African American-Owned Medical Practice Files $1 Million Discrimination Lawsuit Against Optum Over Denied Insurance Claims

UPPER MARLBORO, Maryland, April 23, 2024 – A Maryland pain management practice has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against healthcare giant Optum, alleging the company discriminated against the African American-owned business by wrongfully denying over $1 million in legitimate insurance claims while approving identical claims from non-minority owned practices.

Choice Pain & Rehabilitation Center, LLC, which operates eight pain management clinics throughout Maryland and serves thousands of patients, alleges that Optum began systematically rejecting its insurance reimbursement claims in January 2022 without any legitimate justification. The practice is owned by two African American physicians, Dr. Chukwuma Onyewu and Dr. Tristan Shockley.

According to the complaint, Optum's discriminatory practices resulted in approximately $466,837 in denied claims between January and May 2022. The practice was then forced to redirect its toxicology testing to other laboratories from June through December 2022, causing an additional loss of $595,684 in revenue.

The lawsuit alleges that while Optum rejected Choice Pain's claims, it continued to approve identical claims submitted by other toxicology labs serving the same geographic region. The complaint states that "Choice Pain's status as a minority-owned business is the only meaningful difference between it and the other toxicology labs that had their claims processed and approved by Optum Maryland."

The financial impact was devastating for the practice, forcing it to:

• Lay off more than a dozen employees;

• Take out high-interest loans to cover payroll and operating expenses; and

• Abandon several of its medical providers.

"This case highlights the ongoing challenges minority-owned healthcare practices face in receiving equal treatment from insurance administrators," said Jordan D. Howlette, Managing Attorney of Justly Prudent, the law firm representing Choice Pain. "The systematic denial of legitimate claims without justification, while approving identical claims from non-minority owned practices, represents exactly the type of discrimination that civil rights laws were designed to prevent."

This case is Choice Pain & Rehabilitation Center, LLC vs. Optum, Inc., et al. (Case No. C-16-CV-24-001926), filed in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County.