For the first time since the unsealing of whistleblower complaints around the country against Health Management Associates started last month, former HMA president and CEO Gary D. Newsome is named as a defendant. A lawsuit filed Jan. 15, 2011 in federal court in South Carolina, alleges HMA and high-ranking corporate executives, including Newsome, "devised an unlawful scheme to drive up the rate of hospital admissions from all HMA hospital ERs, without regard to medical necessity" to increase corporate profit and cheat Medicare and Medicaid programs out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The lawsuit was unsealed Jan. 3 when the U.S. Department of Justice decided to intervene.
