The Little Rock Division of the FBI is looking for potential victims of a psychiatrist accused by hundreds of patients of holding them against their will at an inpatient mental health unit at Northwest Medical Center in Springdale, the bureau announced Tuesday.

Dr. Brian Hyatt ran the hospital’s Behavioral Health Unit until his termination in 2022. He also chaired the Arkansas State Medical Board until 2023. That’s when disturbing allegations began emerging that Hyatt had been improperly confining patients in the locked mental health ward — or holding them for days longer than appropriate — for the purpose of overbilling Medicaid and other insurers. He rarely saw the patients in his unit face-to-face, according to state investigators.

Hyatt was suspended from Arkansas’s Medicaid progra

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