The Price of Compassion - Commercialized Hospices and the Mistreatment of Vulnerable Patients

Introduction - Commercialized Hospices

We have occasionally written about the rise of the commercialized hospice industry, and concerns that commercialized hospices may not be providing the compassionate care they promise.  As we have discussed before, the hospice movement began with small, non-profit, community based organizations meant to provide compassionate palliative care to the terminally ill.  However, in the US, the hospice movement has been co-opted by commercial hospices, often run by large corporations, which may put profit ahead of compassion.

Several long investigative articles have appeared this year that focus largely on the commercial part of the hospice movement:
Terminal neglect? - how some hospices decline to treat the dying, Washington Post, May 3, 2014, by Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating
How dying became a multibillion-dollar industry, Huffington Post, June 19, 2014, by Ben Hallman
Is that hospice safe? - infrequent inspections mean it may be impossible to know, Washington Post, June 26, 2014, by Peter Whoriskey.

As we have discussed before, the biggest risk of the rush to commercialize hospices is that it may lead to the enrollment of patients who are not terminally ill.  To try to achieve a dignified death in as much comfort as possible, the hospice movement emphasizes aggressive use of analgesics, including narcotics, and other psychoactive drugs.  Also, hospice patients cannot expect treatments meant to prolong life or cure acute problems, since in terminal patients these may cause unpleasant side effects and will not, by definition, work.  Therefore, a patient who is not terminal enrolled in hospice runs risks of being drugged into a stupor, and could be doomed were he or she to develop an acute illness for which treatment is available, like a bacterial pneumonia that might respond to antibiotics, because in hospice antibiotics are not given for acute infections.  Thus the whole hospice model depends on the ability of hospices to enroll only terminally ill patients.

This is difficult because prognosis is difficult to predict.  Beyond that, we discussed how commercial hospices may have financial incentives to enroll patients who are not terminally ill because they can make a lot of money from such patients.

The recent articles add more evidence that commercial hospices may enroll patients who are not terminal, and such patients may end up suffering or dying prematurely because of excess pain treatment or withholding of treatment of acute illness inherent in the hospice model.

A Long Anecdote Illustrating the Dangers of Commercialized Hospices

The Huffington Post article provided an extended anecdote about what happened to a patient enrolled in a commercial hospice despite the lack of an identified terminal condition. The patient was Mary Maples.

By the fall of 2011, her health was often poor. She ate a special diet to keep her diabetes in check and likely also suffered from COPD, a disease that often afflicts ex-smokers and makes it hard to breathe. Still, she retained her wit and sense of humor

She was hospitalized briefly for a urinary tract infection. Her family felt she needed rehabilitation, but apparently had run out of eligibility for Medicare payment for it. Then somehow the family was approached by marketers for Vitas Inc, a commercial hospice company owned by Chemed, also the parent company of Roto-Rooter.

Spry doesn’t recall exactly when she first spoke to a representative from Vitas, or how the company found out that her mother might be a candidate for hospice. But Vitas staff told HuffPost that the medical director of the Titusville rehabilitation center is also on the Vitas payroll, as a team leader.

Spry said a Vitas nurse persuaded her that hospice was the correct choice for her mother. The nurse touted the at-home care and help with other chores that had grown difficult, such as bathing her mother,

Note that what the Vitas nurse allegedly emphasized were ancillary benefits of hospice, not its key function.  The implication is that at a time of vulnerability, the Vitas marketing pitch was deceptive.

It is not clear that Ms Maples or anyone with the legal power to make decisions for her understood the implications of hospice, or consented for her enrollment.

Spry signed the admission forms, even though she did not have the legal right to do so. Dunn, Maples’ grandson, actually had power of attorney over her affairs.

'I didn’t know what I was getting us into,' Spry said.

Vitas said patients or patient representatives must sign a consent form that clearly spells out the hospice mission before they can be enrolled. Records provided to HuffPost from Maples' family, obtained from Vitas, did not include this consent form.

Also,

It’s also not clear that Maples consented to hospice treatment, at least initially. She did not sign the documents authorizing her enrollment 'due to weakness,' according to Vitas records. Yet that same day, according to other nursing notes provided by her family, she was strong enough to move about using a walker during a physical therapy session. 

Enrolling the patient without her consent, or consent from a person with legal authority over her, appears to be a serious ethical failure by Vitas. 

Hospice records did not show the patient had a terminal illness.

Maples did not have a terminal illness. Her diagnosis was 'debility, unspecified,' according to her records. This is a catch-all term for frail patients that Medicare’s regulator has said hospices are no longer allowed to use, because so many claims made under the diagnosis were later rejected or determined fraudulent. 

So the patient did not have a terminal illness and did not consent to hospital enrollment, and the hospital company apparently did not make it clear that hospice is only supposed to be for terminal patients.  Furthermore, later it turned out that the family thought Ms Maples would be a candidate for resuscitation, yet hospice care is specifically not supposed to include such aggressive attempts at life prolongation.  Again, this suggests a serious failure by hospice personnel to communicate clearly at best, and perhaps outright deception.

Maples’ records show she or her family repeatedly indicated that she was full code, meaning she wanted life-saving treatment.

Nonetheless, the patient was apparently treated with narcotics and anti-psychotics even though she did not have chronic pain.  This appears to be very bad medical practice, and potentially very dangerous.

Maples was elevated to continuous care even when she wasn’t experiencing any pain at all, her records show. By doing so, Vitas boosted its daily billing rate from the standard $146.20 a day to $853.30.

Documents shared with HuffPost show that in the Melbourne office, at least, managers were encouraged to increase continuous care counts. In the fourth quarter of 2009, for example, one of four 'management program goals' was for continuous care to average 17 patients a day. Managers said they received bonuses pegged to whether they met this and other patient count targets.

The most difficult part of Maples’ experience to evaluate concerns her medication. Her records show she was given morphine, along with Ativan, a type of sedative, and Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic drug.

All three medications are contained in the 'comfort pack' that hospices ship to a patient’s house on admission. They are typically used in the final weeks of the patient’s life, when he or she is near death. 

Ultimately, Ms Maples suffered an acute event that the hospice did not apparently treat adequately.  A relative talked to her on the telephone, and found,

Her speech was garbled and she wasn’t making any sense, he recalled.

He then called the head office of the local Vitas chapter in Melbourne, Florida, and asked that his grandmother be discharged — he wanted to quit Vitas. The receptionist said Maples’ doctor was out of town, and nothing could happen until he returned the next week, according to Dunn.

Later that day, Vitas transferred Maples from her home to its inpatient unit at Courtenay Springs Nursing Home on Merritt Island.

Maples’ records indicate she was moved for 'constipation' — often a side effect of the medications she was receiving — and 'nausea.'

Then,

An ambulance brought Maples to Cape Canaveral Hospital, where she was 'unresponsive and in respiratory failure' on arrival, according to records. She was diagnosed with septic shock — a severe blood infection that is often fatal, especially in elderly patients. 

This implied that hospice personnel failed to adequately manage a potentially fatal acute problem, septic shock, extremely poor medical practice.  However, it would make no sense to aggressively treat septic shock afflicting a patient who was terminal, but, as noted above, Ms Maples did not have a terminal condition.  Although Ms Maples survived that episode, she died weeks later.

So in this one detailed case, a patient who had chronic problems but was not terminally ill was enrolled in hospice, apparently without adequate consent, and after a marketing pitch that did not seem to explain that hospice is only for terminal care.  The patient received apparently very bad medical care, including the use of narcotics for no apparent reason, and an initially inadequate response to a severe acute medical problem, probably hastening her death.  This suggests that commercialized hospices over-selling their services to the wrong patients can hurt, and sometimes even kill patients.

Overly Aggressive and Deceptive Marketing

The Huffington Post and two Washington Post articles also contained other illustrations of these problems.  In the Huffington Post article was the general observation that

Every day, hospice marketers descend on doctor’s offices, rehab centers and hospitals. These workers have been known to rifle through patient logs at nursing stations, scramble to sign up what some in the industry call 'last gasp' patients — people with just hours left to live — and even scuffle with each other in hospital corridors over the right to sign up dying people, according to current and former hospice employees and allegations made in federal lawsuits.

Such a frenzy suggests a certain lack of care about whether the targeted patients are appropriate. Furthermore, the article included specific examples of the push to enroll more patients, no matter what.  

'The pressure was direct from operations on a daily basis,' said James Robbins, a former sales manager at AseraCare Hospice, a chain operating in 19 states. 'What are you not doing? Why are we not getting more patients? We’d have constant conference calls, meetings.'

Robbins, who lives in Atlanta, said he would 'cruise' nursing home lobbies and try to pressure medical directors at those facilities to refer directly to him. 'It's not even about patient care anymore; they’ve gone to the dark side,' he said. 'It’s all about money.'

'I’m a nurse, not a saleswoman,' said Pamela Schiffman, a hospice nurse and patient case manager in California who said she has quit four jobs in the last decade because she was ordered to keep pestering families who resisted her pitch.

Note that AseraCare is a commercial hospice system owned by Golden Living, which in turn is a privately held corporation partially owned and entirely managed by Fillmore Partners, and San Francisco based private equity group (look here). 

Also, there is evidence that marketers were pushed by management to obscure the nature of hospice, and deceive patients into thinking that they would not be denied acute care should they need it.

'One huge problem I had to deal with on a daily basis is patients not understanding they were dying and truly on a real hospice,' said a former manager at a Vitas branch in Florida, who requested anonymity for fear of losing her current job in the industry. 'The admission and marketing staff would tell them, 'This is the new hospice, we are not for dying people, the rules have changed, we can just help you.'

Note that the idea that the rules have changed and hospice is not for dying people anymore is absolute nonsense. 

Furthermore, there is evidence that once enrolled, hospices may resist discharging patients even if it becomes apparent that they are not terminally ill.

A nurse who currently works for Vitas in the same Melbourne, Florida-based location that enrolled Maples said that nurses who tried to suggest at meetings that a patient was no longer appropriate for hospice were routinely 'humiliated.'

Medical Mismanagement

In the Huffington Post article, there were several anecdotes about excess use of pain medicine,

In one example described in court filings, prosecutors allege a Vitas patient was given crushed morphine, even though she wasn’t in pain. The morphine treatment continued even after the patient showed signs of having a toxic reaction to it — even seizures, prosecutors claim. 

Also,

Mary Gubacz fell into a ditch across the street from her assisted living facility at 2 a.m. after she was prescribed the powerful antipsychotic Seroquel while under care of Odyssey Hospice in Michigan, her daughter Marilyn Little said. 

Note that Odyssey hospices are one of multiple chains of hospices owned by Gentiva.


The Washington Post article, Terminal Neglect, provided data about many hospices' inability to manage worsening symptoms (but presumably mainly for patients who were terminally ill.)  In particular, it showed that many hospices never provide what is called continuous nursing care which is usually required by patients with worsening symptoms.  For example,

One of the largest such hospices in the country is the Heartland Hospice Services in Santa Rosa, Calif., a facility owned by HCR ManorCare, a company that was turned private in 2007 by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm.

Its hospice in Santa Rosa billed Medicare in 2012 for more than 50,000 days of routine hospice care, but no patient received continuous care or general inpatient care, according to the Medicare billing records.

A spokesman for HCR ManorCare portrayed the absence of those services as a statistical anomaly.

Note that given the size of the sample, that would have to be a pretty major statistical anomaly.  

Also,

Other records, too, indicate that many hospices offer very little nursing care in the last days of life.

For example, Medicare tracks how often a hospice sends a skilled nurse to a patient in the 48 hours preceding death.  

But at about 12 percent of hospices, more than one-third of patients die without seeing a skilled nurse in the last 48 hours of their life. Indeed, at 34 hospices, no patient saw a skilled nurse during that time.

The newer Washington Post article, Is That Hospice Safe?, documented many instances of apparently inadequate care of worsening clinical problems,

A woman dying of liver cancer, battling nausea and breathing difficulties, waited weeks for someone to drain fluid from her swelling abdomen and died still waiting, according to records. Another cancer patient had a feeding tube that oozed pus where it pierced his skin and did not actually reach his stomach. He had received no fluids from it for five days, emergency room doctors said. At the same time, a patient complaining about chest pain waited two days for a recorded visit and eventually was taken to a emergency room and diagnosed with pleurisy.

Many of these problems may go unnoticed, because the article noted that hospices are inspected very infrequently, if ever, by government agencies.

Summary

The three recent articles add to the evidence that commercial hospices often enroll patients who are not terminally ill, although hospice is meant only for the terminally ill.  There may be strong incentives for hospice employees to do so, and such enrollment may be induced by deceptive marketing and not accompanied by true informed consent.  Once in hospice, many patients may get poor medical management.  Patients who are not terminally ill may be at risk of getting inadequate care, and perhaps dying due to this lack, were they to get acutely ill, since hospice is not meant to provide life prolonging or potentially curative care for acute problems.

Note that most of the examples above concern the largest commercialized hospices, owned by large publicly held corporations (Vitas owned by Chemmed and, Odyssey owned by Gentiva), or by large corporations owned by private equity (AseraCare, owned by Golden Living, run by Fillmore Partners, and HCR ManorCare, owned by Carlyle Group).  Such large and rich organizations ought to be particularly held accountable for what they are doing to vulnerable patients. 

The US is in the midst of a great, uncontrolled experiment.  We have systematically taken medical and health care services previously lead by health care professionals and sited within community non-profit organizations and given them to for-profit firms, often huge corporations.  Meanwhile, rather than increasing regulation to account for this, we have systematically deregulated health care organizations.  There is more evidence that an increasingly commercial health care system within the framework of wild West, laissez faire capitalism is expensive and dangerous.  It is particularly dangerous for vulnerable populations especially when they are unaware that their caregivers must answer to huge corporations.

In my humble opinion, we should return control of direct patient care, especially of the most vulnerable patients, to health care professionals and if necessary small non-profit community organizations.  We ought to give strong consideration to banning corporate hospices, and banning all forms of the corporate practice of medicine and corporate health care "delivery."

Given how many insiders make so much money from the current version of laissez faire capitalism in health care, however, I would expect strong resistance should such apparently "radical," but actually conservative proposals actually get any mainstream attention.    

The Continuing Mystery of the Fugitive Founder and Missing Money - What it Says About the Opacity of Offshore Medical Schools

The next chapter in the bizarre tale of the fugitive founder of an off-shore (from the US and Canada) Caribbean medical school, and his now convicted spouse, do not solve any mysteries, but raise larger concerns about the accountability, or lack thereof, of leaders of important health care organizations.

Introduction: the Fugitive Founder and Convicted Spouse

As we posted in October, 2013, drawing an amazing for us number of comments, the couple who founded two Caribbean medical schools which catered almost entirely to US and Canadian students ran into significant legal trouble.  Founder David Leon Fredrick and his wife, Dr Patricia Lynn Hough were indicted for tax evasion for failing to report income from the two medical schools they allegedly owned, and later sold.

The schools were Saba University School of Medicine, on Saba, and the Medical University of the Americas, on Nevis.  The initial legal proceedings revealed that while Saba University School of Medicine was apparently first set up by a non-profit foundation (or NGO) run by the couple, somehow it became for-profit owned by Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough, and Saba and the Medical University of the Americas were subsequently sold to a private equity group, Equinox Capital.

Before jury selection started, Mr Fredrick disappeared.  Dr Hough was eventually convicted of defrauding the US Internal Revenue Service, and income tax evasion, after trial testimony to the effect that the couple concealed money in a Swiss bank, got $36 million from the sale of the schools, and bought an airplane, two houses, and a condominium.

Left mysterious at that time were Mr Fredrick's whereabouts, where the money that the couple derived from the sale of the medical schools went, and how a school that began as a non-profit organization became a for-profit corporation owned by the couple.  The case should have lead to some concerns about the leadership and governance of the off-shore medical schools that now train increasing numbers of would be US and Canadian physicians.

However, after Dr Hough was convicted, there was little public discussion of these issues, at least until Dr Hough's recent sentencing.  (There were some interesting comments made on our blog post, many from anonymous erswhile defenders of Saba University and/or Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough.  While they expressed some interesting opinions, in my humble opinion they did not add any substantive facts to the discussion.)

Latest Developments in the Case

In the past few weeks the case got a little more public notice in terms of reporting of the legal proceedings leading to the sentencing of Dr Hough   They brought to light some additional contentions by the prosecution, which deserve some attention because after all, they won their case.

The Amount of Money the Couple Made


As reported by the Sarasota (FL) Herald-Tribune,  Dr Hough was sentenced to two years in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and to repay $15 million to the IRS.  In addition,

 Prosecutors say Hough and Fredrick sold the schools and associated real estate in April 2007 for more than $35 million. An IRS agent testified last Thursday that Hough also made more than $12 million in income from the two schools from 2003 until 2007.

How much Mr Fredrick made was not discussed since it was not relevant to Dr Hough's sentencing. 

The Effort that Went into the Plot

According to Bloomberg,

'Hough’s crimes were neither impulsive nor isolated but required sophisticated transactions, coordination with foreign bankers, annual lies to the federal government, and by her own admissions, trips to Switzerland,' prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo on April 14. 'Hough made calculated decisions to cheat, over and over again.'

Also,

Prosecutors accused the couple of crafting their scheme with UBS AG (UBSN) banker Dieter Luetolf and Swiss financial adviser Beda Singenberger, both unindicted co-conspirators.

Singenberger, who was separately charged with helping 60 U.S. clients hide $184 million in offshore accounts, hasn’t responded in federal court in New York.

In more detail,

Prosecutors said the couple used an array of accounts in the names of businesses to hide their money and employed 'e-mails, telephone calls and in-person meetings to instruct Swiss bankers and asset managers to make investments and transfer funds from their undeclared accounts at UBS.'

The Mysteries Remain



Where Did the Money Go?

As noted above, the sale of the two medical schools netted Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough about $35 million.  Where that went is still unclear.

How Did Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough Become Owners of a Previously Non-Profit Medical School?

As noted above and in our previous post, Saba University School of Medicine began as a non-profit managed by Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough.  Somewhere along the way, the couple assumed ownership of the school.  There seems to be no record and no discussion of how this happened.  In the US, a conversion of a substantial non-profit, like a medical school, to a for-profit, ordinarily would require some regulatory approval and public discussion.  Furthermore, in most cases, non-profit conversions to for-profit would require some sort of protection of the assets of the former non-profit, often leading to a spin-off of a new non-profit foundation.   None of this apparently happened in this case (which admittedly did not occur in the US.)  How did Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough just take over a non-profit, sell it, and keep all the money involved?

Where is Mr Fredrick and Why did He Flee?

We need Sherlock Holmes for this. 


What Does This Case Say About the Leadership and Governance of Offshore Medical Schools?

So the latest details revealed suggest a fairly intricate plot by the American couple who founded two Caribbean medical schools.  The plot allegedly netted them millions, and now resulted in one of the couple remaining a fugitive, and the other convicted of federal crimes.

The biggest issue raised by this case, in my humble opinion, is not about financial crimes, tax-evasion, or the hiding of assets in Swiss banks.  It is about the leadership and governance of offshore Caribbean medical schools, and by extension, of academic medicine and health care.  In 2010, Eckhert documented that the number of offshore medical schools, "for-profit institutions whose purpose is to train U.S. and Canadian students who intend to return home to practice," but not to train physicians to practice in the countries in which these schools are located, was rapidly growing.(1)  By 2010, there were 33 such schools, 20 of which were new since 2000.

These offshore medical schools are not accredited in the US or Canada, and such accreditation is currently not required for individual graduates of such schools to be admitted to US house-staff programs or for US licensure.  So perhaps it is not surprising that little is known about these schools.

How they choose students, the qualifications, or even names of their faculty, their curriculum, how they supervise clinical training (which is mostly done by affiliated North American hospitals), and what happens to their graduates are boscure.  Eckhert attempted to describe what is known, but noted "variability exists in the availability of information on faculty; where data exists, it is noted that most of the permanent on-site basic science faculty are internationally trained, many have no documented medical education experience in the United States, and it is not uncommon for them to be OMS [offshore medical school] alumni."

Even less is known about who leads these schools, who if anyone is responsible for their stewardship, and even who owns them.  The current case suggests that Saba University School of Medicine was run by couple who mysteriously assumed ownership of the school after leading it as a non-profit organization, then sold it to private equity for millions in a transaction that eventually left one a convicted criminal and the other a fugitive.  Yet none of this came to light until the federal government launched an investigation not of offshore medical schools, but of offshore money laundering and happened to catch the couple in the investigational web. No regulatory process, no watchdog organization in the US or Canada, or on Saba apparently found this out until it was revealed in an investigation by the US federal government that had nothing specifically to do with health care or offshore medical schools.  This suggests that offshore medical schools now can be lead and run by anyone, qualified or not, honest or criminal, without any oversight or accountability.  

For example, even today little is known about the leadership of Saba University School of Medicine.  The school currently provides only minimal biographical information on its administration.  Its President is listed as Joseph Chu MD MPH, who appears to have the same educational credentials (MD from Georgetown, MPH from University as Washington) as one Joseph Chu who is apparently a Clinical Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Washington.   Dr Chu's specialty and previous experience are not apparent.  Whether the Dr Chu at University of Washington is the same as the President of Saba is unclear.  If they are the same, how Dr Chu holds down these two jobs is not clear.

For comparison, most US schools provide extensive information about their leadership.  Just as an example, see the introductory page on the Dean of the University Washington medical school.

Even less is known about the stewardship or governance of Saba University School of Medicine.  Many US medical schools have their own boards of trustees who are supposed to provide stewardship. For example, the UW board is here.  Their membership is generally known.  Furthermore, most US medical schools report to university leadership, again whose identity is known, and are subject to governance by a university board of trustees.  We have certainly criticized the leadership and governance of US academic medicine.  At least, however, it is possible to find out the names of the people responsible. 

However, while Saba University School of Medicine is still apparently owned by Equinox Capital according to the latter's website, to whom Dr Chu reports at Equinox Capital is unclear.  Whether Saba has a board of trustees, or any such similar stewardship mechanism, is unclear.  So who is ultimately accountable for Saba is unclear.  Probably just as unclear is who leads, who stewards, and who is accountable for the leadership of most other offshore medical schools.

While Eckhert wrote in 2010 that the increasing presence of offshore medical graduates in the US "obligates U.S. medicine to take a closer look at these educational programs," no such scrutiny has occurred since then.  While offshore medical schools account for the training of an increasing proportion of US (and presumably Canadian) physicians, we know next to nothing about their leadership and governance.  This seems to be just another part of the decreasing accountability of the leadership of US health care, and the increasing opacity of the governance and stewardship of US health care organizations.  True US health care reform would make leadership transparent and accountable.         

Reference
 1.  Eckhert NL.  Private schools of the Caribbean: outsourcing medical education.  Acad Med 1010; 85: 622-630.  Link here. 

"Emotion, not Information" - the Lucrative Deceptive Marketing of Hospice, and its Potentially Fatal Consequences

One of the real recent advances in health care, in my humble opinion, was the organization of compassionate, palliative care for people at the end of life.  During my training and early career I saw too many patients with terminal illness getting aggressive, sometimes very painful treatments which at best only offered hope of briefly prolonging their lives.  Some patients chose such treatments with full knowledge of the implications, at times with the hope that they might survive until some significant event, for example, the birth of a grandchild.  Many patients, however, seemed to be suffering with no purpose.

The hospice and palliative care movement, however, offered true comfort to those with little hope of prolonged survival.  Good hospice care eased the final days of patients with advanced disease for whom no definitive treatments could be found.

Hospice seemed like a great alternative for such patients, but its reasonable use depended on physicians' abilities to identify patients who really were at the end of life, and for whom aggressive treatment would be futile.  The Achilles Heel of the hospice movement remained health care professionals' inability to reliably identify such patients.  The big problem is that putting a patient who actually potentially could survive for a long time in hospice will doom that patient were he or she to develop an acute illness for which treatment is available, like a bacterial pneumonia that might respond to antibiotics, because in hospice antibiotics are not given for acute infections.

So the development of hospice had a downside which could be fatal for some patients.  I think most physicians hoped, however, that we could minimize the number of such patients by trying hard to make accurate predictions, and that in the future, better technology would lead to better predictions.

The Rise of Corporate Hospices

Back in the 1980s, however, I did not anticipate that hospices might become parts of for-profit corporations, and that such corporations might be able to make more money by admitting more patients, even patients who really were not at the end of life.   Starting in 2011, however, we started to find cases in which that appeared to be what was going on (look here, then here, here, and here).

In 2013, more cases appeared, listed in chronologic order -

Hospice of Arizona LC and American Hospice Management LLC - Per a news release from the Department of Justice, these entities settled litigation that alleged, among other things, that they "submitted or caused the submission of false Medicare claims between Sept. 1, 2002, and Dec. 31, 2010, for Hospice of Arizona patients who did not need end of life care...."

 Hospice Care of Kansas, and parent company Voyager HospiceCare - Per a Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal article, these entities settled to resolve allegations that they "submitted inappropriate claims between January 2004 and December 2008 for patients without a terminal prognosis of six months or less."

Hernando-Pasco Hospice - Per the Tampa Bay Times, " Hernando-Pasco Hospice has agreed to pay $1 million to settle allegations that it billed the Medicare and Medicaid programs for patients who did not need end-of-life care, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida announced Monday.  The not-for-profit Hernando-Pasco Hospice, which goes by HPH Hospice, is accused of admitting ineligible patients in order to meet targets imposed by its management team, federal authorities said in a statement."

These were all small settlements, that is, less than $15 million, reported in relatively small media outlets.

This week the issue was in the media spotlight courtesy the Washington Post, in an article which provided yet more data and vivid examples suggesting that for-profit hospices were putting money ahead of vulnerable patients' well-being.   


The Post added to the background we provided above,

Medicare began paying for hospice care in 1983, following a resurgence of interest in end-of-life care, sparked in part by the publication of 'On Death and Dying' by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

'We can give families more help with home care and visiting nurses, giving the families and the patients the spiritual, emotional, and financial help in order to facilitate the final care at home,' Kubler-Ross testified to the Senate Special Committee on Aging in 1972.

After this well-intentioned beginning, there was a rapid increase in the use of hospice, and hence its costs,

The benefit was quickly embraced by Americans and continues to grow, with Medicare paying for hospice care for more than 1.2 million people annually. In 2000, Medicare spent $2.9 billion on the hospice benefit. By 2012, that figure has risen fivefold, to $15.1 billion.

But as more Americans have taken up hospice care, a profound change has been underway: Big businesses have moved in.

In parallel, the nature of hospices changed, going from being predominantly local non-profit organizations to predominantly corporate,

When Medicare paid its first hospice benefit, the vast majority of hospice-care providers were nonprofit groups. Over the past decade, however, the for-profits have come to dominate the industry.

In 2000, 70 percent of hospices were run by nonprofit organizations or government agencies. Today, nearly 60 percent are for-profit companies, and they may account for an even larger share of patients.

They really were for-profit,

The profit margins as measured by MedPAC, the Medicare watchdog, climbed to 8.7 percent in 2011.

The per-patient operating profit has risen from $353 in 2002 to $1,975 in 2012, according to the analysis of California data.

Big money lured aggressive players, in particular, private equity,

 The returns have attracted some prominent financial firms, whose analysts have run the numbers and decided to invest. Among the private investment companies that have put down bets on hospices in recent years are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., KRG Capital Partners and Summit Partners.

As we have discussed elsewhere, the private equity model involves not long term management, but trying to make big money in the short term, either by directly extracting it from the companies taken over, of by rapidly selling them, if necessary, piece by piece. 


Financial Incentives to Enroll the Wrong Patients

Keep in mind that the revenue fueling the uber capitalists involved in for-profit hospices came predominantly from the US government, and depended on the rules set by the government to pay for hospice,

The vast majority of those profits flow from the U.S. government and Medicare, which makes an estimated 85 to 90 percent of all payments to hospices.

The payments provide more profit from patients with the longest stay in hospice,

The reason that longer stays are more profitable is that hospice companies typically spend more on patients at the beginning of their care and then again at the end of their lives.

When a patient is first enrolled, the hospice often must diagnose the patient’s illness, set up home equipment and get them stabilized. Then, during the last week of life, a hospice typically must pay for more frequent home visits by the nurse, aides and others.

As a result, patients who live a longer time — and for whom there is a long, stable period in the middle — generate more profits.

There is evidence that for-profit hospice management has reacted to these incentives to enroll patients who would live a long time, despite the fact noted above that hospice was intended for patients who were at the end of life, and were obviously thus expected not to live for a long time,

Indeed, it has been an open secret in the industry that, because of the method of payment, the way to run a hospice profitably is to enroll patients who stay for a long time.

The annual report in 2004 for one large hospice provider, VistaCare, noted that its fortunes depended on its ability to manage costs and 'maintain a patient base with a sufficiently long length of stay.'

The company also warned that 'cost pressures resulting from shorter patient lengths of stay . . . could negatively impact our profitability.'

'It is common knowledge in the industry that a longer length of stay is going to be more lucrative,' said Rachel Mason, who worked in marketing at Delta Hospice in California, where one of the company’s branches had one of the highest discharge rates of living patients in the state last year — 63 percent. 'If they come in very sick and die right away, it’s difficult to run a business that way.'

So, in the aggregate, stays have gone up, costs have increased, partially because there are more hospice ''urvivors," that is, patients who actually were admitted to hospice not at the end of life, survived much more than the six months which was supposed to have been their expected lifespan, and thus ended up graduating from hospice, a service meant originally for the terminally ill,

over the past decade, the number of 'hospice survivors' in the United States has risen dramatically, in part because hospice companies earn more by recruiting patients who aren’t actually dying, a Washington Post investigation has found. Healthier patients are more profitable because they require fewer visits and stay enrolled longer.

The proportion of patients who were discharged alive from hospice care rose about 50 percent between 2002 and 2012, according to a Post analysis of more than 1 million hospice patients’ records over 11 years in California, a state that makes public detailed descriptions and that, by virtue of its size, offers a portrait of the industry.

The average length of a stay in hospice care also jumped substantially over that time, in California and nationally, according to the analysis. Profit per patient quintupled, to $1,975, California records show.

Yet, while Medicare administrators have been warned about these perverse incentives, they have done nothing to fix them,

For five years, Medicare’s watchdog group has been recommending that the payments to hospice companies be revised to eliminate the financial incentive for improper care, but Medicare has not yet done so. To ensure that patients are appropriately selected for hospice care, Medicare relies on strict medical documentation requirements, a spokesman said. 

Perhaps Medicare administrators are listening harder to for-profit hospice executives than to their own advisory committee,

 The hospice industry is opposed to fundamental changes to the payment system. Jonathan Keyserling, senior vice president of health policy at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, an industry group, said that the current payment system is sound and that tampering with it could have unintended consequences. 

Furthermore,

because of the large sums of money at stake, MedPAC in June added a sense of urgency to its recommendation.

'Given the magnitude of hospice spending devoted to long-stay patients, who are more profitable under the current payment system than other patients, it is important that an initial step toward payment reform be taken as soon as possible,' MedPAC wrote.

Yet Medicare administrators still seemed to feel no sense of urgency, and are not eager to address the specifics of the MedPac recommendations,

A spokesman for Medicare said the agency is considering hospice payment reform but that no such changes will happen in fiscal 2014.

'While the Medicare hospice benefit provides a choice for beneficiaries to seek the care that best meets their care needs and desires, Medicare has and will continue to take actions to safeguard this benefit from inappropriate use,' said Jonathan Blum, principal deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement.

So to recap so far, the hospice movement devolved from one involving non-profit organizations providing care to the terminally ill to ever larger corporations providing care to the less ill, paid largely by the US government under rules from a simpler era.  However, since hospice provides only palliative care, this transition meant that some patients who were not terminally ill may have died from illness that would have been treated in an environment other than hospice.

Vivid Anecdotes of the Deceptive Marketing of Hospice

The Washington Post article summarized allegations from multiple legal actions that provided a disturbing tapestry of deceptive marketing deployed to recruit patients unsuitable to hospice care,

While the lawsuits against the for-profit hospices vary in the details, as a whole they depict an industry in which companies compete for new patients and provide services to patients who are not eligible for them.

Hospice 'outreach specialists' and 'community education representatives' seek out patients in a variety of ways: They solicit doctors and hospitals who might regularly deal with the terminally ill; they make connections at nursing homes, assisted-living developments and Meals on Wheels groups. They show up at the 'health fairs' held at senior centers with, for example, machines that test blood pressure. For families struggling to take care of a loved one, they offer the promise of extra help.

At AseraCare, officials gave advice to their recruiters on how to close a deal with families who are 'not ready yet' for hospice, according to a company presentation for Alabama employees. It instructed recruiters to 'focus families' by stressing the urgency of a decision, and saying things like, 'We only have 10 minutes left.'

'Effective communication is the transfer of emotion, not information,' the presentation said.

At Odyssey Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest hospice companies, representatives earned bonuses if they met their goals for new patients, according to that complaint. The case led to a $25 million settlement with the company.

At Vitas, a division of Chemed, a company that also owns the Roto-Rooter plumbing service, the corporate culture encouraged staff members to admit as many patients as possible, regardless of whether they were eligible for hospice care, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit said the company paid bonuses based on the number of patients enrolled. One former manager said that the company philosophy was 'sign everybody up' and that medical staffers felt pressured to admit patients regardless of whether they were appropriate.

And at Angels of Hope hospice in LaGrange, Ga., audio recordings cited in the complaint described how some salespeople found patients: by cruising neighborhoods, looking for elderly people with disabilities.

The article coned down on specific litigation about AnseraCare,

One of the primary lawsuits against AseraCare was initiated by Dawn Richardson, a clinical manager at the company, and Marsha Brown, the former executive director at the company’s Monroeville, Mobile and Foley, Ala., outlets.

There was steady pressure for AseraCare managers to find more patients, the lawsuit said.

An executive who did not meet a quota was penalized, according to the lawsuit, and the company offered a massage chair for the person who brought in the most hospice patients.

'In order to make our admission goal for the month, we are down to the wire, and need today to be a huge admit day for every region,' a regional vice president wrote in an e-mail, according to the lawsuit. 'Mobilize your teams, get them into the game this morning . . . when we call on them, they always respond with referrals and a push to convert those referrals into admits ASAP.'

'We had a director who would be like, ‘Get a patient, get a patient, get a patient,’ ' Michael Bonham, a Lutheran minister who worked as a chaplain at the company in Alabama, said in an interview. He is not a party to any of the lawsuits.

These demands for patients were sometimes met with people who were sickly but not dying, according to the federal lawsuit, which outlines five examples.

One patient was supposed to have had end-stage heart disease and thus would have had trouble breathing and walking, according to the lawsuit.

He left the nursing home for his granddaughter’s graduation and for Christmas, had a good time and ate a lot, according to notes from hospice workers cited in the lawsuit.

Another, diagnosed with end-stage 'debility,' was not losing weight as is typically the case, according to the legal filing, and instead went out for a trip to Wendy’s and another to go birdwatching.

Hospice firms' public relations departments provided the usual high minded statements that did not address specific allegations about the marketing of hospice, for example,

'AseraCare provides an important and valuable service to patients and their families facing difficult end-of-life decisions,' the company said in a statement. 'Our policies and programs comply with the Congressional intent of the hospice benefit to reduce the stress and anxiety of the end of life of a loved one,' the company said.

'Doctors for each patient in question determined that the patient needed hospice care, and expressed their clinical judgment by signing the required physician certifications. Other independent and well-qualified physicians reviewed the charts of these ­patients, and overwhelmingly agreed with the original conclusions that these patients were entitled to receive the hospice benefit.'

The company declined to identify the doctors who certified the patients in Alabama.

That seems about as relevant as the mission and values statements of Golden Living, AseraCare's parent corporation,

Our Mission

To share our passion for improving quality of life through innovative healthcare — one person, one family and one community at a time.

Our Values

Make integrity and accountability your pledge.
Share our passion for excellence.
Be uncompromising in delivering quality care.

Summary

Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members. 

Pearl S Buck, My Several Worlds, 1954, p 377 (see Wikiquote)

I also was once taught that the true test of a doctor is his or her care of the sickest and most vulnerable patients.  By this token,  how the hospice movement in the US evolved into corporate health care delivery which generates tremendous revenues from the most vulnerable patients, and in some cases may condemn ill but not terminal patients to death from treatable disease marks how badly US health care has failed.

The story combines many of the themes we have sounded before -

Perverse Incentives - a reimbursement scheme that made sense when hospices were local community non-profit organizations now provides incentives for commercial hospices to enroll patients who are not terminally ill, putting them at risk of inadequate care should they develop a new serious but treatable problem.

Money Before Mission - For-profit hospices which market themselves as equivalent to their community non-profit forerunners, are run, as is suggested above, to maximize revenue no matter the effect on mission. Presumably this is justified by the fallacy of maximizing shareholder value, which really means maximizing apparent short-term revenue in order to maximize executive compensation, no matter what the collateral damage.

Impunity - Although hospice enrollment of unsuitable patients not only may defraud the government, but may put such patients at risk of their lives, the only regulatory or law enforcement actions against big corporate hospices so far involve corporate fines that are small in comparison with revenues, but not penalties imposed on any individuals who authorized, directed or implemented such patient enrollment, even when patients wrongly enrolled have died from lack of treatment of potentially treatable problems.

Corporatism - Government agencies which could seriously challenge corporate hospices' actions have been curiously inert, perhaps because agency leaders feel more sympathetic to their fellow managers within corporate hospices than to the citizens whose interests they are supposed to protect.

Because of their potentially severe adverse effects on our most vulnerable patients, reform of hospices should be at the forefront of true health care reform.  At the least, we need vastly tougher regulation of corporate hospices, removal of perverse incentives for them from the government payment system, and vigorous law enforcement when their leaders induce them to misbehave.  Leaders of corporate hospices need to be held accountable for their actions, and must be pushed towards putting their patients' health ahead of all other considerations, including the leaders' personal enrichment.

Furthermore, the story of corporate hospices shows that while turning direct health care over to poorly regulated for-profit corporations may have been increased efficiency, been "disruptive" and lead to innovations, the efficiency, disruption and innovation have mainly lined the pockets of corporate insiders, and not improved patients' or the public's health.  We ought to give strong consideration to banning corporate hospices, and banning all forms of the corporate practice of medicine and corporate health care "delivery."

Given how many insiders make so much money from the current version of laissez faire capitalism in health care, however, I would expect strong resistance should such apparently "radical," but actually conservative proposals actually get any mainstream attention.    

The Mystery of the Fugitive Founder (and Longterm President of an Offshore Medical School for US Students)

We recently wrote about for-profit medical schools located offshore from the US, but catering to American students, not students from the countries in which they operate.  Now some new media reports raise further questions, if not mysteries about another set of such schools.  

Two Bloomberg articles on a trial underway focused on the alleged use of offshore accounts to avoid US taxes.  These accounts were connected to the former long-term President and founder of two offshore medical schools, and his spouse, a dean at one of the schools.  


The first Bloomberg article opened thus:

Patricia Hough, according to her lawyers, is an altruistic psychiatrist who helped her husband build two Caribbean medical schools. To prosecutors, she is a tax cheat who used offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes on millions of dollars from the schools’ sale.

Jury selection began today in federal court in Fort Myers, Florida, where Hough, 67, is accused of using accounts at UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank, and elsewhere to hide assets and income from the Internal Revenue Service, including almost $34 million she and her husband made when the schools were sold in 2007. 

The Bloomberg article asserted,

 At the heart of the case is whether she misused accounts associated with the Saba University School of Medicine Foundation.

The main question to me is not whether Dr Hough is guilty or innocent, which I cannot tell.  There are more intriguing  mysteries raised by this case.

How Did Non-Profit Medical Schools Become For-Profit?
 
According to Bloomberg,

  Hough’s lawyers say she helped [her husband, David] Fredrick build Saba University School of Medicine, on the island of Saba in the  Netherland Antilles, and the Medical University of the Americas, or MUA, on Nevis in the West Indies.

To do so,

 Through the Saba foundation, which they first funded in 1988, according to a government trial brief filed Oct. 3, the couple opened the Saba University School of Medicine in 1993. Fredrick served as president and a foundation director. Hough was associate dean for clinical medicine. 

Also,

In 1999, Fredrick and Hough began the Medical University of the Americas, a for-profit school on Nevis in the West Indies, according to the government filing.

There seems to be no question that the schools were started by a foundation based in the Netherland Antilles.  A report of a site visit of the Saba University School of Medicine by the Division of Licensing of the Medical Board of California in 2004 summarized this history,

In 1986, the government of the Netherlands Antilles proposed to a group of American educators that a medical school be established on the small island of Saba, N.A.  It was to be relatively small, of high quality and established for the dual ppurpose of benefiting the economy of the island (of only 1500 population) and attracting N.A. citizens to medical careers in the N.A.

A committee of Dutch citizens from Curacao, the seat of the N.A. government, approved the preliminary plans and the school was founded as a non-profit foundation under Dutch law....

The Saba University website still states that the school is accredited in the Netherlands,

Saba University School of Medicine’s Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) program is accredited by the NVAO (in Dutch: Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie). The NVAO is the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders. This organization was established by international treaty and ensures the quality of higher education in the Netherlands and Flanders.

So apparently Saba University was started as a non-profit organization meant to focus on medical education for the Netherlands Antilles, and thus accredited there.  But then, somehow,  according to Bloomberg.

Equinox Capital, a private-equity firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut, bought the Saba school and MUA for $36 million in 2007. The transaction included $34 million for land held in the name of Fredrick’s daughter from an earlier marriage, according to prosecutors.

Hough and Fredrick didn’t tell the IRS about most of the proceeds of the sale and transferred money among various undeclared accounts to buy the plane and real estate, make gifts to family members and pay personal expenses, prosecutors said.

There also seems to be no question that Equinox Capital did buy the schools.  The summary of a 2007 press release from the company stated,

 Equinox Capital III, L.P. announced that it has completed the recapitalization of Saba University School of Medicine B.V. ('Saba'). Founded in 1986, Saba is a leading for-profit university that awards four-year graduate degrees in Doctors of Medicine (M.D.). 

A statement from Prairie Capital, which is now an investor in the schools, noted that now

 R3 Education is a Massachusetts-based holding company that controls The Saba University School of Medicine ('Saba'), The Medical University of the Americas ('MUA') and St. Matthew University ("SMU").

After,

 Prairie Capital partnered with Equinox Capital to acquire the three universities.

It is enough to cause some dizziness.  Let me recap.  Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough somehow founded two medical schools apparently under the auspices of a foundation, the Saba University School of Medicine Foundation, which the couple ran.  The goal of the foundation was to attract Netherland Antilles citizens to medical careers in the NA.   However, the Saba University school became an off-shore facility for US medical students.  The two schools were later acquired by Prairie Capital and Equinox Capital, and they are now run as for-profit operations by R3 Education.

So somehow Saba University transitioned from being a non-profit meant to serve the medical education needs of the Netherlands Antilles to a for-profit owned by US private equity firms (and apparently now focused on serving Americans.)

How did that happen?  What was the rationale for the change?  Did any Dutch authorities consider the implications for their country?  Did any American organizations concerned with the quality of education and credentials of US physicians consider the implications?

Where Did the Money Go?

According to Bloomberg, US prosecutors made some striking allegations,

Both the foundation and MUA failed to tell the IRS about accounts held at UBS, Liechtenstein Landesbank and other banks, the U.S. charges.

Singenberger and Luetolf helped the foundation and MUA move money through British Virgin Islands or Hong Kong entities they controlled called Top Fast Finance Ltd., Ample Dynamic Trading Ltd., New Vanguard Holdings Ltd. and Apex Consultants Ltd., according to prosecutors.

'Hough and Fredrick were the beneficial owners of and had signatory authority over all over these accounts and owned and controlled each of them,' prosecutors said in their brief. 

The prosecution also alleged that Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough spent the money they allegedly got from selling the two medical schools rather lavishly.  Per the second Bloomberg article,

[Prosceutor] Kessler said Hough and her husband used the proceeds of the school sales to buy a $1.6 million airplane, a $1.1 million house in Asheville, North Carolina, a $590,000 house in Greenville, North Carolina, and an $800,000 condominium in Sarasota, Florida. She said they also gave money to relatives.

The prosecutors charged that the money the private equity firms paid went to Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough.  But while Mr Fredrick was President of Saba University, and apparently ran the foundation that was supposed to support it, he did not own either.  So why would the money go to him, and his wife?  If the money did not go to them, where did it go?

As the trial continued, as documented in a second Bloomberg article, Dr Hough's lawyer denied that she got the money,

Dan Saunders, an attorney for Hough, said his client never believed the money held at UBS AG (UBSN), the largest Swiss bank, and in other offshore banks belonged to her. Rather, he said, she thought it belonged to the foundation that ran the schools.

'It wasn’t her money, and she never believed it was,' Saunders said in his opening statement. 

If that is true, however, why is money that supposedly belongs to a foundation sitting quietly in a Swiss bank?

Dr Hough's lawyer said,

 Saunders said the accounts did serve a business purpose: to protect the assets of their nonprofit foundation from people attempting a hostile takeover.

Hostile takeovers of publicly held corporations do occur, of course.  However, how could a hostile takeover of a foundation occur, and who would possibly want or be able to do so?

So thus far, no one has offered a rationale explanation for how the schools were sold, why they were sold, and where the money resulting from the sale went.

Where in the World is Mr Fredrick?

So far, while the defendant is Dr Hough, the role of her husband, Mr Fredrick, apparently the President of Saba University from its founding at least until 2007, seems key.  Yet little of the coverage focused on Mr Fredrick.  The reason for that suggests the next mystery, per  the first Bloomberg article,

Fredrick vanished after the indictment, leaving Hough to face trial alone. U.S. District Judge John Steele, who is overseeing the trial, has declared Fredrick a fugitive.

So why did Mr Fredrick flea, and of course, where did he go?

Obviously, the fact that Mr Fredrick, who was the President of Saba University for many years, chose not to defend himself against charges that he hid the money he somehow obtained from the sale of that and another medical school, but rather fled, suggests that he may not have had a very good defense against those charges.  What does that say about the leadership of these medical schools?

 Summary

So the coverage of this intriguing trial, when added to some other publicly available information, suggests a wealth of mysteries about the founding, current nature, and leadership of two Caribbean medical schools which currently are run as for-profit firms and owned by US private equity firms, and whose student bodies come almost exclusively from the US.

So the really big mysteries are those about the implications for the medical education these schools provide, the students they attract, the physicians who graduate from their programs, the US patients of such physicians, and the US government which largely provides the loans which paid for these students' education (look here).

Despite the extraordinary nature of this case (again, involving the longterm president of an offshore medical school that sought to educate a substantial number of US physicians, and who is now a fugitive from justice), the only interest in it so far seems to be its implications for US prosecutions of hidden offshore accounts.

This case illustrates why we must reexamine our fascination for "market based" approaches to health care, when almost nothing about any part of health care resembles, or could resemble a free market (see this post).  We need to make health care more transparent, and shine more sunshine on the nooks and crannies, like off-shore but US corporate owned medical schools.  We need to facilitate health care leadership and governance that puts patients' and the public's health first, way ahead of the personal enrichment of the participants.  




ADDENDUM (29 October, 2013) - Dr Hough was convicted of defrauding the IRS and income tax evasion, see the Bloomberg article.  So far I see no response, certainly no apology or disavowal, by the current managers and owners of the medical school. 

The Door Revolves Again: the Former White House Health Reform Czar Goes to Private Equity Firm Looking for Investments Created by Health Reform

Round and round it goes, and when it will stop, nobody knows.

Background: The Former Health Care Reform Czar's Past Career

It appears that Ms Nancy DeParle, formerly a White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and before then, from 2009 - 2011, the Director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform, has gone through the revolving door again.

We raised concerns about Ms DeParle's strong ties to the commercial side of health care at the time she was put in charge of getting health care reform legislation passed (look here.)  Specifically, her background for shepherding this legislation included being on the boards of directors of three large health care corporations, Boston Scientific, a medical device company, Cerner, a vendor of health care information technology, and Medco, and pharmacy benefits company.   She had previously been on the boards of DaVita, a commercial kidney dialysis care delivery company, and Triad Hospitals, a for-profit hospital system.  At the time, I wondered whether this set of relationships with multiple  health care corporations would lead to "health care reform" that was more about the interests of big health care corporations and their top executives than about us, the people.

As it turned out, there is a case to be made that a lot of the health care reform legislation that eventually passed was in the interests of big corporations.  It enabled for-profit health care insurance companies to continue to dominate the insurance market, and created no "public option" that could have competed with them.  It fostered the development of "accountable care organizations," (ACOs), and thus fostered a wave of consolidation in the hospital market favoring ever larger hospital systems, including for-profit ones, and the rise of the corporate physician.  It pushed the use of commercial health care information technology without requiring these devices' effects on patients to be rigorously assessed, and with no obvious concerns about the risks posed by these systems.  It did nothing to stop concentration of power in health care, nothing to support small private practices, small non-profit hospitals, or non-profit health insurance.  While it required more disclosure of conflicts of interest affecting physicians, it did nothing to reduce them, or to combat deception in health care marketing and public relations, or to reduce manipulation or suppression of clinical research to serve commercial vested interests, or even to combat blatant health care corruption.

A Brief Stop at a Think Tank

At any event, Ms DeParle left the government early this year.  She did not immediately go back to the commercial world, however.  Instead, as reported by The Hill, she went to a think tank.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, a White House deputy chief of staff and the president's point person on his signature health care law, is leaving the West Wing to join the Brookings Institution. 

Brookings president Strobe Talbott announced in a post on Twitter that the longtime Obama staffer would work as a guest scholar for the think tank.

Through the Revolving Door to Private Equity

That position did not last long, however.  A few days ago, a Wall Street Journal blog announced she was moving again,

As health care-focused private equity firms navigate the nuances of the Affordable Care Act, one such shop, Consonance Capital, has decided to go straight to the source, hiring Nancy-Ann DeParle, the former director of the White House Office of Health Reform.

So now she will be with private equity, and in particular, with a private equity firm specializing in, of course, health care:

Consonance has been out targeting between $350 million and $450 million for its debut fund.

The fundraising effort appears to have gained traction in recent months. LBO Wire reported in February that the firm had raised $30.3 million for Consonance Private Equity PV LP.  According to a person familiar with the fundraising, the vehicle has gathered as much as $200 million so far from investors including Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, Travelers Insurance and LGT Group.

The fund is earmarked for buyouts and recapitalizations of health-care providers, payors, pharmaceutical and specialty distributors and device manufacturers with between $20 million and $150 million in annual revenue.

Finally, it seems Ms DeParle will be suited to this new employment opportunity since she knows so much about how the new supposed health care reform will create investment opportunities,

 Ms. DeParle said the changing regulatory environment will give rise to a host of new investment opportunities. 'There’s a lot that’s changing in health care,' said Ms. DeParle. 'There will be millions of new customers for hospitals and health care providers, much stronger demand for health care services....'

Summary

So to recapitulate, Ms DeParle came from roles as a steward of multiple large health care corporations to lead the health care reform efforts of the executive branch.  In that capacity, she helped to create and enact legislation that she would later say created many "new investment opportunities."  Now, as the legislation is going into operation, she has spun over to private equity to take advantage of these opportunities.

This seems to be a great example of why the revolving door is bad for government, health care, and the American public.  People in responsible government positions, in which they are supposed to represent all the people, may be constantly thinking about impressing those who might employ them in the private sector when they leave government service.  What better way to impress these potential employers than to take actions which may later improve these companies'  commercial prospects, whatever effect they may have on us, the people?

I am no political scientist, but in my humble opinion, there should be multi year cooling off periods before someone who worked in the commercial world can get a job in a government agency whose work has direct effect on his or her previous employer or industry sector, and before someone who worked in a government agency whose work had direct effect on a particular economic sector can accept a job for a company in that sector.  Now that would be a real reform. 

Deadly Over-Doses and Private Equity - the Case of Bain Capital's Methadone Clinics

Some reporting by Bloomberg provides more evidence about what happens when direct care of the most vulnerable patients is commercialized.  The vulnerable patients in this case were narcotic addicts.

By way of introduction, one method of treating narcotic addiction is the use of methadone.  Methadone is a narcotic that may block the "high" produced by other narcotics and thus may lead to the abuse of these drugs.  Because methadone is long-acting and can be given orally in liquid form, methadone clinics traditionally provided patients one dose a day which they swallowed on the spot.  The methadone would presumably block their craving for other narcotics for that day, and the method of administration would prevent diversion of the drug.  Methadone clinics became more prevalent starting in the 1960s, and like most "health care provider organizations," as we now call them, were then largely non-profit.

On a personal note, in the 1980s, I was the internal medicine physician for a non-profit hospital based methadone clinic designed for patients who had become addicted to prescription narcotics.  It was a challenging task, but the challenges seemed manageable.  That was then.

Nowadays, methadone clinics are more likely to be for-profit.  In this brave new world of for-profit "health care delivery," there may be problems unlike those seen "back in the day."   For example, Bloomberg just reported on a case with a distinctly colorful title

Dead Man Spurs Methadone Probe at Bain’s CRC Clinic in Baltimore 

Maryland state regulators are investigating an addiction-treatment clinic owned by Bain Capital Partners LLC after the methadone-related death of a Baltimore man. 

The probe is focused on the Pine Heights Treatment Center in Baltimore, one of dozens of clinics operated by Bain’s CRC Health Corp., the largest methadone-treatment provider in the U.S. It was triggered by a complaint from the public, said Dori Henry, a spokeswoman for the state Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration. She declined to comment on the investigation’s details.

The complaint alleges that Warren Lumpkin, 34, a forklift operator, died on Jan. 4 after ingesting methadone that was given to him by a CRC patient, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg News. An autopsy found that 'methadone intoxication' contributed to his death, records show.

Lumpkin’s ex-wife, Sabrina M. Lumpkin, who filed the complaint, said in it that he wasn’t a patient at the CRC clinic. He had a friend who was, and that friend gave half a dose of methadone from the clinic to Lumpkin, according to the complaint. 

Note that "back in the day," such an event would have been nearly impossible.  As noted above, patients were given a cup of liquid containing their daily methadone dose, and drank it under observation.   Practically, they could not "cheek" or otherwise divert the drug.  Of course, that approach required personnel to observe each patient each day.  Paying those personnel made the operation more expensive.  "Back in the day," though, non-profit hospitals and clinics were willing to provide the service in the interest of making sure the patients, and only the patients got the prescribed treatment.

Things may be different when methadone clinics are run for a profit.  A Bloomberg investigative report published in February looked into the operations of the company that owned the clinic in Maryland.  That too had a provocative title and started with a similarly disconcerting case.

Drug Users Turn Death Dealers as Methadone From Bain Hits Street 

 After Jennifer Vanlieu turned to methadone treatment to beat an addiction to heroin and pain pills, she morphed from drug user to convicted drug dealer.
 
Vanlieu said she got a carryout methadone dose at a clinic operated by CRC Health Corp. in Richmond, Indiana, in March, 2010, and then gave about 15 milligrams to her friend Carissa Plemons. Plemons died hours later, after ingesting a lethal mix of methadone and other drugs, according to police reports.

Take-home methadone -- doses patients carry out instead of taking at clinics -- enabled the abuse, said Vanlieu, 26, who was sentenced to six years in prison for dealing the drug to Plemons. While she didn’t sell it to her friend, she said in an interview that other clinic patients often resold their take- homes. CRC is owned by Boston-based Bain Capital Partners LLC and is the largest U.S. provider of methadone treatment.

'Some would sell it in the parking lot,' she said. 

As in the first case, unlike the process "back in the day," now patients, who are almost all presumably narcotic addicts, may be given multiple doses of liquid methadone to take home.  They are no longer required to take a daily dose of methadone under observation.  As the case above illustrates, it is all too easy to divert take home doses of methadone.  While methadone can be used to block the effects of other narcotics, it can also be abused.  Obviously, as in the cases above, abused methadone can cause a lethal overdose. 

Wide Use of Take-Home Methadone

The Bloomberg report found multiple instances in which CRC Health clinics handed out multiple take-home methadone doses apparently without proper consideration of the risk or supervision of the patients.

 In states where CRC has had its highest patient counts -- Indiana, West Virginia, California and Oregon -- available data and interviews show the company tries to provide take-home packages, which range from one dose to as many as 30, more often than other clinics.

In addition, 

The Richmond, Indiana, clinic gave take-home methadone to a patient who flunked a drug test, a January 2012 audit found. The company’s Williamson, West Virginia, clinic didn’t immediately revoke take-homes from a patient who had two positive drug tests in 2010, records show. In 2011, inspectors found no evidence that a physician at CRC’s clinic in Renton, Washington, used 'good clinical, judgment' in giving patients carryout doses.

A CRC center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, failed to supervise take-home doses properly in a case 'clearly indicative of drug diversion,' state authorities found in June 2011. The company’s clinics in Claymont, Delaware, and Coatesville, Pennsylvania, were faulted in May 2012 and October 2010, respectively, for giving carry-outs to patients who missed required counseling, records show.

As for the spot-checks Herschman described -- they hardly ever happened at CRC’s clinic in Goldsboro, North Carolina, said Liaudaitis, the former counselor. 

Furthermore,

In Indiana, CRC’s five clinics served 69 percent of methadone patients in 2011, while distributing 96 percent of the take-homes tracked by state records. Patients of CRC’s dozen California clinics received carryout packages of as many as 30 doses at a rate twice that of all others. In Virginia, 74 percent of patients at CRC’s three clinics got at least one take-home dose a week in August 2012, while 47 percent of patients at all other clinics did, state records show. 

The Business Model Behind Take-Home Methadone

So why would a methadone clinic hand multiple doses of an abusable narcotic to narcotic abusers?  The Bloomberg article went on to document some possible reasons which ultimately have to do with the business model of for-profit methadone clinics.

First of all, providing multiple doses of methadone requires less time from clinic personnel, which is handy when the clinics may be under-staffed by over-worked poorly paid personnel.  

'That was the culture -- keep the census up,' said Mike Liaudaitis, who worked as a counselor at CRC’s clinic in Goldsboro, North Carolina, from mid-2009 until early 2011. He recalls being swamped with a 64-person caseload that exceeded the state’s limit of 50. 

Also,

'Clearly the company is saving money if they’re distributing multiple take-home doses at one time,' said West Virginia Delegate Don Perdue, a Democrat who has pursued stricter oversight of for-profit clinics. 'They don’t have to have as many staff handing out the merchandise.'

In particular,

the Goldsboro clinic -- like others described by regulators and former CRC employees in Indiana and West Virginia -- was frequently understaffed, Liaudaitis said.

Since Jan. 1, 2009, CRC’s clinics haven’t met staffing standards more than 50 times, regulatory records from 15 states show. Clinics were cited 80 times for failing to document that they gave patients enough counseling. In response, the company agreed to hire more, recruit more aggressively and increase supervision. Competition for qualified workers is intense, CRC said in its 2011 annual report.

CRC didn’t pay well enough to attract or keep experienced counselors, said Malaysia Williams, who worked at its clinic in Huntington, West Virginia, from June 2009 through March 2010. 'Nobody stayed there,' she said. 'It paid poorly.'

Williams got $13 an hour, she said -- about the same amount other former counselors reported. That’s roughly $27,000 a year. 

There is evidence that under-staffing, under-payment of personnel, and the wide use of take-home methadone lead to big increases in short-term revenue for CRC Health, the for-profit corporation running the clinics.

 Until recently, there was little difference between the operations of for-profit and non-profit methadone clinics, said Thomas D’Aunno, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University who has tracked the treatment centers for years. That changed in 2011 survey data, which showed 'significant differences,' he said: For-profit clinics had fewer staffers than public clinics.

As Williams struggled to catch up in Huntington, the clinic pushed its revenue up almost 8 percent to $5 million in 2010 -- while expenses increased less than 1 percent to $2.6 million, according to state regulatory documents. 

Private Equity's Take Over of Methadone Clinics

The potential for big revenues has drawn private equity into the world of methadone maintenance for the treatment of narcotic addiction.

 Nurtured by government spending, methadone clinics spread nationwide in the 1960s and ’70s until strapped state and local governments began decreasing their outlays. By 2010, for-profit providers controlled 52.8 percent of the 1,200 U.S. clinics.

Over the past seven years, private equity firms have invested more than $2.2 billion in substance-abuse treatment and behavioral health companies in 62 deals, according to PitchBook Data Inc., a Seattle-based research firm.

Addiction-treatment companies are 'some of the most sought-after -- and valuable -- acquisition candidates in health care,' partly because of profit margins that can top 20 percent, according to the Braff Group, a Pittsburgh-based mergers and acquisitions advisory firm.

 As it turns out, CRC Health was acquired by one of the more notable private equity firms.

Bain Capital, the private equity firm co-founded by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, paid $723 million for CRC in 2006, corporate filings show. Romney, who left Bain in 1999, had no input in its investments or management of companies after that, he has said.

Still, Romney reported last year that he owned more than $1 million worth of a Bain fund that holds most of CRC’s shares. He reported receiving between $100,000 and $1 million in dividends, interest and capital gains from that holding, as well as income from two other Bain funds with interests in CRC, according to the financial disclosure he filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in June. Bain executives declined to comment, said Alex Stanton, a spokesman. Representatives for Romney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

 CRC has reported paying Bain about $15.4 million in management fees along with $7.2 million in fees related to the merger since 2006. The company’s revenue more than doubled to $446 million in 2011 from $209 million in 2005. Methadone clinics generated more than a quarter of the 2011 revenue, $123 million.

Note that last year, when Mr Romney was running for the US Presidency, and hence his ties to Bain Capital were particularly newsworthy, several investigative reports about care at Bain owned health care provider organizations were published.  We posted about issues at another CRC Health operation, Aspen, which operates in -patient treatment centers for psychiatric patients.  Investigative reporting about that part of CRC Health also suggested that the company was putting short-term revenue ahead of patient welfare.  We also posted about issues at HCA, a for-profit hospital chain partially owned by Bain, which again suggested revenue came before patients. 

In one sense, this should be no surprise, since the business model for private equity is all about extracting the most money in the shortest time for acquired corporations.  (Look here for more details.)

Summary

We now have more evidence that patients "cared for" directly by for-profit corporations, especially those owned by private equity firms, do not do well.  Meanwhile, the top executives of these firms do exceedingly well.

We have noted how health care organizations have increasingly been "financialized," lead by executives who put short-term revenue generation ahead of all other goals, including good patient care. Furthermore, hospitals are increasingly likely to be formally for-profit, and hence likely to be lead by such executives. Worse, hospitals are increasingly likely to be owned by private equity firms, further increasing the emphasis on short-term money making. Even worse, physicians are now more frequently employed by such organizations, which may pressure them to do what it takes to increase revenue, no matter what the effect on patients' and the public's health.

The probably effects on the quality of care, access, and costs are obvious.

In my humble opinion, before the health care bubble bursts, we need to challenge the notion that direct health care should ever be provided, or that medicine ought to be practiced by for-profit corporations. Before market fundamentalism became so prominent, many states prohibited the corporate practice of medicine, and the American Medical Association forbade the commercialization of medicine.

 It is time to heed that wisdom. I submit that we will not be able to have good quality, accessible health care at an affordable price until we restore physicians as independent, ethical health care professionals, and until we restore small, independent, community responsible, non-profit hospitals as the locus for inpatient care.

 True health care reform will require an end to market fundamentalism in health care.