A Baltimore County psychiatrist pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding Medicaid of at least $200,000, billing the state-administered system for as many as 19 hours of therapy in a single day when he actually worked a fraction of that.
Roman Ostrovsky, 49, wiped his eyes and got a pat on his back from his attorney as Baltimore County Circuit Judge John Turnbull sentenced him to a year of home detention and to pay $400,000 to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Ostrovsky brought a $250,000 cashier?s check to court, attorneys said, and is expected to pay the rest within two years.
“I just feel very sorry,” Ostrovsky told the judge. “I failed my patients. I failed my family.”
A Soviet immigrant who came to the country in 1990 with $100 and a suitcase, Ostrovsky built up his own practice and at one point treated nearly 800 patients, defense attorney Andrew Jay Graham said.
Ostrovsky was solely in charge of the billing. For more than two years starting in January 2002, he charged Medicaid thousands of times for roughly 45-minute sessions with his patients, according to court documents.
His carefully maintained calendar revealed that many of those sessions only lasted 15 minutes, or that the patient never came in at all, the documents say.
“The only explanation that I?ve been able to derive is that he didn?t understand the seriousness of what he was doing,” Graham said.
Many of Ostrovsky?s patients also were Eastern European immigrants who relied on him as one of the few psychiatrists in the Baltimore region with whom they could communicate, Graham said. His license is still active, and isn?t set to expire until 2007, according to the state?s Board of Physicians.
“What he?ll do now, I?m not sure. He?s a good doctor. He?s a good person,” Graham said. If Ostrovsky lost his license, he said, “it would be a shame.”
