Just about every Tuesday morning around 7:30, John McCreary of Poway can be found waiting for Dr. James Novak’s office to open. Almost always, McCreary said, he’s the first one there.

Novak’s practice is listed as the only one in the San Diego area offering Trina Health’s “Artificial Pancreas Treatment,” a four-hour IV insulin infusion procedure for people with diabetes. Some people like McCreary, 69, who has wrestled with diabetic nerve pain for years, said they think the procedure is working for them.

Since he started going to Novak for the infusions last summer, he said the infusions have been effective. They have made the painful tingling in his hands — “like I was just constantly grabbing on to a barrel cactus” — almost disappear, McCreary said. He said his Medicare coverage and his supplemental plan from Colonial Penn Life Insurance Co. have paid for everything.

McCreary said he is supposed to go today for his infusion. He hasn’t heard that anything will change at the clinic since the news last week that Trina founder and CEO G. Ford Gilbert was indicted on fraud and bribery charges in Alabama.

“I guess it’s going to be a wait and see situation,” he said.

Gilbert is accused of bribery, health care fraud and wire fraud, among other charges, in what federal prosecutors call a “public corruption scheme.” He is accused of paying an Alabama politician to try to get legislation passed that would have required an insurance plan there to pay for his infusions. The plan and Medicare had previously denied coverage, based on the lack of scientific proof that IV insulin infusions actually benefit patients. The legislation never passed. Gilbert and two other defendants are due in court on April 18. Read more.

State Rep. Jack Williams, R-Vestavia Hills, and lobbyist Martin J. “Marty” Connors of Alabaster recently were indicted on public corruption chargesalong with G. Ford Gilbert of Carmichael, California. The charges concern allegations of a scheme to require Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama to cover diabetes treatments provided by a company Gilbert owns. inewsource has spent months investigating Gilbert and his practices in promoting what he calls a “miraculous” procedure for reversing the complications of diabetes. These are the first two stories from that investigation.

By Cheryl Clark, inewsource

Just imagine: A nonsurgical treatment that helps millions of people with complications from diabetes restore vision, repair damaged kidneys, and reverse heart disease and cognitive decline. A treatment that heals wounds in their legs and feet, repairs damage from stroke, and eliminates a common type of diabetic nerve pain called neuropathy.

That’s what lawyer G. Ford Gilbert and his network of Trina Health clinics have been promising with his IV insulin infusions offered through his Sacramento-based company. The Trina CEO calls the procedure “miraculous,” and the first “real change” in treatment for people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes since the 1921 discovery of insulin.

Gilbert has not been deterred by the nation’s top experts in diabetes who aggressively debunk his procedure, calling it outright fraud and a scam. Nor has he seemed daunted by Medicare and some private insurance companies, which have refused to pay for outpatient insulin infusion procedures because they lack sufficient evidence of medical benefit.

The American Diabetes Association dissuades patients from seeking Gilbert’s branded Artificial Pancreas Treatment, saying people with diabetes are a particularly vulnerable population.

Despite these obstacles, Gilbert has openly marketed his infusion protocols for years, expanding across 17 states, even as investigations, audits and payment denials have shut down many of his clinics.

Now his Trina Health operation faces a new threat. A federal grand jury in Alabama indicted Gilbert on charges of fraud and bribery in a failed scheme that prosecutors said was intended to get a state law passed to force coverage of Trina infusions. Since the indictment was unsealed, the clinic in the Bronx has taken the Trina logo off its website and the Las Vegas clinic stopped offering the treatments.

Over the years, Gilbert and his clinics have billed Medicare and private insurers untold millions of dollars using a method that regulators and health plans said was incorrect and played a role in the Alabama criminal charges.

Battles over coverage of new treatments and drugs are not uncommon, but what makes the Trina Health conflict unusual is how its network of clinics has thrived despite disagreements over their worth.
Read more.

Hustling Hope: San Diego Doctor Runs Controversial Diabetes Clinic

By Cheryl Clark, inewsource

Just about every Tuesday morning around 7:30, John McCreary of Poway can be found waiting for Dr. James Novak’s office to open. Almost always, McCreary said, he’s the first one there.

Novak’s practice is listed as the only one in the San Diego area offering Trina Health’s “Artificial Pancreas Treatment,” a four-hour IV insulin infusion procedure for people with diabetes. Some people like McCreary, 69, who has wrestled with diabetic nerve pain for years, said they think the procedure is working for them.

Since he started going to Novak for the infusions last summer, he said the infusions have been effective. They have made the painful tingling in his hands — “like I was just constantly grabbing on to a barrel cactus” — almost disappear, McCreary said. He said his Medicare coverage and his supplemental plan from Colonial Penn Life Insurance Co. have paid for everything.

McCreary said he is supposed to go today for his infusion. He hasn’t heard that anything will change at the clinic since the news last week that Trina founder and CEO G. Ford Gilbert was indicted on fraud and bribery charges in Alabama.

“I guess it’s going to be a wait and see situation,” he said.

Gilbert is accused of bribery, health care fraud and wire fraud, among other charges, in what federal prosecutors call a “public corruption scheme.” He is accused of paying an Alabama politician to try to get legislation passed that would have required an insurance plan there to pay for his infusions. The plan and Medicare had previously denied coverage, based on the lack of scientific proof that IV insulin infusions actually benefit patients. The legislation never passed. Gilbert and two other defendants are due in court on April 18. Read more.