Social workers and mental health clinicians who claim they were not paid by a billing company for services performed over the last quarter will meet this week with top state health officials.

Possibilities Counseling, an Auburn-based billing agency operated by Wendy Bergeron, announced it is closing at the end of October.

Gregg Frame, an attorney at Taylor McCormack and Frame in Portland, said more than 125 clinicians have contacted his firm seeking payment.

Frame said his firm intends to file a civil lawsuit seeking the money.

“We currently represent over 50 (health care workers) now, and it’s growing every hour when my staff takes intake,” Frame said Thursday.

He said his clients are out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We have clinicians who performed a service for the state. They contracted with the service (Possibilities Counseling) to do the billing for them.”

He said it appears that the state paid claims sent in by Possibilities Counseling.

“The state pays the service, and that’s where it ends,” he said. “We’re still peeling back this onion, but our understanding is the state has fully paid.”

Susan Dore Lamb, executive director of the Maine Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, alleged in a printed announcement that more than 500 Maine mental health caseworkers have not been paid for work they performed under contract with Possibilities Counseling.

“Nonpayment of bills dates back to December 2009, with most of the unpaid bills coming from June through September 2010,” Lamb’s announcement says. “Most of the clients are MaineCare clients. The therapists continue to see their clients.”

The meeting with state Health and Human Services Commissioner Brenda Harvey will be held in Jewett Hall Auditorium at the University of Maine at Augusta at 6 p.m. Thursday.

Dore’s announcement says Harvey will take questions and that more than 200 clinicians are expected to attend.

John Geismar, an attorney representing Bergeron, said she continues to seek payment for her clients.

“She is trying making every effort she possibly can to get the clinicians paid for the work they did in September and for prior periods,” Geismar said Friday.

But Geismar blamed the state for the problem.

“The state has not paid any of the claims she submitted on their behalf for the month of September,” he said.

John Martins, director of communications for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said the state has paid Possibilities Counseling more than $15 million since September 2009.

He said the state has paid claims in September that were filed properly.

The number of claims dropped sharply in August and September after the department issued a conditional license for Possibilities Counseling after finding a number of deficiencies during an Aug. 26 inspection.

Geismar said the agency billed $1 million to $1.2 million in health services per month.

Information about Thursday’s meeting is available by calling the Maine Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers at 622-7592 or e-mailing Lamb at naswmaine@naswmaine.org

As for any legal action, “our first goal is to get our foot in the door,” Frame said. “And then my sense is that, soon thereafter, we’d seek to certify as a class.”

 

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