A psychiatrist and, incredibly, the former chairman of the Arkansas Medical Board, Hyatt is now the target of over 200 lawsuits for malpractice and fraudulent involuntary institutionalization—what is essentially legalized kidnapping for profit.
And that’s only the beginning of his problems. Hyatt also faces upcoming state prosecution for Medicaid fraud.
But wait—there’s more! And it’s painfully ironic: Arkansas’ leading psychiatrist has now been locked up himself—for being nuts.
Hyatt “never had even a single conversation with the vast majority of patients under his care.”
The commitment order applies the term “gravely disabled” to Hyatt, a phrase lifted directly from the state involuntary commitment legislation Hyatt himself misused to wrongfully institutionalize so many.
Hyatt, 52, who has been embroiled in a messy divorce, was arrested twice in 2025—once for public intoxication and once for DUI. Now, like his multitude of victims, he has been involuntarily committed for 45 days after he was found to be severely paranoid and engaging in manic conduct.
Could it be a sneaky tactic to influence his divorce proceedings, an attempt to build an insanity defense for when he faces felony charges in court, or has Hyatt really flipped out and gone stark, staring, screaming mad?
Either way, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. At least now he knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the psychiatric torture he forced patients to endure—so that he could profit—for so long.
Starting in 2018 and until he was fired in 2022, Hyatt served as medical director at Northwest Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Unit in Springdale.
In May, his divorce was finalized, with his ex-wife taking him to the cleaners: She got the house, she got the child, and she left him with just his clothing and a motorcycle, a settlement that Hyatt’s attorney called “so one-sided as to be unconscionable.”
Hyatt’s wife’s “statements regarding the defendant’s mental health were true,” a court filing read. “He had been exhibiting concerning mental health symptoms since a fall in November 2024, which were increasingly severe and exacerbated since April 2025.”
Meanwhile, his attorney claims Hyatt’s wife told Hyatt the divorce was “merely a sham to protect her, their son and their marital assets from seizure in ongoing litigation being pursued against him.”
It’s hard to keep the stories straight, but there’s little question that Hyatt will face serious legal trouble when his trial begins in October—like, behind bars kind of trouble.
Gregory McKay, senior special agent for the Arkansas Attorney General’s Medicare Fraud Unit, has stated that Hyatt wasn’t treating patients at nearly the level billed, that staff members he supervised were instructed to submit falsified Medicaid claims “on Dr. Hyatt’s behalf” and that they were directed to bill for the highest level of service, though Hyatt rarely even showed up at the hospital—and when he did, avoided patients like the plague.
Though Hyatt claimed he had daily visits with patients, a whistleblower told investigators he had little to no contact with them, and was only in the hospital for short periods each day. Surveillance video taken over 45 days showed Hyatt entering patient rooms only 17 times, for a total of less than 10 minutes. Nevertheless, Hyatt was pulling down $1,367 per day, according to the state attorney general’s office, while also profiting from his own private practice, Pinnacle Premier Psychiatry.
A search warrant affidavit states that Hyatt “never had even a single conversation with the vast majority of patients under his care.”
“It was like a nightmare. If I cried, then I was again threatened with more time.”
Worse, Hyatt had been falsely and involuntarily institutionalizing patients in a grab for easy Medicaid money. Northwest Medical Center’s parent company agreed to repay over $1 million to the state Medicaid program. A state audit found that documentation for their claims “did not justify or support the medical necessity requirement for hospitalizations,” according to a report from Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin.
“I think that they were running a scheme to hold people as long as possible, to bill their insurance as long as possible before kicking them out the door and then filling the bed with someone else,” said Aaron Cash, an attorney representing many of Hyatt’s involuntary commitment victims.
Cash had to repeatedly obtain court orders to force the release of Hyatt’s clients.
In response to one of Cash’s release orders, Hyatt responded, “Our facility is in receipt of your silly demands and libelous commentary regarding someone you claim to represent who is purportedly within our facility.”
It took two court orders to finally obtain that patient’s release—and yes, she was in there all right, no matter what Hyatt said.
One Hyatt patient, Shannon Williams, said she was taken into custody, stripped and injected with a sedative against her will. “It was as if I was in a prison,” Williams said. “It was like a nightmare. If I cried, then I was again threatened with more time.”
The hulking, bearded Hyatt even hired men larger and more threatening than him to keep incarcerated patients in line. One male patient suffered broken ribs when he was slammed into the floor for refusing to strip.
From January 2019 to June 2022, Medicaid paid out more than $800,000 to Hyatt’s facility, according to the attorney general’s search warrant. “Dr. Hyatt is a clear outlier, and his claims are so high they skew the averages on certain codes for the entire Medicaid program in Arkansas,” reads the document.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights filed a complaint against Hyatt, noting that his Medicare billings were “nearly four times higher than those of the average psychiatrist.” Consequently, in 2023, Hyatt’s Medicaid billing privileges were suspended and he was arrested on a warrant related to Medicaid fraud.
“I am not resigning because of any wrongdoing on my part but so that the Board may continue its important work without delay or distraction,” Hyatt wrote—outrageously—in May of 2023 when he quit the Arkansas Medical Board. “I will continue to defend myself in the proper forum against the false allegations being made against me.”
“Dr. Hyatt continues to maintain his innocence and denies the allegations,” his attorneys have said.
Terminating his contract in 2022, Northwest Medical Center released the following statement: “We believe hospital personnel complied in all respects with Arkansas law, which heavily relies on the treating physician’s assessment of the patient, including in decisions related to involuntary commitment.” The “treating physician,” of course, in this case would be Hyatt.
Cash said some patients “did need help. And what they got was hurt.”
The bottom line is this: Hyatt is a dark, horrid example of just why America needs to clear the scammers, fraudsters, con artists and lunatics out of the so-called “mental health” money hustle—especially those in positions to deprive citizens of their liberty.
The UN Human Rights Office and the World Health Organization have already called for an end to involuntary incarceration in psychiatric institutions. Good.
America’s taxpayers, its Medicare and Medicaid recipients, those with genuine need for help—in fact, every honest person in this country—must demand that our nation does the same thing.
Now.
