Prosecutors say Chicago hospital officials bribed doctors
CHICAGO (AP) - A trial has begun for three former officials at a hospital in Chicago accused by federal prosecutors of abusing patients' trust in a kickback scheme that amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Prosecutors say the former Sacred Heart Hospital administrators, including owner Edward Novak, participated in the scheme to bribe doctors to refer patients to Sacred Heart. Those referrals of poor patients meant millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid fees, according to prosecutors.
The other defendants are former chief operating officer Clarence Naglevoort and former chief financial officer Roy Payawal. The 119-bed hospital was raided by federal authorities and closed in 2013.
"There was a secret behind the doors at Sacred Heart Hospital," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said during her opening statement. "The secret was that the most sacred thing at Sacred Heart was money."
Many of the kickbacks, prosecutors say, were disguised as teaching agreements, lease contracts and staffing perks.
Defense attorneys say other hospital administrators were to blame, including two who wore wires for the FBI and are expected to be witnesses in the trial. Novak's attorney, Daniel Collins, told jurors Novak shouldn't be culpable for his employees' actions, and that any hard work he did to keep the hospital open wasn't illegal.
Attorney Terence Campbell, who's representing Naglevoort, said prosecutors want to "put the worst possible spin on every single fact."
"Here's a news flash - hospitals are businesses," Campbell said. "Everything a hospital does is designed to attract doctors and patients."
When Sacred Heart was raided, authorities said doctors were endangering patients by purposely over-sedating them and performing unneeded tracheotomies. But these allegations were not included in the indictment against the defendants that came later.
In a pretrial ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly blocked prosecutors from talking about what they say were instances of patient mistreatment.