An anesthesiologist at the center of the $200 million Forest Park Medical Center fraud has been sentenced to five and a half years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $82.9 million in restitution. Richard Ferdinand Toussaint, Jr. — who is already serving a 41-month federal prison sentence for a separate healthcare fraud conviction — pleaded guilty to his involvement in the Forest Park scheme in March 2018, admitting to one count of conspiracy to pay healthcare bribes and kickbacks and one count of illegal remuneration under the Travel Act. The 66-month sentence will be served concurrent to the 41-month sentence. Dr. Toussaint, 61, acknowledged that he teamed up with co-defendant Dr. Wade Neal Barker, a bariatric surgeon, to launch Forest Park Medical Center, a physician-owned hospital for bariatric and spinal surgery patients, in 2008. Together with Forest Park hospital manager Alan Andrew Beauchamp, Dr. Toussaint, Dr. Barker, and their colleagues conspired to steer lucrative patients — particularly those with high-reimbursing, out-of-network private insurance — to the now defunct hospital by paying surgeons for referrals. Most of the kickbacks, which totaled more than $40 million, were disguised as consulting fees or “marketing money,” doled as a percentage of surgeries each doctor referred to Forest Park, Dr. Toussaint admitted.
