🚨🚨🚨 Last year, @barbfederostrov and I spent months investigating Jorge Perez's rural hospital empire, which accounted for HALF of the 2019 rural hospital bankruptcies.
@TheJusticeDept just charged him in a $1.4 BILLION fraudulent billing scheme.
khn.org/news/hospital-…
@TheJusticeDept just charged him in a $1.4 BILLION fraudulent billing scheme.
khn.org/news/hospital-…
How companies run by Perez and his associates were able to drive so many rural hospitals into the ground so quickly is a story about the fragility of health care in rural America and the types of money-making ventures that have flourished in America's fraught medical system
Perez and his associates would swoop in on struggling rural hospitals and then, prosecutors say, use them as a pass-through for a lab-billing scheme.
He said he was out to save rural hospitals; instead they allegedly brought in $400 million. 8 rural hospitals closed.
He said he was out to save rural hospitals; instead they allegedly brought in $400 million. 8 rural hospitals closed.
As the money dried up after insurers caught wind of the scheme, staff across his 18-affiliated rural hospitals worked as payroll came late and then not at all.
Despite holding toilet paper drives, prayer walks and fundraisers, the bills kept coming.
khn.org/news/rural-hos…
Despite holding toilet paper drives, prayer walks and fundraisers, the bills kept coming.
khn.org/news/rural-hos…
At Drumright Regional Hospital in Oklahoma, HR Director Allyson Lunsford said they ran out of oxygen and blood. By December 2018, they were so far behind on bills that the company that rented them hospital beds came to repossess them — despite patients still using them.
I-70 Community Hospital, in Sweet Springs, MO, has remained closed since February 2019.
Tara Brewer said Perez's charges do little to fix the closed hospital doors for a county that has had one of the highest per capita rates of #covid19 in MO.
Tara Brewer said Perez's charges do little to fix the closed hospital doors for a county that has had one of the highest per capita rates of #covid19 in MO.
Last year, Perez told @KHNews in a rare interview that he was losing sleep over the possibility he could go to jail after propping up struggling rural hospitals.
“I wanted to see if I could save these rural hospitals in America,” Perez said. “I’m that kind of person.”
“I wanted to see if I could save these rural hospitals in America,” Perez said. “I’m that kind of person.”
Pam Green, a former night charge nurse at the now-shuttered Horton Community Hospital in Horton, Kansas (population under 1,700), said she hopes Perez and his colleagues receive long prison sentences.
“He just devastated so many people, not just in Kansas, but in Oklahoma and all the other places where he had hospitals,” said Green. “I went months and months without pay, without health insurance. He robbed the community.”
khn.org/news/hospital-…
khn.org/news/hospital-…
