Advocate Aurora to make remote work permanent for 12,000 employees

Advocate Aurora keeping 12,000 employees on remote work assignment

Advocate Aurora Health is implementing a new work model that will move 12,000 non-clinical employee positions in finance, consumer experience and more departments to remote-first operations, according to a May 21 BizTimes report. 

Under the new work model, dubbed WorkForward, the 12,000 non-clinical employees who have been working remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to do so permanently; these employees will “no longer have dedicated workspaces” like cubicles or offices at the health system’s Milwaukee and Downers Grove, Ill.-based offices, the publication reports. 

Affected departments include finance and accounting, consumer experience and public affairs, strategy and business development, government relations and administration. Employees will be able to choose to work from home, at a coffee shop or other locations, Advocate Aurora Chief Human Resources Officer Kevin Brady told BizTimes

“For some departments, remote-first may come to mean monthly team meetings in the office, once-a-week collaboration sessions or a trip to an outside-the-box location that inspires the team,” he said. 

Advocate Aurora will “regularly evaluate” its real estate needs with the work model transition; the health system recently vacated non-headquarters office space when its lease ended at the end of 2020. Advocate Aurora is also reconfiguring its remaining facilities to create more “innovative and productive” work areas that employees can use for meetings or temporary office space, according to the report.

Virginia physician gets 59-year sentence for unneeded patient surgeries, $20M fraud

A Virginia OB-GYN was sentenced May 18 to 59 years in prison for a fraud scheme that caused insurance programs to lose more than $20 million, according to the U.S. Justice Department

Javaid Perwaiz, MD, was sentenced after being convicted last November of 52 counts of healthcare fraud and false statements related to a scheme in which he performed medically unnecessary surgeries, including hysterectomies and improper sterilizations, on his patients. 

From about 2010 to 2019, Dr. Perwaiz often falsely told his patients that they needed the surgeries because they had cancer or could avoid cancer, prosecutors said. Additionally, evidence showed Dr. Perwaiz falsified records for his obstetric patients to induce labor early to ensure he was reimbursed for the deliveries and violated Medicaid’s required 30-day waiting period for elective sterilization procedures by backdating records to make it appear that he had complied with the waiting period. Dr. Perwaiz also billed insurance companies for diagnostic procedures that he only pretended to perform at his office, prosecutors said. 

“Motivated by his insatiable and reprehensible greed, Perwaiz used an arsenal of horrifying tactics to manipulate and deceive patients into undergoing invasive, unnecessary and devastating medical procedures,” Raj Parekh, acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, stated. “In many instances, the defendant shattered their ability to have children by using fear to remove organs from their bodies that he had no right to take.”

A lawyer representing Dr. Perwaiz told The New York Times that Dr. Perwaiz is appealing the conviction.