SEC Investigates London Records of HCA

Source: Tennessean via WaPo

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a probe into whether Hospital Corporation of America violated securities law by manipulating its books and records, according to documents and people familiar with the investigation.

The investigation has been focusing, at least in part, on HCA's London subsidiary and whether the company fabricated tens of thousands of payments for phantom nursing shifts, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. The SEC has been coordinating with investigators at Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs in London, according to documents.

Nashville-based HCA runs more than 160 facilities across the United States and in London and treats millions of people a year. In 2006, HCA, then a public company, was bought by a consortium including its management, the family of former Tennessee GOP Sen. Bill Frist, who was Senate majority leader, and three major financial firms for about $33 billion in the largest leveraged buyout ever at the time.

In a statement, HCA confirmed Tuesday that it has been contacted by the SEC as part of an ongoing probe, saying it "received a voluntary request for related information from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. We have provided requested information and look forward to working with them to conclude this inquiry." The company said the allegations under investigation are unfounded.

Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091007/BUSINESS01/910070400/1003/BUSINESS

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la la la la la .... how ya like it, dears?

To make it look like they met regulatory requirements? To make it look like more nurses were helping patients then they could bill more? Of course all this money NOT paid to nurses went into their pockets.

Being a private hospital where most hospitals are public, they might well want to be able to say "we have twice as many nurses on duty as an NHS hospital", and to bill accordingly. It might be regulatory too, I suppose; the company's denial says it's to do with the employee's computer details being used repeatedly:

People should take it as a given they have paid into any anti-NHS publicity campaigns going.

apparently they own 6 or 7 private hospitals in London, and say they treat about 200,000 people a year (in and outpatients). Being London, that may include many non-Britons who come from smaller countries where they can't get expensive specialist treatment.

I once worked for these blood suckers. There nurse/patient ratios were horrible and I got tired of driving home in anxiety wondering if we overlooked anything. As I'm sure most of you already know they were, some years ago, found guilty of the largest Medicare fraud in history.

I worked at HCA in Nashville for a very short time. The place was scary. Very posh lobby and lots of flashy adverts but on the floors, they were overstaffed, under-resourced-- 2 dynamap (vital sign) machines for the entire floor and they were still using Baxter IV pumps! I think third world countries are using Baxter pumps. I could not run blood or platelets with a pump. Plus the pharmacy had a serious knowledge deficit problem. Also, they did not allow employees to access the internet so I could not look up the latest on the chemo I was infusing and the pharmacist had no idea about compatibilities. Big mistakes were happening on that floor. It was systemic. They did not orient the new nurses very well at all. I could not wait to quit. Their attitudes regarding nurses and doctors were horribly ancient.

The only thing I though was really good was the spacious private rooms for the patients that included a table and chairs as well as fold out chair/couch for family members.

I'm not surprised they were faking expenses.

and would generally take 4-5 patients in order to avoid my staff having 10 patients each. Very scary.

Source: WP

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a probe into whether the largest hospital company in the world, Hospital Corporation of America, violated securities law by manipulating its books and records, according to documents and people familiar with the investigation.

The investigation has been focusing, at least in part, on HCA's London subsidiary and whether the company fabricated tens of thousands of payments for phantom nursing shifts, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. The SEC has been coordinating with investigators at Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs in London, according to the documents.

HCA runs more than 160 facilities across the United States and in London and treats millions of people a year. In 2006, HCA, then a public company, was bought by a consortium including its management, the family of former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and three major financial firms for about $33 billion in the largest leveraged buyout ever at the time.

In a statement, HCA confirmed Tuesday that it has been contacted by the SEC as part of an ongoing probe, saying it "received a voluntary request for related information from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. We have provided requested information and look forward to working with them to conclude this inquiry." The company said the allegations under investigation are unfounded.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603684.html?hpid=topnews

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Well well well the Frist family is caught up in another crime scandal!

denying medical care or kicking sick people off for preexisting conditions.

Its a sick world we live in.

I thought this sounded familiar. This article is about their London operation. From the same article:



Earlier, an investigation dating to the mid-1990s exposed a massive health-care fraud at HCA, resulting in the largest penalty ever imposed on a company in a health-care case. In 2003, HCA agreed to pay a total of $1.7 billion to the U.S. government to settle charges that it defrauded government insurance programs. The company's top managers were replaced.



More recently, the SEC investigated whether Frist, whose family helped found the company in 1968, sold shares with insider knowledge before HCA announced that it was going to miss profit estimates in July 2005.....

If you are unfamiliar with SAIC, they're one of the biggest DoD contractors out there. They'll talk about privatizing at the same time they suck mother's milk out of the public treasury. That's talent.

A Republican associated with a private "for-profit" health delivery system?

There's a first!:sarcasm: