NEWPORT — A former Newport-based mental health counselor has been sentenced to two years’ probation after pleading guilty to defrauding Medicaid and unauthorized practice of psychotherapy.
Gretchen E. Lewis, 58, of Williamstown, who operated a solo practice providing mental health and substance abuse counseling services in Newport, was ordered to pay $22,750 in restitution to Vermont Medicaid, complete 100 hours of community service, and is prohibited from working as a Medicaid service provider.
Judge Rory Thibault, presiding in Vermont Superior Court, Orleans Criminal Division, imposed the sentence after Lewis pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges. If she violates probation terms, Lewis faces up to one year in jail.
The criminal charges directly resulted from Lewis violating the terms of a 2021 disciplinary order that prohibited her from working more than 40 hours per week. Despite this restriction, Lewis routinely billed Medicaid for services exceeding this limit.
In 2022 alone, Lewis billed in excess of 40 hours weekly for more than 40 weeks, with her highest billing reaching 60.5 hours in a single week. The joint investigation by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit and the Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation (OPR) also revealed Lewis “billed Medicaid for other unauthorized services and failed to maintain patient treatment records meeting even minimal professional standards.”
Lewis’s professional misconduct began years before her criminal charges. A November 2023 consent order from OPR detailed extensive ethical violations with multiple clients, including boundary violations, confidentiality breaches, and dual relationships.
In one case, Lewis was found to have left a mobility-impaired client at a restaurant without transportation home. In another incident, she transported clients to an organization that couldn’t help them, leaving them stranded in snowy conditions without scheduled medications.
Lewis, who was licensed as both a clinical mental health counselor and an alcohol and drug abuse counselor, was also found to have allowed clients unauthorized access to her office when she wasn’t present and permitted a homeless client to sleep there.
The 2023 consent order indefinitely suspended Lewis’s alcohol and drug abuse counselor license for a minimum of two years.
