Audit: Physician at prisons billed for thousands of hours not worked | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Barry Smith, who is an associate editor for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    A new audit shows that a physician contracted by the state Department of Public Safety to provide services to five prisons over-billed taxpayers by more than half a million dollars between 2011 and 2014.

    The report, by State Auditor Beth Wood's office, recommends that DPS seek reimbursement from the physician and that the department also should consider reviewing the physician's time records before July 2011 to determine if additional over-billings occurred.

    The auditor's findings have been referred to the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation and the Wake County District Attorney's office.

    Dr. Sami Hassan, president of North State Medical Associates in Oak Ridge, signed a request for personal services contract in June 2011 with the state. In 2013, the contract was extended by a year. The department, then called the Department of Correction, agreed to compensate Hassan at a rate of $125 an hour.

    According to the report, the Department of Public Safety realized there was a discrepancy between the physician's time records and the gate logs.

    Over the three-year period, the DPS paid the physician $1.1 million for 8,864 hours. However, investigators could only analyze 6,198 hours of the 8,864 because of incomplete records.

    The report says that of the 6,198 hours reviewed, the physician was at one of the corrections facilities only 1,661 of them - or 27 percent of the hours he claimed. Hassan billed the department for 4,537 hours he was not on site, totaling $567,125 in excessive billing.

    However, the report says the physician had a "tacit agreement" with the department to bill for more hours than he was on site. "He said DPS administrative personnel had actual knowledge he billed DPS for more hours than he worked at the prisons," the report says. "The physician said he routinely billed DPS approximately eight hours for a large facility and three hours for a small facility each visit."

    Department administrators denied having such an agreement in place, the report continues.

    However, the report shows that one prison employee said she was told by supervisors to sign the physician's time records even though she knew they were inaccurate. And two prison employees responsible for approving the physician's time records said they were told by supervisors not to verify hours because it was difficult to find physicians to work at prisons.

    In their response to the report, DPS Secretary Frank Perry and Division of Correction and Juvenile Justice Commissioner David Guice say they plan to follow the auditor's recommendations.

    They say that DPS is exploring avenues for reimbursement and plan to appoint a review team to review available records. Perry and Guice say that measures are in place addressing the need for accountability on time records and that any employee who doesn't follow policies and procedures will face disciplinary action. In addition, the department's review team will review other contracted physicians' time records for compliance.

    The prisons involved were the North Piedmont Correctional Center for Women and the Davidson Correction Center in Davidson County, the Albemarle Correctional Institution in Stanly County, and the Brown Correctional Institution and Lanesboro Correctional Institution in Anson County.
Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




Balls Instead of Halls Carolina Journal, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics Unsolved Murder: Democratic Party Director's Killing Linked to Hillary, Wikileaks


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it
America needs to wake up and get its priorities right
Former President Donald Trump suggested this week that if he becomes president again, he might allow Prince Harry to be deported.
It's a New Year, which means it's time to make resolutions — even for prominent evangelical leaders. The Babylon Bee asked the following well-known figures in the faith what they hope to accomplish in 2024:
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic, reportedly the first time a president or vice president has visited an abortion facility.
An eight-mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville has been temporarily closed due to a string of “human and bear interactions,” the National Parks Service announced.
University of Wisconsin tried to punish conservatives for the fact that liberals regularly commit crimes to silence opposition
most voters think EU officials not doing a good job on illegal immigration
Come from behind by GOP candidate is a blueprint to 2024

HbAD1

Biden spending and energy policies to blame
Tuberculosis carried by illegal invaders has already infected Texas cattle
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
President Joe Biden’s brother told the Internal Revenue Service that Hunter Biden told him he was in business with a “protege of President Xi,” referring to the leader of China, according to notes by an IRS investigator that were divulged during a congressional interview of Jim Biden.
Gov. Roy Cooper seeks a temporary restraining order to block a law changing the composition of the State Board of Elections.
X owner Elon Musk mocked a news segment from ABC News this week that promoted President Joe Biden’s talking points about the Democrat-led Senate’s failed border bill, which critics and many experts have said would make the situation on the border worse.
That’s the question Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab sought to answer in a recent webinar on the topic.

HbAD2

 
Back to Top