Unethical practices at Wickstrom drug rehabs

November 27, 2020

I got started researching Per Wickstrom and his Michigan drug rehab centers in early 2017. I've compiled what I've learned in the story Drug rehab fraud in Michigan and I've tried to keep that story updated as new information comes along. Here, however, is a fresh look based entirely on new Internet research.

Wickstom is still running three drug rehab facilities in MI (there may also be some in Indiana and Florida):

A Forever Recovery- 216 St Marys Lake Rd in Battle Creek MI
Behavioral Rehabilitation Services- 355 W Mannsiding Rd in Harrison MI
Best Drug Rehabilitation- 300 Care Center Drive in Manistee MI

Over the years he has had facilities shut down for various reasons and then pop back up with different names, but they are run by the same organization and use the same tactics for getting patients into their facilities. Note that a lot of Wickstrom’s business activity is performed under the MI corporation U.S. Addiction Services.

Before diving into the unethical activity, it’s important to note that these rehab centers do in fact provide actual drug rehab care, and seem to have hundreds to thousands of patients go through their rehab programs successfully. The issue is the unethical and illegitimate activity that appears to occur alongside the real drug rehab care. I will highlight four unethical behaviors:

The facilities collect patients using fake drug abuse hotlines and websites that funnel people seeking help to their own facilities.
They allegedly promise prospective patients that the patient’s insurance will cover their entire care, when in fact it won’t, and may not cover any of it.
They set up a lab to do the bloodwork for their own rehab facilities.
They submit a massive amount of fake reviews for their own facilities.

Drug rehab centers have many ways of getting new patients, the most common (and ethical) is to be part of one or more insurance networks, and simply show up on an insurance-hosted search when someone in need is looking for a nearby rehab center that is covered by their insurance. Unfortunately Wickstrom’s facilities appear to take a different approach. They manage to get patients from all over the country to travel and sometimes even fly to their facilities. They do this not by being in-network or having great reviews, but by running a fake drug abuse phone hotline that masquerades as an abuse hotline intending to help people who are in distress and need care. Wickstrom’s organization clearly pays for their website and phone number to come up towards the top of Google and Facebook searches related to drug abuse help. Their largest one seems to be the https://drughelpline.org hotline. There is a Frequently Asked Questions section on their About Us page, and in an earlier version (9/23/2020), one of the questions was Who Answers the Phone? One of the four "partners" listed was US Additions Services (see below).

It is extremely unethical to run such a help hotline. Note that there is a federally-funded national drug abuse hotline run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) that people should really be using for unbiased help. The scariest part of this whole thing is that the people calling this fake hotline might be in serious need for help and thus are extremely vulnerable to this kind of scam. When a person calls one of these fake hotlines looking for help, the person running the hotline (who works for Wickstrom’s organization) gets the caller’s insurance information and then tells the caller that they found a facility fully covered by their insurance, when in reality they are just directing the caller to one of their own facilities, regardless of the insurance info provided to them. They then urge the caller to come to the facility ASAP, using the urgency of a 911 operator telling you to go to the ER, to give the caller as little time as possible to do further research. They even assist in finding the soonest flight and/or bus transportation to the facility. Based on some accounts it appears they run their own shuttle system to get patients from nearby cities/metro areas to the facilities, which would be a nice perk if all the other unethical stuff wasn’t happening. There is a 2016 court case that highlights this whole process, in which three VA patients fell into this trap after calling the fake hotline and ended up with tens of thousands of dollars owed at the end. Wickstrom sued the patients who refused to pay and the patients won the case.

The second issue is that they seem to, as a part of their normal operation, tell prospective patients that their insurance is going to fully cover their care. They take the person’s insurance information, and clearly don’t actually look it up, but then tell the patient that the rehab service will be fully covered. This is evident from the numerous reported cases online and in court cases. They claim to be an in-network facility when they really aren’t. It is unclear if they are (or were ever) in-network for any major insurance providers. Also, these facilities attempt to bill insurance every step along the way, regardless of them being out of network. There is even an article where Wickstrom’s organization sued Blue Cross after receiving a large amount of denied claims. This is comical considering the method they use of telling potential patients that their care will be fully covered by their insurance. After the caller has traveled to the rehab center and began their rehab program, (allegedly) they are told during care that their services are taken care of by insurance and then, once they leave, they are hit with an enormous bill. An example of this happening is seen in the referenced court case. There are also cases reported online of patients who, in the middle of their care, asked about what they owe, and they were told they don’t owe anything and insurance is covering it. The bill they then receive after service, which has everything properly itemized and dated, shows a balance early on in the program. I.e., information
	Per Wickstrom
about them owing money was intentionally withheld from them when they asked about it at the time, and the rehab center waits until the patient has finished care before sharing any real financial/billing info. In the rehab center’s defense, telling a rehab patient in the middle of their program that they owe many thousands of dollars does not help matters. It could lead to them leaving the program early and get further involved with drugs or even cause self harm. But that is no excuse for lying to people about coverage. From the evidence online, it appears that Wickstrom’s organization attempts to get as much as they can from the patient’s insurance, and then afterwards they try to get as much as they can from the patient, suing patients who refuse to pay even if they have good reasons (e.g. being lied to every step along the way).

To make matters even worse, Per Wickstrom created his own lab (e.g. for running blood work), registered in FL, called First Fisher Laboratories, LLC. It’s registered using the 309 Jasmine Way, Clearwater FL address given for his wife in his divorce suit. Using this scheme, his MI rehab centers can both bill the patients directly as well as bill them through this lab for rehab-type lab services. Because Wickstrom’s organization has full control over this lab they run, they can bill whatever amount they want. The registered practice address for this lab is 11350 SW Village Pkwy Ste 310 Port St Lucie FL which is a fenced off and gated building. In the same building, in the next suite over on the same floor, is what appears to be a much more legitimate lab, Tsa Labs LLC, that is affiliated with other rehab centers. So even though there is no proof as to what exactly is going on, it’s possible that First Fisher Labs is not actually a lab, but instead just uses Tsa or some other lab in the building to do the blood work, but then charges an enormous “mark up” when they go to bill the rehab patients for lab services, and the patients can’t do anything about it - it’s required lab work.

Coincidence?

The last unethical thing they seem to do is use fake reviews, to make their facilities seem more legitimate. This YouTube video touring Behavioral Rehabilitation Services in Harrison, MI has, as of this writing, 41 comments. Nearly all appear to be written by newly made accounts with fake names, and they all have roughly the same format. Here is an example of a few:

They were all written at the same time and if you click any of the names you’ll see that the account was created the same time period the comment was made. Similarly, if you Google the name of any of these facilities with the word “reviews” after, you are likely to come by the www.rehabs.com review page for the facility. There are actually some negative reviews sprinkled in that appear legitimate, such as one person who claimed “There is no psychologist on staff, just a Dr that comes in 1-2 times a week for an hour or 2.” which is very concerning because a rehab center needs to have at least one doctor on site - at least during normal business hours. But many of the reviews appear like the YouTube comments, super fake and mass produced under fake names, like the following which was obviously not written by a patient who went through any rehab program, even a good one. It reads like a marketing person’s ad:

In the facility’s defense, there are some very positive reviews that appear legitimate. These are actual drug rehab facilities that are helping some number of people get over their addiction. They are not a pure scam. The facilities likely would not last very long if they were not effective. But that does not make up for the use of fake hotlines, lying about insurance coverage, withholding billing information, using a lab owned by the same organization, and posting fake reviews. There are many legitimate rehab centers out there that don’t need to use this kind of unethical behavior to get business.

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