If Utah health officials wanted to provide free prenatal care to undocumented immigrants, they could have funded it with state dollars, says attorney Sam Meziani.

Instead, Utah avoided that politically charged debate and set up a system that some women who are undocumented immigrants used to tap federally funded care — with the aid of nine-digit enrollment numbers provided by the state.

Meziani argues the Baby Your Baby program essentially involved the state "providing Social Security numbers to noncitizens," and contends officials are wrong to target WestView Women's and Family Medical Center for alleged wrongdoing in getting women covered.

"Within this larger context," argues Meziani, "it is profoundly unfair for the state to attack WestView."

State authorities allege that an employee at the now-defunct West Valley City clinic coached undocumented immigrants to lie about their citizenship to obtain care from Baby Your Baby, a form of Medicaid that pays for up to two months of prenatal care for legal residents. No charges have been filed against clinic owners Goldie Dennison, her son Cydore Dennison — both represented by Meziani — and her daughter, LaRohnda Dennison. An investigation is ongoing.

Health officials last week vowed to revisit their decades-old practice of handing out nine-digit numbers to Baby Your Baby applicants who claimed to have forgotten, lost or never owned a Social Security number. The move came after it was revealed that some numbers handed to undocumented immigrants matched the Social Security numbers of people in New England.

LaRohnda Dennison points out that WestView didn't approve Baby Your Baby applications — workers trained by the Utah Department of Health did. Women apply at local health agencies, federally qualified community health centers and various hospitals.

In 2006, Dennison said, she asked health officials to explain why some Baby Your Baby patients had enrollment "pink cards" bearing "odd" Social Security numbers.

"She was told, 'It's not something that you need to be concerned about. If someone comes in with a valid Baby Your Baby card, you don't need to look beyond that,'" said Tara Isaacson, Dennison's attorney.

Now that the state is investigating WestView, "They're saying, 'You should have been concerned; you should have known what was going on,'" said Isaacson. "But LaRohnda didn't know … Why is it that LaRohnda's conduct is being characterized as criminal and the state health department's conduct isn't?"

Dennison has said if an employee coached patients, it wasn't with her knowledge or blessing.

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Disappearing patients • WestView had a high number of Baby Your Baby patients who later surfaced on Emergency Medicaid, which is open to noncitizens and pays for delivery costs.

That's unusual because patients who are eligible for Baby Your Baby are also eligible for traditional Medicaid, both reserved for legal residents.

But health department records indicate that issue isn't isolated to WestView. In 2009, about 7,500 pregnant women enrolled in Baby Your Baby.

Of those, 587 — almost 8 percent — were issued temporary enrollment numbers by the state. And only 25 of the 587 wound up on traditional Medicaid. Another 35 surfaced on Emergency Medicaid.

What happened to the rest is unclear. Some women may have miscarried, left Utah, had home deliveries or lucked into private coverage, explained Kolbi Young, a health department spokeswoman.

Some may also have been WestView patients, though likely not all. Dennison estimates that over about six years, roughly 1,000 of the 4,500 women who delivered at her clinic were assigned enrollment numbers. That's about 166 a year.

Some Utah lawmakers question the state's oversight.

"There's nothing wrong with issuing tracking numbers," said Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara. "But the state's programs ought to be doing all they can to cut out waste, fraud and abuse."

Acknowledged flaws in Utah's numbering system don't absolve WestView, said Robert Steed, an attorney in the Utah Attorney General's Medicaid fraud unit. "It's one thing to provide a number for purposes of administering a federal-state program," Steed said. "It's another thing to lie about one's legal status to qualify."

States can ask applicants for their Social Security numbers — one piece of information used to verify citizenship — but federal law bars them denying benefits to applicants who can't furnish them, Steed said. Baby Your Baby is a "presumptive eligibility" program designed to get needy pregnant women into a doctor early in their pregnancies while they wait for their Medicaid applications to be vetted.

Steed notes that it was the health department's own claims reviewers who eventually tipped authorities to problems at WestView.

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Clinic care defended • Court documents filed with a search warrant request detail other allegations against WestView, such as unlicensed staff drawing blood and ordering ultrasounds too early in pregnancies to be of any medical value. Dennison denies these allegations but would not address them.

The 45-year-old native Utahn built WestView after hearing from area providers about the dearth of medical centers west of Interstate 15.

The business didn't make her rich, she said, describing how she struggled to hire quality physicians. "The location wasn't attractive because it was so far from the hospital; most physicians want to be on campus."

But she said she has no reservations about the quality of care delivered.

Dale Sundwall agrees. Dennison once managed his Utah obstetrics practice, and in the late 1980s they launched All Medical Billing, Inc., the billing service that later grew into WestView.

Sundwall, who now lives in Snoqualmie, Wash., said he parted ways with her in the late '90s over "problems" that he is barred from talking about under a legal settlement.

But he added, "I have no animosity for LaRohnda." In 2008, he worked temporarily at WestView as he was making a transition from Minnesota to Seattle.

Sundwall said most of WestView's patients were Latino, and he figured she had found a new niche.

"The good things I liked about LaRohnda were still there," he said. "She had kind of a mill, but I thought she was doing a good job caring for a population that needed help."

Dennison said she has no regrets, but that the investigation has had an impact.

It has cost her and her brother their homes. Their mother may lose her home, and Dennison has filed for bankruptcy.

"I rent a room, half a room. I don't have a closet and I don't have dresser drawers," she said last week, her eyes welling with tears. "I have nothing. Even my name has been taken away."