By Susan Kelly
Mon Dec 3, 2012 1:08pm EST
(Reuters) – Shares of Health Management Associates Inc fell about 5 percent on Monday after a radio news module 60 Minutes aired a story describing assertive studious admissions policies allegedly followed during a company’s U.S. hospitals.
The story enclosed interviews with several former employees of a sanatorium sequence who pronounced they were pressured to accommodate quotas for revelation patients.
HMA Senior Vice President Alan Levine told 60 Minutes a allegations were “absolutely wrong”.
In a matter expelled after a 60 Minutes broadcast, a Naples, Florida-based sanatorium association pronounced a news found no issues with a peculiarity of caring during a hospitals and relied wholly on “disgruntled” former employees and engaged physicians.
“Neither 60 Minutes nor a physicians interviewed identified any acknowledgment preference in that a physician’s medical visualisation was overridden by an HMA executive, most reduction to deceive Medicare,” HMA said.
HMA, that operates 70 hospitals in 15 states, pronounced admissions rates from a puncture bedrooms were in line with attention standards and unchanging over several years.
The association hold a discussion call for investors on Friday forward of a 60 Minutes news in that Levine pronounced that HMA’s examination showed there was no basement for an claim of increasing admissions by a company’s puncture departments.
CRT Capital Group researcher Sheryl Skolnick cut her rating on HMA shares to “sell” from “fair value”, citing a Medicare rascal allegations in a 60 Minutes report.
“We trust there is significantly larger risk of a deeper/wider (government) review and a almost aloft risk that HMA might have to compensate bigger fines to settle it,” Skolnick wrote in a note to clients.
Among those interviewed for a radio uncover was a former executive of correspondence for HMA, Paul Meyer, who sued a association for prejudicial termination. Meyer indicted a association of committing Medicare rascal by billing a supervision for sanatorium stays that did not accommodate supervision standards for acknowledgment or reimbursement.
HMA pronounced it hired an outward law organisation to examine Meyer’s allegations, though it found no justification to support an claim of fraud.
HMA shares were down 38 cents, or 4.8 percent, during $7.57 in afternoon trade on a New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting By Susan Kelly; Additional stating by Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay and Marguerita Choy)
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