The owner of an Essex County health center that closed in January 2024 has been indicted on charges of health care fraud and accused of practicing medicine without a license. <\/p>\n
Esney Davis-Sharpe, 63, was performing gynecological services on patients at the Bessie Mae Women\u2019s Health Center in East Orange even though she wasn\u2019t licensed to practice medicine in New Jersey, according to a joint press release from the Office of the Attorney General, the Division of Criminal Justice, and the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor. <\/p>\n
Davis-Sharpe did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit health care claims fraud, unlicensed practice of medicine, health care claims fraud and Medicaid fraud. <\/p>\n
One of her employees is also accused of performing gynecological services on patients without a medical license since 2021. The employee is allegedly enrolled as a medical student at Suburban Community Hospital in Norristown, Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the hospital did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The unlicensed practice of medicine at Bessie Mae Women\u2019s Health Center first drew the attention of authorities in August 2023.<\/p>\n
An investigation revealed that in addition to practicing medicine without the proper license, the health center was fraudulently billing for services. <\/p>\n
Authorities allege Bessie Mae submitted 2,500 claims to the New Jersey Medicaid Program from December 2020 to February 2024, submitting most of those claims under the names of two physicians without their permission, knowledge or consent.<\/p>\n
The state Department of Health sent Bessie Mae a cease-and-desist order two years ago instructing the clinic to stop providing all services. The East Orange facility has been closed since then. <\/p>\n
The case is being prosecuted by Deputy Attorneys General Sean O\u2019Connor and Lauren Aranguren for the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor – Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The owner of an Essex County health center that closed in January 2024 has been indicted on charges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-431786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}