MUSKOGEE – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced today that Dr. Bryan Andrew Blanck, a Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM) who formerly owned and operated the Valley View Foot and Ankle Center, located in Ada, Oklahoma, has agreed to pay $7,000,000 to the United States to resolve allegations he violated provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA).
The settlement resolves allegations that Dr. Blanck submitted false claims to the VA Choice/Patient-Centered Community Care programs for excessive medical services and for higher levels of service than what were medically reasonable or necessary for veterans receiving bioengineered skin substitutes and skin substitute related treatment.
Dr. Blanck accepted and treated veterans at the Valley View Foot and Ankle Clinic.
An audit conducted by the VA revealed that from Feb. 14, 2017 – June 14, 2018, Dr. Blanck was the #1 billing podiatrist out of 4,014 podiatrists nationwide in VA Choice and accounted for 23.7% of total podiatrist billings in the VA Choice program.
During the same time period, Dr. Blanck was the #1 billing provider out of 280,073 individual providers in the entire VA Choice program across the nation. These high billing numbers sparked an investigation by the VA-Office of Inspector General.
