Hospital Co-Founder Pleads Guilty in Forest Park Kickback Case

Friday, July 27, 2018 | 0

Federal prosecutors have announced another guilty plea in the wide-ranging Texas hospital kickback scheme that led to the indictment of 21 people, including doctors, hospital officials and one well-known workers' compensation attorney.

Court records show that Alan Andrew Beauchamp, a co-founder of Forest Park Medical Center chain, pleaded guilty this week to paying bribes and kickbacks in a scheme that referred patients to the hospital.

Beauchamp is the seventh defendant to make a guilty plea in the case, which is set to go to trial Oct. 22, according to a local news report.

Beauchamp faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to  $250,000, the plea agreement shows. The kickback scheme involved as much as $40 million in bribes and is similar to the recent Pacific Hospital of Long Beach case in California, in which former hospital owner Michael D. Drobot was sentenced to prison.

In the Texas case, claimants' attorney Royce Bicklein, of San Antonio, was indicted in the Forest Park investigation in 2016. In May, the judge in the case denied a motion by Bicklein to have the charges against him dismissed. He was summoned to appear in court in the case last week on a violation of the conditions of his pre-trial release, court records show.

Bicklein, chairman of the Texas Bar Association's Workers' Compensation Section, is set to lead a course at the bar's annual workers' comp legal education seminar, Aug. 23-24.