"5-Minute Queen" - Addiction Treatment Center Supervisor Gets Supervised Release in Healthcare Fraud

"5-Minute Queen" - Addiction Treatment Center Supervisor Gets Supervised Release in Healthcare Fraud

A clinical social worker nicknamed by her co-workers as the “Five Minute Queen” who, at times, substituted a one or two-sentence conversation for a billed 45-minute therapy session for her addicted patients, has been sentenced to three years of supervised release, the first three months to be served in home detention with electronic monitoring.

It marks the latest action related to the now-defunct Recovery Connections Centers of America. 

In January 2025, Michael Brier, the former owner of the chain who “embezzled and cheated his way through life,” was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison for defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurers out of millions of dollars.

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GoLocalProv first reported on the criminal travels of Brier in 2016, when Fox Point neighbors and business owners contacted GoLocal to raise concerns about Brier back in 2016, who at the time was opening a new Suboxone therapy clinic on Wickenden Street. 

READ: The Criminal Travels of Michael Brier: Fraudulent Tax Preparer to Suboxone Clinic Cheat

 

As GoLocal unveiled, Brier was a former Rhode Island tax preparer who had previously been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison in 2013 and was previously prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

 

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In pleading guilty in November 2023 to a charge of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, Mi Ok Song Bruining, 64, admitted that, while employed as a supervisor at Recovery Connections Centers of America, Inc. (RCCA) in Providence, she helped devise and execute a scheme that shortchanged Rhode Island and Massachusetts substance abuse disorder patients out of counseling and treatment services while, at the same time, defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurers out of more than $3.5 million dollars.

Bruining, and others working at her direction, routinely submitted false and fraudulent claims for psychotherapy and counseling services that did not occur for the length of time billed, consistently billing for far more patients than was possible for RCCA staff to have seen during office hours. Bruining, known at RCCA as the “Five Minute Queen” for her speed in seeing patients for so-called counseling sessions, billed for 45-minute sessions when she actually saw patients for no more than 5-10 minutes, at times asking patients only one question before she ended a session.

According to information presented to the court, to facilitate this fraud, Bruining directed counselors and others at RCCA to record in their notes that they were providing counseling in 45-minute intervals, but without listing AM or PM for the start time. Bruining gave this instruction so that it was not clear that they were seeing more patients than possible within a single hour. 

She also instructed other counselors to copy and paste the last visit’s note into each entry to make the bill look complete. As a result, many of the patient notes for patients billed by RCCA were simply identical cut-and paste copies of the same note.

Bruining was sentenced by U.S. District Court Mary S. McElroy to three years of supervised release, the first three months to be served in home detention with electronic monitoring, 100 hours of community service, and to pay restitution in the amount of $100,000.