It’s not often that you hear about hospitals scamming the public, but The Post’s Carl Campanile yesterday reported at least seven in New York that have been accused of doing just that.
To the tune of more than $50 million in lost Medicaid money.
And what makes this notion even more bizarre is that New York hospitals are virtually all not-for-profit institutions. So why would they resort to fraud, as alleged? What’s in it for them?
Actually, there’s a clear answer: There are too many hospitals in New York state – and too few patients to fill their beds.
Which is why so many for the past few years have found themselves in dire financial straits.
And since hospital brass (not to mention health-care unions and workers) always fight to keep their facilities open, the seven were no doubt desperate to boost “business.”
As Campanile reports, two recently unsealed civil suits by Eastern District US Attorney Benton Campbell and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charge that the seven hospitals filed a whopping 14,642 fraudulent drug-detox claims for Medicaid payments between ’02 and ’06.
Parkway Hospital in Queens, which was one of the few for-profit New York facili- ties and which closed in November, actually paid workers to troll for prospective “customers” in homeless shelters and other public sites.
Workers bribed “patients” with cigarettes, food and even beer.
Now, we’ve been pointing out Medicaid fraud since long before The New York Times, in its jaw-dropping expose on the subject a few years back, reported that such corruption might cost New York as much as $18 billion a year.
Cuomo has certainly stepped up efforts to crack down on the fraud. But these two cases point to another badly needed measure to rein in state health-care spending: closing down hospitals.
That, in fact, was the clear recommendation of the Berger Commission in 2006. But the panel suggested only modest first steps in that direction, and so far the state has fallen short on even those.
With the state facing whopping budget shortfalls, cracking down on Medicaid fraud seems more vital than ever.
But closing underused facilities – eliminating their “need” to engage in fraud and sleazy “patient”-recruitment – should also be at the top of the to-do list.
Gov. Paterson’s to-do list, that is.
Assuming he’s up to the task.