Wade Neal Barker, Healthcare Bribery, Texas 2023

A Mesquite-based bariatric surgeon today formally admitted his role in the $200 million Forest Park Medical Center fraud, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox.

53-year-old Wade Neal Barker, one of Forest Park’s founding doctors, appeared in court this morning, where he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay and receive healthcare bribes and kickbacks as well as aiding and abetting commercial bribery.

“Patients trust doctors to make healthcare recommendations based on their best interests,” said Nealy Cox. “Instead, Dr. Barker let his own financial considerations guide decisions about where patients would be treated – and, in the process, defrauded millions from patients’ insurance. The Northern District of Texas will not tolerate plots that undermine confidence in the healthcare system.”

Barker is the seventh of 21 defendants to formally plead guilty in the bribery scheme, designed to induce doctors to refer lucrative patients – particularly those with high-reimbursing, out-of-network private insurance – to the now-defunct hospital, as opposed to other facilities.

Instead of billing patients for out-of-network co-payments, instituted by insurers to de-incentivize the high costs associated with out-of-network treatment, Forest Park allegedly assured patients they would pay in-network prices. Because they knew insurers wouldn’t tolerate such practices, they concealed the patient discounts and wrote off the difference as uncollected “bad debt.”

According to prosecutors, Barker and his co-conspirators shelled out approximately $40 million in bribes, disguised as “marketing money” and funneled through a shell company, between 2009 and 2013. Because he performed surgeries at Forest Park, Barker received these so-called “marketing” payments as well.

He faces roughly five to seven years in federal prison. Sentencing has not yet been set.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/surgeon-pleads-guilty-forest-park-medical-center-bribery-scam