The organizer of a $56 million Medicare fraud conspiracy and a doctor have entered guilty pleas to health care fraud charges in federal court in New Orleans. The U.S. Department of Justice says 51-year-old Mark Morad, of Slidell, and 53-year-old Dr. Divini Luccioni, of Kenner, each pleaded guilty Wednesday before Chief U.S. District Judge Sarah S. Vance. Morad and Luccioni pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Morad also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to falsify records in a federal investigation. Sentencing for each is set for April 1. Authorities say Morad directed the scheme through multiple New Orleans-area companies he owned, including Interlink Health Care Services Inc., Memorial Home Health Inc., Lakeland Health Care Services Inc., Lexmark Health Care LLC, andMed Rite Pharmacy Inc.
Louisville-based Humana Inc.'s share price has risen from about $66 per share in December 2012 to above $145 per share today. "We have had a wonderful run over the last few years" in terms of the company's market valuation, Humana president and CEO Bruce Broussard said this morning at a Greater Louisville Inc. breakfast event. This sort of thing is happening all over the insurance business. Share prices for UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Aetna Inc. have nearly doubled in the same period, for instance. Broussard said the company's rising share price is one of the top things he is asked about.
Some of the largest health care systems in America do not have any nurses serving on their boards of directors. That is a huge oversight, especially in a time of rapid change in health care delivery, when consumers and providers would benefit from having nurses' frontline perspective present in boardrooms as health care policy decisions are made. Last month, nurse leaders from 21 national nursing and other health-related organizations came together to change that. The nursing leaders launched the national Nurses on Boards Coalition, which has a goal to put 10,000 nurses on boards of corporate and nonprofit health care organizations by 2020.
Spending on medical care varies dramatically depending on the clinics that Minnesotans choose — from $269 to $826 per patient per month — according to a first-of-its-kind analysis designed to make patients wiser shoppers and doctors more accountable for the cost of care. The average patient cost $425 per month, but fully one in five of Minnesota's clinics was substantially cheaper or more expensive than average, according to the analysis by MN Community Measurement (MNCM), a nonprofit agency formed a decade ago to compare clinics by the cost and quality of care. Even after weighting the data for clinics that treat sicker or more problematic patients, the analysis found huge variations in cost.
Within weeks of taking office, Mayor Bill de Blasio proclaimed he had "saved a hospital." Not exactly. Not by a long shot. Ten months later, Cobble Hill's Long Island College Hospital is indeed shut down, and the political-legal-real estate gamesmanship that dragged on interminably ranks as one of the more bizarrely memorable business stories of 2014. Give de Blasio and the neighborhood-union coalition that fought hospital operator SUNY Downstate Medical Center's divestiture this much credit: There will be a lot more health services on the redeveloped site than there would have been without their efforts. But there's nothing like a true hospital, and Fortis Property Group is banking on residential real estate development to make its $240 million purchase worth it.
NPR and ProPublica have been investigating the increase in so-called "wage garnishment" by credit card and other companies. For this story, we looked specifically at nonprofit hospitals and found the practice widespread in five different states around the country. Nonprofit hospitals get huge tax-breaks — they are considered charities and therefore don't pay federal or state income tax or local property tax. In exchange, they are obligated to provide financial assistance or "charity care" to lower-income patients. Some nonprofit hospitals around the country don't ever seize their patients' wages. Some do so only in very rare cases. But others sue hundreds of patients every year.