A former New Hampshire psychiatrist and onetime hospital chief medical officer has been sentenced to 12 months and a day in federal prison for signing hundreds of medically unnecessary orders for braces without ever examining patients, according to an Oct. 13 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire.
Steven Powell, MD, 56, who now lives in Georgia, was also ordered to pay $761,202.75 in restitution to Medicare after pleading guilty to one count of health care fraud in April 2023. His sentencing was repeatedly delayed, according to an Oct. 20 report from the Valley News. Between December 2018 and March 2019, Dr. Powell signed pre-populated orders for knee, wrist, back and shoulder braces for more than 500 Medicare beneficiaries, often approving several braces per patient, without examining or speaking with them.
He ordered four or more braces for at least 71 beneficiaries, according to court documents cited by the Valley News. In one instance, he completed more than 100 pages requiring 75 signatures in just over a minute. That packet included orders for four braces for a 77-year-old beneficiary who was immobile during the last year of his life and had never met Dr. Powell. In one instance, he completed more than 100 pages requiring 75 signatures in just over a minute. That packet included orders for four braces for a 77-year-old beneficiary who was immobile during the last year of his life and had never met Dr. Powell.
A telemedicine company, Expansion, generated fabricated medical records and sent them to Dr. Powell through DocuSign. He was paid $15 per consult to sign orders falsely stating he had assessed or treated the patients. Expansion then sold the orders to DME suppliers, which submitted about 1,400 false claims totaling more than $1.9 million, of which Medicare paid $761,203.
Expansion’s owner, Steven Richardson, was sentenced in August to two years in federal prison in a related $110 million telemedicine DME fraud scheme.
Prosecutors had sought 18 months. U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro recommended that Dr. Powell serve his sentence at the lowest possible custody level and as close to his family as possible. He must report to prison Nov. 13.
Dr. Powell was chief medical officer of New London (N.H.) Hospital from April 2012 until May 2018. “This criminal case does not pertain to his time at NLH,” the hospital said in a statement to Becker’s.
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