OC health agency official placed on leave after criticizing oversight of COVID vendor ...Middle East

News by : (The Orange County Register) -

The Orange County Health Care Agency’s top compliance officer, who called out the agency’s oversight of a COVID testing vendor that may have double-billed the county, has been placed on paid leave.

Chief compliance officer Kelly Sabet conducted an internal probe last year into the practices of 360 Clinic, which operated drive-thru testing sites for the county during the pandemic. Sabet’s review found that the county had paid more than once for the same claims as well as for services already covered by insurance companies.

County health officials would not say why Sabet was put on leave, calling it a personnel matter. Sabet’s total compensation is listed at $269,123 in 2024, according to the public pay database Transparent California.

Her review last year identified multiple cases of the county paying twice on the same claim from 360 Clinic.

The probe also showed that health care staff had concerns about 360 Clinic but were told to pay the company anyway, under instructions by former Supervisor Andrew Do. Do was sentenced in June 2025 to 60 months in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of accepting more than $800,000 in bribes in exchange for diverting $10 million in pandemic relief money, mostly to a nonprofit that employed his daughter.

In a June 2025 memo to Health Care Agency Director Veronica Kelley, Sabet noted that county staff failed to report its suspicions of abuse by 360 Clinic to the compliance office and fell short in overseeing the county’s $5 million contract with the vendor.

“It is imperative the (Office of Compliance) is included in these discussions to ensure the issues are appropriately investigated and addressed in real time,” said the memo, which recommended that employees be retrained on how to report suspected fraud, waste and abuse.

Much of the problem was with the “uncollectible” reports, a list of claims submitted by 360 Clinic to the county after they were turned down by insurance carriers.

“This raises serious concerns regarding the validity of all claims outlined in the uncollectable reports submitted by 360 Clinic,” the probe concluded.

“Based on the Office of Compliance review of the documentation, it appears there was a lack of appropriate reconciling of the uncollectable reports submitted by 360 Clinic as evidenced by the same service being requested for reimbursement on multiple reports,” the memo said.

The report suggested that this same method may have been used to double-bill the county and the federal government.

“The Office of Compliance strongly suspects 360 Clinic may have obtained payment from (the federal Health Resources and Services Administration) for claims 360 Clinic included on the uncollectable reports and subsequently received payment from (the county) Health Care Agency,” the memo said.

Sabet called for a full audit into 360 Clinic’s dealings with the county. Those contracts are being reviewed as part of a $1.3 million forensic audit of 2,500 county contracts by Weaver and Tidwell. A report on the phase of the audit that includes 360 Clinic is due at the end of this month.

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The attorney for 360 Clinic did not return two phone calls and a text message seeking comment.

The clinic also was accused in a whistleblower lawsuit of scheming to illegally solicit kickbacks from doctors and defraud federal health programs. The suit by a former employee, which is pending, outlined the alleged plot to double-bill government agencies and collect kickbacks from doctors in exchange for referrals.

The COVID testing company was formed in 2020 at the height of the pandemic by Vince Tien, who ran a family-owned home nursing and hospice business, and his brother, Gary Nguyen, along with David Ngo, according to the suit.

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