan to obtain a list of physicians in the area who are eligible to become their physician.
The letter continues that patient’s medical records cannot be released without written authorization from the patient, but that requests for those records must be made by Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. Georgia Pain Physicians must have an authorization to release medical records so a copy can be forwarded to a patient’s new physician. Georgia Pain Physicians asks patients to fax requests for medical records to 770- 850- 8485 or mail them to 2550 Windy Hill Road, Suite 206, Marietta, Ga. 30067.