Now here’s a case of the type I’ve never seen before, but expect to see more of it going forward given the temptations involved. According to the Dallas Morning News, the top administrator and CFO of a now closed chain of hospitals is facing charges that he defrauded the government of nearly $800,000 in EMR stimulus funds.
The administrator, Joe White, and the doctor who owned the hospitals, Tariq Mahmood, are accused of identity theft and stealing government healthcare funds. Meanwhile, it’s alleged that White falsely certified that Shelby Regional Medical Center in East Texas has met the requirements to receive Meaningful Use funds. Federal authorities assert that White used a computer ID and Social Security number belonging to another employee who had refused to attest at the hospital.
White is also accused of demanding that data be manually inserted from paper records into the incomplete EMR, in an effort to meet Meaningful Use qualifications.
This comes as a follow-up to the catastrophic failure of Mahmood’s six-hospital chain, which came after years of increasing financial chaos, with the hospitals mounting up millions of dollars in debts to vendors and landlords. As the hospitals fell apart financially, inspectors were documenting hundreds of patient care failures, the Dallas Morning News reports.
This came amid questions as to whether White was qualified to run a medical center, given his past record as a RadioShack salesman and a maintenance man.
