A clinical social worker, known among her colleagues as the “Five Minute Queen,” has been sentenced for her role in a scheme that defrauded federal, state, and private health care insurers. Acting United States Attorney Sara Miron Bloom announced that Mi Ok Song Bruining, aged 64, will serve three years of supervised release. The first three months will be under home detention with electronic monitoring.
In November 2023, Bruining pled guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. She admitted to orchestrating a plan at Recovery Connections Centers of America, Inc. (RCCA) in Providence that deprived substance abuse disorder patients in Rhode Island and Massachusetts of necessary counseling and treatment services while defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurers out of over $3.5 million.
Bruining and others under her supervision regularly submitted false claims for psychotherapy sessions that were shorter than billed. Known for her swift patient consultations at RCCA, she billed 45-minute sessions after spending only 5-10 minutes with patients. Sometimes these sessions consisted merely of one question before concluding.
Court information revealed that Bruining instructed counselors to record session notes in 45-minute intervals without specifying AM or PM start times. This omission obscured the fact that more patients were seen than possible within an hour. She also advised counselors to duplicate previous visit notes into new entries to create seemingly complete billing records. Consequently, many patient notes billed by RCCA were identical duplicates.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy sentenced Bruining to three years of supervised release including three months of home detention with electronic monitoring, along with 100 hours of community service and restitution payment of $100,000.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Sara Miron Bloom and Kevin Love Hubbard. It was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Additional assistance came from the IRS, Customs and Border Protection, and the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General.