Some accounts sound like a step into the Twilight Zone, with people who arrived for free mental health assessments finding themselves in locked psychiatric wards without even realizing they had been admitted to a hospital.
Former employees talk of a pressure to fill beds and max out on allowable insurance coverage regardless of whether it is with someone who needs inpatient care.
That’s the picture that emerges of Universal Health Services, operator of the country’s largest chain of psychiatric hospitals, in a lengthy BuzzFeed investigation published Wednesday. The company owns 221 psychiatric hospitals across the country. Five of them are in Massachusetts and run under the banner of Arbour Health System.
The firm racked up $7.5 billion in revenue last year and boasts a profit margin of about 30 percent, according to BuzzFeed. The story says a year-long investigation “raises grave questions about the extent to which those profits were achieved at the expense of patients.”
Current and former employees BuzzFeed spoke with “said they were under pressure to fill beds by almost any method — which sometimes meant exaggerating people’s symptoms or twisting their words to make them seem suicidal — and to hold them until their insurance payments ran out.”
The article says the company is or has faced a slew of investigations, including a state-funded report in Illinois that found a Chicago hospital was horribly understaffed and routinely admitted more patients than it could care for “in an effort to maximize financial profit.”
More than 1 in 10 of the company’s 211 psychiatric hospitals are under federal investigation for Medicare fraud.
The BuzzFeed story does not spotlight any of the company’s Massachusetts hospitals. But in March, the Globe reported that all five UHS-owned psychiatric facilities in Massachusetts were part of a wide-ranging federal investigation of billing fraud. The paper also reported that Arbour “has been cited repeatedly by state regulators over poor care and inadequate staffing at its hospitals and outpatient clinics.”
UHS is being sued by the family of a 19-year-old woman that alleges their daughter died after receiving improper care at an Arbour clinic in Lawrence.
The company’s hospitals often advertise free mental health assessments, which some former employees say is a lure to fill beds and rack up insurance reimbursements. One former administrator told BuzzFeed the company tracks hospitals’ “conversion rate,” which is the share of those undergoing free assessments who end up being admitted.
“They keep track of our numbers as if we were car salesmen,” one former counselor at a UHS hospital in Utah told BuzzFeed.
In a statement to BuzzFeed, the company insisted it admitted people for mental health care based solely on their need for inpatient services.
The article suggests that UHS hospitals have boosted their “conversion rate” by claiming would-be patients expressed suicidal thoughts at a rate far greater than seen at other psychiatric facilities.
Based on an examination of Medicare claims data, BuzzFeed said UHS hospitals have steadily increased the share of patients who allegedly have expressed “suicidal ideation,” such that the reported rate at its facilities by 2013 was four-and-a-half times that of non-UHS psychiatric facilities in the country. The designation is helpful in getting insurer approval of a hospital admission.
The company’s stock price plunged 12 percent yesterday following release of the BuzzFeed story.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Layoffs are still possible even after more than 500 state employees took advantage of an early retirement offer. (Boston Herald) Lowell-area lawmakers lament emergency budget cuts approved by Gov. Charlie Baker. (Lowell Sun)
Attorney General Maura Healey’s office tangles with Exxon in Suffolk Superior Court. (WBUR)
Trips to Israel this month by Gov. Charlie Baker and a group of legislators are drawing criticism from pro-Palestinian groups because the travel is being financed by two local Jewish organizations, one of which is pushing legislation on Beacon Hill not to invest state pension funds in companies taking part in a boycott of Israel. (Boston Globe)
State Auditor Suzanne Bump slams the Massachusetts Sheriffs Association for failing to have systems in place to gather information on inmates and recidivism, data that would be invaluable to researchers and policy makers. (Berkshire Eagle)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
State Sen. Brian Joyce has been hit with a sharp increase in his residential tax bill after Milton officials raised his home’s assessed value. (CommonWealth)
A judge has issued an injunction against the owner of a controversial tenant farm in Westport and ordered the removal of all animals from the property in a suit by town officials seeking to permanently close the condemned farm where more than 1,400 dead and abused animals were found this summer. (Herald News)
Falmouth selectmen are considering putting a question before voters in the spring banning recreational marijuana shops in the town, which voted against the statewide legalization initiative by a 52-48 margin. (Cape Cod Times)
Westborough plans to sell 38 acres of the former Westborough State Hospital to Pulte Homes for the construction of elderly housing. (Telegram & Gazette)
Meet Eugene O’Flaherty, city corporation counsel and trusted aide to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who desperately doesn’t want to be profiled in the press. (Boston Globe)
Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson says the city needs a more holistic approach to crime prevention; Mayor Marty Walsh says it already has that. (Boston Herald)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
President-elect Donald Trump has picked a climate change skeptic to head the EPA. (U.S. News & World Report)
Trump taps a Brighton boy, Gen. John Kelly, to run Homeland Security. (Boston Globe)
Trump is considering a plan to turn over his business operations to his sons but continue to maintain his stake in the companies. In the meantime, in an indication she may become more involved in the administration, Ivanka Trump is looking at taking a leave from the Trump Organization and moving to Washington to aid her father. (New York Times)
“Well, for a man who insisted repeatedly during his campaign that he ‘knew more than the generals,’ President-elect Donald Trump seems intent on filling his Cabinet with as many as possible,” says a Herald editorial, which offers strong support for at least one of those military men, James Mattis, who has been tapped for defense secretary.
Could a Jeff Sessions reign at the Department of Justice sound the death knell for bipartisan criminal justice reform efforts? (Boston Herald)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A change in the way the state deducts payments for the E-ZPass accounts from customers’ banks has triggered a slew of angry calls to Commonwealth Auto Credit in Virginia from Massachusetts drivers who mistakenly believe the company is plundering their accounts. (MetroWest Daily News)
Reebok is leaving its Canton headquarters and moving to Boston’s Seaport District. (Masslive)
An Abington used car dealer is shutting down his business and paying customers back $24,000 in an agreement with the attorney general’s office after being charged with selling vehicles with major mechanical problems. (Patriot Ledger)
EDUCATION
Brockton school custodians are being paid a stipend termed “hazard pay” for handling and disposing discarded needles from drug users on school grounds. (The Enterprise)
The Framingham School Committee has reached agreement with a former school employee in his whistleblower suit against the town. The whistleblower charged he was forced to resign after reporting sexual assault allegations against a “prominent” player on the high school football team. (MetroWest Daily News)
More Boston schools are extending their school day. (Masslive)
A Tufts University sorority is divided over the issue of admitting a transgender student, with more than half of the members resigning after the group’s national chapter initially balked at admitting her. (Boston Globe)
Timothy Murray of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce says it is time to invest in vocational schools. (CommonWealth)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
Fatal opioid overdoses continue to rise in Lowell, with 55 deaths this year compared to 47 last year. (Lowell Sun)
The Globe publishes the final installment of a remarkable five-part series by reporter Billy Baker on a Braintree family’s desperate effort to find a cure for what had been a uniformly deadly form of cancer their son Will was suffering from.
Baystate Medical Center is notifying 1,500 cardiac surgery patients of a potential infection risk. (Masslive)
TRANSPORTATION
John Dalton, the newly hired manager of the MBTA’s Green Line extension, says he will ride the route of the proposed community path with bicycle activists in January but is making no promises about changing the modified design of the project. (CommonWealth)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Inspectors at Pilgrim nuclear power plant have found nearly 900 panels designed to prevent a nuclear reaction from spent fuel cells are degrading and could be deteriorating within a year. (Cape Cod Times)
Weymouth officials are planning to sue the owner of a Fore River power plant for violating the state’s subdivision laws by selling 16 acres of its land to a Texas company planning to build a controversial compressor station on the site. (Patriot Ledger)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
As Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera prepares to launch an investigation of police handling of the disappearance and death of Lee Manuel Viloria-Paulino, the case has become a hot-button issue in the looming mayor’s race. (Eagle-Tribune)
Monthly fees charged to the 67,000 people on probation in Massachusetts are disproportionately borne by poorer communities, adding another obstacle to offender rehabilitation, according to a new report. (CommonWealth)