More Trouble for the Diocese of Wheeling...

Department of Justice Accuses Wheeling Hospital of Violating Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Statute 

"The lawsuit notes R & V took over management of Wheeling Hospital in 2006 and quickly turned around the hospital’s financial performance. Prior to R & V, from 1998-2005, Wheeling Hospital lost about $55 million, according to the lawsuit. Wheeling Hospital, under R & V’s management, saw profits of nearly $90 million in the first five years of new management. 

"Former Wheeling-Charleston Diocese bishop Michael Bransfield hired R & V to manage Wheeling Hospital. According to the lawsuit, R & V, 'in its management of the hospital, reported to and took direction from … Bransfield and an ad hoc committee of the hospital’s board of directors comprising … Bransfield, Monsignor Kevin Quirk of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston (president of the board of directors) and a third member of Wheeling Hospital’s Board of Directors.' 

"According to the lawsuit, “one of the primary means by which Violi and R & V engineered Wheeling Hospital’s financial turnaround was the hiring of a large number of physicians, primarily as employees, to capture for the hospital those physicians’ referrals and the resulting revenues, thereby increasing Wheeling Hospital’s market share. In executing that strategy, since at least 2007, Wheeling Hospital, under the direction and control of R & V and Violi, systematically entered into compensation arrangements with referring physicians that did not satisfy the requirements of any statutory or regulatory exception to the Stark Law, or that violated” the Anti-Kickback Statute." (More here.)