A Thornton-based eye clinic will pay a $250,000 fine as part of a settlement with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office for bilking the state’s Medicaid program by charging for thousands of corrective lenses it never delivered to patients.
Vista Eye Care is accused of billing the state for two sets of lenses on nearly 3,000 claims while providing only one set to patients. As part of the six-year fraud authorities uncovered, the clinic provided aspherical lenses for children but billed the state for unnecessary spherical lenses that were never created.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced the settlement Tuesday.
“We all pay the costs of Medicaid fraud as taxpayers, but the people who are hurt most by Medicaid fraud are the Coloradans who lean on the program to pay for things like prescription lenses for their kids,” Weiser said in a statement.
He credited Vista Eye Care with cooperating “throughout the investigation” and said the settlement “will ensure the state is not harmed financially.”
In Tuesday’s release, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office explained that Medicaid provides eligible Coloradans and their dependents with vision coverage for children and adults under the age of 20. Benefits include one pair of frames and two lenses, including lower-cost spherical lenses meant for people with relatively lower prescriptions. Benefits also cover more expensive aspherical lenses, which are prescribed for those with higher prescriptions.
The fraud, Weiser said, took place between 2019 and this year. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Vista will pay the state $100,000 immediately and then follow up with two $75,000 payments on the first and second anniversaries of the agreement.
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