Waaytv.com, Stephen Gallien, April 1, 2022
A federal grand jury has indicted a Huntsville man in a multimillion-dollar health care fraud scheme.
John Hornbuckle, president and CEO of QBR LLC, is charged with health care fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, and money-laundering conspiracy. The indictment alleges Hornbuckle paid doctors to refer patients for electrodiagnostic testing from 2012 to 2018.
The indictment lists four doctors as being involved in the scheme — two from Valley Center for Nerve Studies and Rehabilitation in Huntsville, which billed patients' insurers and interpreted the testing results in exchange for a cut of the money received from insurers; a doctor at a pain clinic in Rainbow City that was paid for referring patients; and Dr. Mark Murphy, who operated pain clinics in Tennessee and Alabama.
Murphy is the only doctor named in the indictment, which says he was paid more than $1 million in kickbacks after federal health care programs were billed more than $8 million for tests performed on Murphy's patients.
In total, health care benefit programs, including at least one private insurance company and multiple federal programs, were billed more than $20 million for testing that the patients didn't need, according to the indictment.
Murphy and his wife were recently convicted in another health care fraud scheme. He's scheduled for sentencing Aug. 30.