A Chicago-based healthcare system agreed to the largest HIPAA settlement fine against a single entity, HHS announced August 4. Advocate Health Care Network will pay $5.55 million to settle three separate HIPAA breaches reported in 2013. The breaches affected a total of 4 million individuals and the protected health information (PHI) included:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/canopy-health-receives-license-names-221800300.html
Canopy Health, the Bay Area-wide health care network being developed by UCSF Health, John Muir Health and three physician groups, has received its Knox-Keene license to operate in seven Bay Area counties. It also has built out its management team, naming Meg Durbin, MD, as chief medical officer and Patrick Caster as chief financial officer.
The restricted license from the California Department of Managed Health Care enables the network to provide services in Marin, Southern Sonoma, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, and portions of San Mateo and Solano counties. Canopy Health will contract directly with health plans on behalf of all providers who are part of the network to develop an insurance product that provides access to high-quality care at an affordable price. Canopy Health currently includes more than 4,000 physicians and 12 hospitals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Our model is unique, as we are partnering with health plans to offer a competitively priced insurance product, rather than selling our own plan,” said Canopy Health Chief Executive Officer Joel Criste. “By accepting risk, we are accountable for the overall health of the patients we serve. It puts the focus where it should be – keeping patients as healthy as possible and providing the care they need in the most appropriate setting, whether that is the primary care physician’s office, an outpatient center or acute care hospital.”
The former chief financial officer at Sonoma West Medical Center said a key hospital benefactor asked him to “falsely portray” the hospital’s finances to show positive net profit for the hospital, according to a whistleblower lawsuit filed this week.
The lawsuit against Sonoma West Medical Center was filed Monday by Douglas Goldfarb, who served as chief financial officer from Nov. 30, 2015 to June 6, 2016. It is the latest legal complaint against the embattled hospital, one that echoes charges made in a lawsuit filed two months ago by the hospital’s former chief nursing officer, Cheri AnDra.
As Sonoma West Medical Center officials said with AnDra’s lawsuit, they could not comment on the legal challenge because it involved personnel matters. Both Goldfarb and AnDra are represented by the same Bay Area attorney, Daniel Bartley.
The suits allege millionaire west county software entrepreneur Dan Smith, the hospital’s largest donor and most consistent financial supporter, is using the hospital as a testing ground for his “defective” tablet-based electronic medical records system called HarmoniMD.
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Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC) said Monday that it believes it has reached an agreement in principle with the government to resolve a long-running criminal investigation and civil litigation about a kick-back scandal involving an Atlanta medical clinic and three of the company’s Atlanta-area hospitals.
Dallas-based Tenet said it has agreed to pay $514 million, has agreed to the appointment by the U.S. Department of Justice of a corporate monitor for a period of three years, and has agreed for two wholly owned subsidiaries that previously operated Atlanta Medical Center and North Fulton Hospital to each plead guilty to a single-count indictment. The settlement will be with the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the Northern and Middle Districts of Georgia, and the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
“The agreement in principle contemplates, among other things, payment by the company of $513,788,345, which is comprised of a civil monetary payment of $368,000,000 and a criminal monetary payment of $145,788,345,” Tenet reported Monday.
The company’s two subsidiaries will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute and defraud the United States, Tenet reported.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hospital-chains-ceo-faces-lawsuit-over-business-practices-1470021573
Less than eight months after becoming CEO of Verity Health System, the successor to the former Daughters of Charity Health System, Mitchell Creem, has been demoted to chief administrative officer. Verity also hired a new COO, B. Joseph Badalian, it disclosed today.
The Redwood City-based system’s board of directors replaced Creem as CEO late last week with Andrei Soran, who was initially hired in April as president and COO.
Verity disclosed the “restructuring of the system’s executive team” on July 28. Board chairman Jack Krouskup said the new CEO “will continue to lead the efforts to revitalize our Verity hospitals to ensure that they continue to serve our communities across California for generations to come.”
Badalian, most recently CEO at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center in Southern California, a for-profit Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC) hospital, is set to start in the new job Sept. 1.
Why revamp the leadership team less than eight months in? “A turnaround is all hands on deck,” Soran told the Business Times late last week. “It’s a major effort, a fairly major turnaround.”
HENRY KOTULA 