THE PROBLEM –
HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS AS GOVERNMENT TARGETS
The past 40 years have seen a significant uptick in prosecutions against healthcare professionals across the country in what appears to be a coordinated campaign against the prescribing of controlled substances, and the autonomy of medical practice itself. State and federal prosecutors are selecting their “targets” with little or no medical rationale and employing spurious tactics to bring them to conviction.
It is difficult for honest practitioners who are unaware of this campaign to recognize when they have come into its sights. “Investigations” may begin as DEA, Medical Board, Pharmacy Board, or other administrative actions. The “target” may first be contacted by officials investigating a matter as seemingly innocuous as a government or insurance audit of billing, coding, and reimbursements. The medical professional is then blind-sided by a criminal indictment accompanied by a sensationalistic press strategy staged by the government to prejudice the professional in the eyes of his or her community. The media are fed lurid and often fabricated details of the supposed crime, which they are happy to repeat in a seemingly endless loop in order to sell more advertising space. Compounding the target’s troubles is the government’s common use of onerous seizure and forfeiture laws, which permit freezing and/or taking all or most of his or her assets and property – even before there is a criminal charge. All of this can happen with a frightening suddenness that leaves the individual and his or her family reeling.
Having worked all of his or her professional life to establish him or herself with the medical community, the target is devastated to be abandoned by it. One day enjoying the esteem of his or her colleagues and friends, quite literally the next he or she has become a pariah. At this point the target often is unable to afford to hire a lawyer of his or her choosing because of the preliminary seizure of their assets by the government. Stuck in jail and destroyed in the media, the target struggles to pull him or herself out of a deep and very dark pit.
THE SOLUTION –
EXPERIENCED, FOCUSED LEGAL REPRESENTATION
Since 1992 Kevin P. Byers has limited his legal practice to the defense of individual physicians, dentists, pharmacists, and nurses before state licensing boards, federal agencies, private practice overseers (e.g., insurance companies and hospitals), as well as in state and federal criminal courts across the United States. He has been privileged to represent hundreds of physicians and other healthcare professionals in the course of his career. Mr. Byers also represents pain patients when they are having difficulty receiving appropriate treatment because of practitioner reluctance/ignorance, insurance regulations, or the chilling effect of government control of pain management.
Mr. Byers has a unique professional history that includes experience as a Medical Board Administrative Law Hearing Examiner. This combination of experience — first, inside the governmental hearing process, and later, as a vigorous legal advocate — enables Mr. Byers to advise and defend his clients to obtain the optimal outcome. He has earned an unmatched reputation for legal excellence in this niche practice area where law and medicine overlap.
