The good, the bad and the ugly......

[Tom Bird]

With most CMH agencies trying to provide the best services for their consumers, it is worth looking at the worst: 

Under ex-CEO, Summit Pointe misspent millions (and bought an $838 bobcat suit), audit says

Under ex-CEO, Summit Pointe misspent millions (and bought an $838 bobcat... Under ex-CEO Erv Brinker, Summit Pointe misspent more than $19 million on lavish benefits, parties and side proj...

The existing Medicaid shortfall would not all be met by recapturing, somehow, this stolen money, but it raises the question that maybe the AG and MDHHS should be more pro-active in investigating Medicaid fraud for both the waiver programs (PIHP's and CMH's) and for fee-for-services payments. Previous estimates have indicated the possibility of many millions of Dollars wasted annually in the latter category.

The same critical examination of the costs of the 10 Regions' expenses should be done. It has been estimated that it has cost the system $50M/yr in additional administrative overhead, ostensibly because the (Former) MDCH said that it could not effectively administer the 30-odd PIHP contracts under the old system, and they, therefore, needed to reduce the number of contracts to only 10. It makes you wonder how many employees they could have added to handle the larger number of contracts instead of wasting critical Medicaid Dollars on a new level of administrative overhead. Probably could have hired 100 new staff for less than $25M/yr and saved the balance for real services to consumers.

Why can't our state Government use common sense?

Tom Bird

cell-616.2041683