Northwest Health, Arkansas: Seven Patients File False Imprisonment Lawsuits against Psychiatrist Brian Hyatt

May 1, 2023

Seven patients have sued a prominent Arkansas psychiatrist within the past three months alleging false imprisonment, saying they were held against their will in the behavioral-health facility he oversaw.

Three of them say they couldn't leave until sheriff's deputies helped them escape.

The four women and three men have filed separate lawsuits describing their admissions to Northwest Medical Center's behavioral-health services unit in Springdale, which was overseen by Dr. Brian Hyatt. Each of the patients said in their lawsuits that they weren't allowed to leave for days, even though neither the facility nor Hyatt had the legal authority to keep them there.

Attorneys for the patients told Insider that Hyatt and his staff would coerce, threaten, and sedate patients to keep them in the facility and would frequently revoke phone privileges to keep them from communicating with relatives or attorneys. In some cases, staff would threaten to keep patients in the facility for up to 45 days unless they stopped asking to leave, the attorneys said.

"You're trapped in this facility, you're told you can't leave, you don't know what your rights are, and now they're cutting off your communication to the outside world and any hope of rescue or help," Monte Sharits, one of the attorneys working on the case, told Insider. "It was a house of horrors. It's a nightmare for them."

The lawsuits were filed over the last four months in the Circuit Court of Washington County, Arkansas. The team of Arkansas attorneys handling the cases told Insider they have been retained by roughly 30 clients with similar allegations and that more lawsuits are forthcoming.

Patients in the seven lawsuits also described receiving substandard or nonexistent medical care during their stays and being given unknown or inappropriate medication.

Some of the patients who have filed lawsuits said they never even met Hyatt, who was the only psychiatrist employed and permitted to treat patients in the unit. Others described only meeting Hyatt briefly, but never being evaluated by him.

One woman alleged Hyatt wrote 45 pages of notes describing her as "unkept and unstable," despite never once meeting, examining, or treating her.

Another patient said the only care he received during his five-day stay was unhelpful group therapy that "consisted of patients sitting together with a 'provider' and discussing things like their favorite Sonic drinks," according to his lawsuit.

Northwest Health told Insider it is no longer associated with Hyatt.

Hyatt didn't return Insider's requests for comment and his attorney declined to comment.

A representative of Northwest Health told Insider in a statement that Hyatt had been an independent physician contacted to oversee the hospital's behavioral-health patients.

"We take very seriously our responsibility to provide a safe environment of care for our patients and for our team members," the written statement said. "While it is not our practice to comment on pending litigation matters, I can share that last spring, we undertook a number of actions to ensure our patients' safety, including hiring new providers responsible for the clinical care of our behavioral health patients in early May 2022."

Patients claim Hyatt held them prisoner as part of an insurance 'scheme'

Hyatt's motive was to keep every bed in the behavioral health unit full to maximize profits, according to Sharits.

"The scheme is this: Get as many patients in the door as possible, keep them there for as long as possible — even if that means illegally keeping them beyond the 72-hour hold, and holding them against their will," Sharits said.

During that time, Hyatt would fraudulently overbill the patients' health-insurance carriers, Sharits said.

All seven plaintiffs said their spouses, parents, partners, or other relatives repeatedly called or showed up in person to demand their release from the facility but were unsuccessful. Three of the patients ultimately obtained court orders demanding their release and were finally freed when sheriff's deputies arrived and escorted them out, the lawsuits said.

Under Arkansas law, patients can be held involuntarily for up to 72 hours if they're deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, so long as they are evaluated by a physician within the first 24 hours. Medical facilities must obtain a court order to hold patients beyond 72 hours.

Bryant Crooks, one of the attorneys representing the former patients, told Insider that none of that happened for his clients.

"In none of these cases — even when an involuntary hold was strategically applied to keep people held — were they ever evaluated by a doctor to determine whether they were a danger themselves or others," Crooks said. "It was just done solely for the purpose of keeping them there and to stop the efforts to get them out."

One patient alleged that Hyatt's staff tried to intimidate her into staying longer even while deputies escorted her out. The staff threatened to force her to stay for 45 days unless she voluntarily signed back in to the facility, the lawsuit said.

Another patient, who was brought to the facility in March 2022 after mentioning passing thoughts of suicide, hired an attorney who initially wrote Northwest Health a letter demanding her release and stating the patient was being held against her will.

A charge nurse waved the letter around while laughing, the patient alleges in the lawsuit. "This legal stuff doesn't work here," the nurse shouted, according to court documents.

Aaron Cash, another lawyer on the team, told Insider he once emailed Hyatt a copy of a court order demanding the release of a patient. Hyatt responded by mocking the college Cash attended and insulting "the repurposed dentist's office you're working out of," according to a copy of the email provided to Insider.

Hyatt is under investigation for Medicaid and Medicare fraud

Hyatt is also under investigation by Arkansas state officials for Medicaid and Medicare fraud and has been suspended from the Arkansas Medicaid Program, according to public records obtained by the Arkansas Advocate. Hyatt has not been criminally charged.

The state probe is reviewing Hyatt's practice of billing Medicaid at the highest possible reimbursement rate, despite never physically seeing or examining the patients, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by the Advocate.

Hyatt was an influential psychiatrist in Arkansas, having been appointed to the Arkansas State Medical Board in 2019 by the former governor Asa Hutchinson, and later elected chairman. Hyatt also owns his own practice, Pinnacle Premier Psychiatry.

The local TV station 5NEWS, which has also covered the patients' lawsuits, reported that Northwest terminated Hyatt's contract in May last year, and that Hyatt resigned from his role as chairman of the state medical board in early March.

Hyatt and Northwest Health are also named as codefendants in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in 2021. The lawsuit accused Hyatt of "prematurely and inappropriately" discharging a suicidal patient without counseling the patient or his family on the severity of his condition. The patient died by suicide the day after being discharged, and the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in August.

Northwest did not respond to Insider's request for comment on the wrongful-death lawsuit, but in court filings, the hospital has denied the allegations. Hyatt has also denied the wrongful-death allegations in court filings.

Source: Michelle Mark “7 patients allege an Arkansas psychiatrist imprisoned them in an inpatient facility. Sheriff's deputies had to help 3 of them escape.” Insider.com, Apr. 4, 2023, URL: https://www.insider.com/arkansas-psychiatrist-imprisoned-patients-in-a-psych-facility-lawsuits-2023-3