Deaths, fraud, physicians’ negligence at SRMC true.
By Staff Writer
Apr 20, 2005, 17:00
The facts were presented and in the end, the people believed the newspaper. A near three-hour “People’s Forum” held last week was the result of the public’s demand to get to the bottom of a serious list of allegations involving Southside Regional Medical Center and city officials.
The allegations that have been surfacing since August of last year when the Virginia Times brought them to the public’s attention, include corruption by hospital administrators, insurance fraud by doctors and sexual harassment by doctors aimed at nurses and other employees and patients.
While the general public was invited to attend the event at Vernon Johns Middle School, the list of invitees also included David Fikse, chief operating offi cer at SRMC, administrators and physicians, Gov. Mark R. Warner, state Board of Medicine and Department of Health Professions heads, Dr. William Harp and Nancy Hofheimer, attorney general’s of- fi ce, the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Concerned Citizens of Petersburg, and the FBI, which listened closely and promised to look into the allegations.
Norman Harris of Petersburg served as moderator. The speakers were George “Seitu” Brown; Christopher White; Lloyd Hines; Alzenia Mayfi eld; Dr. Ben Rice; Stonewall Odom; Dorothy Taylor; Lynn Wiggins; Lillian Evans; and Dr. Lokesh Vuyyuru.
“The Times has been on the cutting edge of information,” Brown told the crowd. “No elected offi cials or hospital authorities would give justifi cation of what they were doing. Hospital offi cials backed Dr. Vuyyuru into a corner,” he said, adding that the two African-American ministers who sat on the hospital authority “sold the community out.”
“The city may have had good intentions (in the decision to sell the hospital), but the process was corrupt,” Brown said.
Vuyyuru said the hospital has yet to provide a solid reason for his dismissal, and surmised he was let go because he interfered with the sale of the facility for three years trying to get it stalled until an appropriate investigation was done by the attorney general’s office. He contends no such investigation was ever done.
According to the contingent of speakers, the forum concluded these 10 points, that:
• Patient deaths at SRMC were true and hushed up by physicians and administrators;
• Physcians at SRMC were involved in fraudulent acts to embezzle Medicaid and Medicare funds as well as private insurance money;
•SRMC physicians were involved in a fraudulent peer review process to protect each other and make money from Medicaid and Medicare and private insurance;
•Because the hospital had lost its “deemed status” during the time it was sold to Community Health Systems, no public interviews were conducted and that both CHS and the Universal Health Corporation were aware of doctors’ negligence and manipulation by the hospital’s administrators.
•Incidences of sexual harassment at SRMC were factual and that the information was suppressed by not informing state and federal government;
•Strippers were in the operating room and urology suite and that the hospital’s vice president lied to investigators;
•Dr. Gopinath Jadhav performed unnecessary medical procedures and that the hospital’s Executive Committee and Quality Assurance committee protected doctors like Jadhav; Akshay Dave; Thomas Ross; Barton; Smith; John Grizzard, L. Shandiliyah, Cary Strayton; J. Rayudu; and Kamlesh Dave – and hushed up patient deaths, unnecessary procedures, insurance fraud and sexual harassment.
•The Centers for Quality Health Care did a sham investigation and was in cahoots with SRMC;
•The entire peer review of the hospital is fraudulent and malicious; and,
•The Centers of Quality Health Care and Consumer Protection leaked out the name of the physician who fi led the complaint to them, and that as a result, the physician became a victim for the peer review committee, although he had no patient complications or deaths, and had met all of his criteria for admissions and procedures.
The forum also concluded that the citizens of Petersburg wanted justice to be done; likening what happened to them at the hospital as another “Tuskegee Experiment,” (in which poor African-American citizens were purposely injected decades ago with syphilis).
Said one forum attendee, “Only this time we have the ‘Petersburg Experiment.’ No where else in the world could this kind of corruption and fraud have taken place and its perpetrators allowed to get away with deaths of patients and misusing millions of dollars of public money.”
“This could not have happened anywhere but in Petersburg, because it involved minorities. Even the multiple patients who died in the hospital were African American. This kind of thing could never have happened in Chester- fi eld County or Henrico County where the majority populations are white.”
“People believe that David Dunham and other physicians involved in wrongful deaths should go to jail. Instead of responding to the newspaper articles directly, Mr. Fikse placed an advertisement in other newspapers to negate the credence of the Times’ articles.
“But the advertisement was of no value, because given the chance to prove the newspaper was wrong, no one from the hospital came to speak on its behalf.”
The whole matter is evolving into a civil rights issue, because of the African American patients who died at the hospital, the fraudulent embezzlement of money from minorities, and suppressing minority physicians, according to the FBI representative. “It’s a major turn in the investigation regarding SRMC and the physicians.” |