The Vermont Attorney General’s Office is asking a court to force Brattleboro Retreat, a major Vermont psychiatric center, to hand over documents related to an investigation of health care fraud.

According to court documents, the Brattleboro Retreat is accused of submitting false claims for payment made to the Vermont Medicaid program for adult inpatient treatments. The attorney general’s office wants the Brattleboro Retreat to hand over particular documents related to an investigation for potential health care fraud.

submitting false claims for payment made to the Vermont Medicaid program for services provided through the Retreat’s Adult Inpatient Treatment Program in 2018 onward,” wrote Douglas Keehn, Assistant Attorney General and the director of the Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit

The Vermont Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse unit is overseeing the investigation.

According to documents, the unit noticed “suspicious changes” to the retreat’s Medicaid billing practices in March of 2020.

One of their investigations found that the retreat “engaged in several deficient Medicaid billing practices, potentially including an upcoding fraud, where a provider bills a higher code than documented services indicate.”

In a statement, the Brattleboro Retreat says “The retreat works hard to cooperate fully with any and all requests from our regulators. However, we are advised that some information requested by the state falls outside the scope of the CID rules.”

The Vermont Attorney Office had no further comments beyond the filing.

The Brattleboro Retreat is a non-profit mental health and addiction treatment center.

The retreat was founded in 1934 and was the first facility in Vermont that provided care for the mentally ill.

The organization is also a member of the ivy leagues hospital network and is one of the first ten private psychiatric hospitals in the nation.