Hewak Foot Clinic in the Spencer Creek Clinic building at 60 Hatt St. in Dundas. The clinic, named after chiropodist Thomas Hewak but now owned by CBI Healthcare, recently removed Hewak from its website. Hewak faces allegations of fraud from the College of Chiropodists of Ontario.
Cathie Coward
Thomas Hewak has worked as a chiropodist at the Hamilton Foot Clinic and the Foot and Ankle Institute at 1508 Upper James Street in Hamilton for years. But both clinics have removed his name from their websites after the College of Chiropodists of Ontario accused him of generating nearly a million dollars in dishonest insurance claims.
Cathie Coward
The College of Chiropodists of Ontario have accused local chiropodist Thomas Hewak, pictured here in a photo used on the websites for the Burlington Foot Clinic, the Hamilton Foot Clinic and the Hewak Foot Clinic, of writing dishonest prescriptions for expensive custom made footwear that generated nearly $1 million in insurance claims. His name and photo were removed from the clinic websites after The Spectator began to inquire about the allegations.
Hamilton area chiropodist facing allegations of fraud
Thomas Hewak, who faces a disciplinary hearing in June, is accused of generating nearly a million dollars in dishonest insurance claims through dishonest prescriptions for expensive, custom-made footwear.
Hewak Foot Clinic in the Spencer Creek Clinic building at 60 Hatt St. in Dundas. The clinic, named after chiropodist Thomas Hewak but now owned by CBI Healthcare, recently removed Hewak from its website. Hewak faces allegations of fraud from the College of Chiropodists of Ontario.
A Hamilton chiropodist, facing a disciplinary hearing over alleged insurance fraud worth nearly a million dollars, has been erased from the websites of the foot clinics he has worked at for over a decade, including the one bearing his name.
Thomas Hewak is accused by the College of Chiropodists of Ontario of generating the pricey insurance claims through thousands of dishonest prescriptions for orthotics and orthotic shoes. Most of that money was sent directly to Hewak.
For more than two years, Hewak was prescribing expensive, specialized inserts and shoes for his patients, often without proper examinations or necessary paperwork at the clinics he worked at in Hamilton and Burlington, according to the college.
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Some 54 patients ended up buying multiple pairs of orthotic shoes and inserts over a 32-month span. Many of them exhausted their insurance coverage, which triggered an audit by insurance provider Green Shield Canada, the college says.
That investigation ultimately led to the college taking action against Hewak.
The College of Chiropodists of Ontario have accused local chiropodist Thomas Hewak, pictured here in a photo used on the websites for the Burlington Foot Clinic, the Hamilton Foot Clinic and the Hewak Foot Clinic, of writing dishonest prescriptions for expensive custom made footwear that generated nearly $1 million in insurance claims. His name and photo were removed from the clinic websites after The Spectator began to inquire about the allegations.
Burlington Foot Clinic
Less than a week after The Spectator began to inquire about Hewak at the clinics where he worked, his bio was expunged from their websites. He was previously given top billing as a chiropodist on the websites for the Burlington Foot Clinic, the Hamilton Foot Clinic and the Foot and Ankle Institute in Hamilton, as well as the Dundas clinic named after him, the Hewak Foot Clinic.
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It is not clear if he still works at any of the clinics.
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The college alleges Hewak engaged in conduct that “would reasonably be regarded by members as disgraceful, dishonourable, or unprofessional.”
Hewak is scheduled to appear before a college disciplinary hearing on June 12. The allegations of the college have yet to be proven.
The college can suspend or revoke Hewak’s licence if a hearing tribunal finds he violated its standards of practice.
In an emailed statement to The Spectator from his lawyer, Hewak declined to comment.
A Spectator investigation found Hewak was part of a small group operating these clinics, and that ownership overlapped with the lab that made the shoes for Hewak’s patients at the centre of the college’s allegations.
According to the college, it received a complaint about Hewak from Green Shield in early January 2023.
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The company would not discuss its investigation into Hewak, but said it uses an algorithm to rapidly compare “claiming activities between providers and plan members to identify suspicious behaviours and claiming patterns.”
Green Shield then conducted a review of more than two thousand insurance claims for orthotics and footwear that Hewak had prescribed to patients from Jan. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2022.
Custom-made orthotics can cost between $300 and $900 per pair, and prescription shoes can be more expensive. Green Shield told the college the insurance plan for most of its clients covered two pairs of orthotics and two pairs of shoes.
“The total value of the claims was approximately $907,778.87,” says the college’s notice of hearing against Hewak. “As a result of the claims, $726,359.50 was paid directly in (Hewak’s) name via cheque or electronic funds transfer to the clinics.”
The insurance company found the volume of claims so suspicious that is launched its own probe. An audit of the claims found that “little to no chiropody services had been provided by (Hewak) to the plan members and/or their dependents,” claim the college hearing documents.
The audit also found “claims had been submitted to (Green Shield) for treatments purportedly provided on the same day from multiple locations and/or on days on which (Hewak) was not working at the clinics” — meaning prescriptions were dated for times when and places where Hewak was not present.
“We have full trust in the discipline committee of the College of Chiropodists of Ontario to take appropriate actions based on the investigations presented,” a Green Shield spokesperson said in an email.
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The college said most, if not all the shoes were made by Kinetic Orthopaedic and Orthotic Lab on Bigwin Road in Hamilton. Also called Koolab, it “is a company with common ownership with the clinics.”
The Hamilton Foot Clinic website says it has an “ownership affiliation” with the lab, but neither it nor the college documents provide details of that affiliation.
Thomas Hewak has worked as a chiropodist at the Hamilton Foot Clinic and the Foot and Ankle Institute at 1508 Upper James Street in Hamilton for years. But both clinics have removed his name from their websites after the College of Chiropodists of Ontario accused him of generating nearly a million dollars in dishonest insurance claims.
Cathie Coward
However, business records obtained by The Spectator found that, until more recently, the clinics and the lab were operated by the same small group of men, including Hewak.
At the centre of that arrangement are Hamilton-area businesspeople David Dick and Eric Nash, who have been attached to several physiotherapy and rehabilitation clinics in the Hamilton area for over a decade, often working with Hewak.
Their names appear as directors or senior officers in the records of all the businesses involved in the Hewak case. In some clinics, one man is listed as sole director, and in others they are listed together.
These records show that Dick operates DSD Management from the same address and phone number as the Hamilton Foot Clinic, which also shares an address with the Foot and Ankle Institute.
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Dick is also president of Koolab, as well as vice-president and secretary of the Hewak Foot Clinic in Dundas, where Hewak is listed as president and treasurer and Nash as a director.
Neither Dick nor Nash are named in the college allegations against Hewak. Those documents do not say how much of the insurance payouts to Hewak, if any, went to the clinics, the lab or its directors.
Business records also show the Burlington Foot Clinic and the Hewak Foot Clinic are now owned by Toronto-based health care giant CBI Healthcare, although it is not clear how recently the company acquired them.
In an emailed statement, a CBI spokesperson said the company is aware of the allegations against Hewak, who did “independent chiropody services at two CBI Health clinics.”
The company does not own the Hamilton Foot Clinic or Koolab.
Dick did not respond to interview requests from The Spectator, and Nash could not be reached for comment.
