Why is the UNM Health Sciences Center (UNMHSC) so keen to go into business with private Texas investors who were part of the largest medical fraud scandal in US history? The UNM Board of Regents has enabled the UNM Health Sciences Center to enter into a part-ownership deal with the for-profit LHP Hospital Group to buy up the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services Hospital in Gallup. UNM will have a 20% stake.
The leadership of UNMHSC is being careless with our taxpayer money and trust. Either they choose to ignore the background of their business partners, or perhaps they just don’t know how to do a simple Google search.
It took me all of two minutes on the Internet to learn that the top executive management of LHP, including their CEO, were leading executives at Columbia/HCA, the largest for-profit health care company in the US at that time. After a ten-year investigation by the FBI, the corporation pleaded guilty in 2000 to 14 felonies including cheating Medicare, Medicaid, Tricor (for veterans and military families) and the Federal Employees Benefits Program (for civilian federal workers). Columbia/HCA ultimately paid civil and criminal penalties of $1.7 billion, by far the largest amount ever paid for health care fraud.
Incredibly, no one ever went to prison for these corporate crimes; three executives were found guilty but they won an appeal. 70 of their senior executives took the 5th amendment and refused to give evidence in court in case it incriminated them.
The citizens of Gallup should be wary of entrusting their community hospital to a for-profit company run by executives who were in the leadership of Columbia/HCA at the time of this major scandal. Besides overbilling public insurance programs, the Columbia/HCA modus operandi was to buy up community hospitals with promises of capital for improvements and then to eliminate unions and jobs (including nurses), give kickbacks to doctors for referring patients, close vital but money losing services such as burn units, and expand profitable services such as outpatient surgical centers. UNMHSC and the taxpayers should understand that LHP has no legal responsibility other than to maximize profits for their investors. Should the medical care of our communities be entrusted to such an entity?
UNM’s reputation and financial stability are on the line, as is the health of McKinley County’s citizens. The leadership of the UNMHSC and the Board of Regents owe it to NM taxpayers to fully disclose exactly what this deal will entail. UNM is a public entity and as such there must be an open discussion about how the university’s mission and the broader community will benefit from this association and what safeguards will be in place to ensure that the LHP executives will not repeat the corrupt practices of Columbia/HCA.
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