In breaking news, an LA hospital top executive was arrested for allegedly scheming to recruit homeless people as phony patients and then bill government programs for millions of dollars in unnecessary health services. FBI agents arrested Rudra Sabaratnam, the CEO of City of Angels hospital, and Estill Mitts, operator of a Skid Row health assessment center. This one blows me away. Wasn't it just the other day that a law was being passed in LA to stop hospital dumping? They were complaining that patients were literally threatening to contact the newspaper if they were dumped even though they had fully convalesced. The case goes like this: The homeless people were picked up by recruiters who sent them to the 7th Street center, where they were given a phony diagnosis and forms were filled out justifying their eligibility for government medical programs. The hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties submitted phony Medicare and Medi-Cal bills for these homeless patients. The homeless shelters (and others?) would then receive kickbacks up to $20,000 a month from some of these hospitals as they were delivering between 30 and 50 patients a month.
How sad can this story get? I bought into the argument that these hospitals were being overwhelmed by homeless people and had no ethical way to discharge them. Now this story throws that scenario totally on its head. The hospitals and its executives were not scumbags for dumping patients. They were scumbags for somehow figuring a way to be worse than that. They concocted a plan to make extra money by using these patients as revolving kickbacks. There were hints in the article that some doctors are involved. Call me crazy but I don't think these acts are part of the Hippocratic Oath.
Posts
