The project examined how Dr. Tariq Mahmood and his rural Texas hospital chain escaped punishment over the last four years despite endangering patients and committing potential fraud.
Main findings:
* Warnings of substandard care and fraud reached multiple federal and state government agencies, including criminal investigative units. But agencies ignored them or were slow to take action. Often they didn’t share information and lacked protocols to do so.
* Regulatory agencies aren’t set up to track problem hospital owners or hold them accountable. Nor do they look for patterns of care breakdowns inside hospital chains. Regulators were unaware Dr. Mahmood owned multiple hospitals until we raised questions about them.
* The oversight system is reactive and lority of care inspections are driven by complaints. Regulators initiate their own inspections only every five to six years. And hospital operators can go months, even years without facing penalties.
* Regulators don’t have the authority to immediately shut down a hospital, even when they find – as was the case with one Mahmood hospital – that months of reckless care led to multiple deaths.
* The federal government doesn’t consider hospitals’ safety records before awarding them stimulus funds. Its primary regulator of hospitals paid Mahmood’s facilities $18 million in stimulus “rewards’’ to create electronic record systems – even as the hospitals were violating nearly every health regulation on the books. Furthermore, managers and staffers revealed that little to none of the funds were used for that purpose. They didn’t know where the money went.
* No government program addresses sudden voids in care when troubled rural hospitals shut down. Days after Mahmood closed his Center, Tex. hospital and ER, a toddler died after choking on a grape when her parents couldn’t find her basic first aid. Other patients who died would have had a greater shot at survival had efforts been made to keep the ER operating, medical personnel say.