Comprehensive Healthcare Management Services is guilty.
On Monday, after five weeks of trial and 29 witnesses taking the stand, two entities of the corporation were found guilty of health care fraud. The case involved accusations of making false statements in connection with the payment of health care benefits and for the purpose of obstructing and impeding the investigation and proper administration of a matter within the jurisdiction of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, Beaver County, is guilty of six counts. Mt. Lebanon Rehabilitation and Wellness Center is guilty of another four.
Sentencing won’t happen until May. Each of the nursing homes could be facing $500,000 in fines and up to five years of probation.
But how do you put an ankle monitor on a business? How does a nursing home answer a probation officer’s questions or comply with the terms of its punishment? The same way it commits a crime — via people acting on its behalf.
That makes the other half of the trial interesting.
While the nursing homes were found responsible for lying and cheating, the people in charge were not.
Sam Halper, owner and CEO of Comprehensive Healthcare; Eva Hamilton of Beaver, who served as the director of nursing at Brighton Rehab; Michelle Romeo of Hillsville, Lawrence County, a regional manager with oversight for nurses at the two facilities; Director of Social Services Johnna Haller of Monaca; and former Mt. Lebanon Rehab administrator Susan Gilbert of Cecil all were charged as part of the crimes. All were found not guilty.
It’s a mystifying idea. How did the medical facilities hatch these schemes on their own? How did they bend the human beings to their will? Was the corporate entity at fault or was it the brick-and-mortar buildings?
It’s a ludicrous question, but it’s equally ludicrous to suggest otherwise. It is the opposite of the “guns don’t kill people” trope.
If two nursing homes are guilty of crimes no people committed, anything is possible. Guns could murder. Credit cards could commit identity theft.
The attorneys for all the human defendants were pleased with the verdict, some even indignant that charges were pressed at all. One called the practices “commonplace” in a nursing facility, which certainly doesn’t suggest remorse or change.
The jurors agreed fraud was committed. But with no people found guilty, who actually learns a lesson?
