Hustling Hope explored a national network of “Trina Health” clinics that promoted a “miraculous” infusion procedure said to reverse complications from diabetes: neuropathy, hypertension, heart disease, kidney/liver damage, wounds leading to amputations and cognitive impairment. Even erectile dysfunction would be history after a few four-hour weekly sessions. And, the clinics advertised, Medicare and health plans covered it.
The investigation found, right at the start, that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services after an exhaustive review in 2009, had issued a national decision there was insufficient evidence the IV procedure, dubbed “OIVIT,” benefited patients and declined to pay for it. Claims were to be submitted under a non-reimbursed G code. Insurance companies generally follow Medicare’s rules. Nevertheless, Trina clinics had popped up in 16 states, including San Diego where a prominent research endocrinologist suggested reporter Clark take a critical look.
Coincidentally, Clark had just posted her story about a spike in diabetes-related amputations. The Facebook algorithm—keying on the word amputations—inserted a Trina clinic ad into her feed. Posted comments came mostly from “patients,” but one came from a verified Kaiser endocrinologist who called it “a scam.” Nationally recognized diabetes experts, including some who formally studied OIVIT, told Clark the procedure was bogus, and outright health fraud. Some said it could cause harm because a process in which patients get alternating doses of insulin and glucose could result in dangerous hypoglycemic or hyperglycemic episodes. So how had these clinics flourished?
Clark investigated the business behind the procedure, and Trina’s founder, Sacramento lawyer G. Ford Gilbert. Investors bought franchises for $300,000 and up, and Gilbert submitted claims to payers on their behalf. Instead of the unpaid G code CMS set up, Gilbert billed a formula of up to 10 office-based CPT codes that disguised the infusions as something else. The series included:
• Details of how a big name in medicine, Dr. Jack Lewin, lent credibility to Gilbert for investors and patients. Ostensibly he was trying to start a proper trial saying his mind was not made up, but was seen on three New York TV shows saying it worked, was “amazing,” though he acknowledged never having treated a patient, read one’s chart or talked with their doctors.
• The Montana drama, where the inewsource team flew/drove to meet the Briggs, the county coroner and his wife who bought a Trina franchise from Gilbert, but now were $1 million in debt when health plans and Medicare stopped paying. PBS NewsHour aired this segment about the rift between the Briggs and the town’s only physicians who refused to back their clinic. Briggs died after he refused to seek their care.
• One patient’s description of going into a diabetic coma after an infusion session, her blood glucose level a dangerous 400. As the story was days from publication, federal officials arrested Gilbert in a related Alabama political bribery scheme. Our series went on line. Clinics across the country promptly closed or rebranded. Payers who hadn’t realized the procedure was OIVIT demanded their money back. And several investors polished lawsuits against Gilbert. Some patients were convinced Trina saved their lives. But Clark learned they had started new drugs or wore new glucose monitors, right about the same time they started Trina.