A Kenai doctor and his clinics’ managers face nearly two dozen felony charges in an alleged Medicaid fraud case after a grand jury indicted them Wednesday.
Prosecutors say Dr. Ray Lynn Carlson, owner of MediCenter clinics on the Kenai Peninsula, fraudulently billed Alaska Medicaid and two insurance companies – Aetna and Premera – from 2014 to 2019.
Also named in the indictment are Scott Carlson, Charise Carlson and Joseph Hurley, as well as a corporation in Ray Carlson’s name, under which he owned two MediCenter clinics, one in Kenai and one in Nikiski.
Each of the defendants faces 23 criminal counts, including fraud, theft and fraudulent insurance acts.
There is limited information about the alleged fraud in the grand jury’s indictment, but it indicates the defendants overbilled Medicaid and the insurance companies and, in at least some instances, submitted false medical billing codes.
Carlson’s MediCenter clinics appear to have closed sometime after the Alaska Medicaid Fraud Control Unit’s investigation began. According to a Peninsula Clarion newspaper story from 2019, investigators had searched MediCenter’s offices that July.
Phone numbers at both clinics are now disconnected. None of the defendants had attorneys listed in court records as of Friday.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere.
