Strange Tony,
We learned our Vice President Operations (VP Ops) Toad has left the company to join former Kindred Chief Financial Officer Stephen Farber at Mednax. Toad will take his pocket coin jingling to the neonatal medical practice company where Farber stands in line to take over as CFO in November.
Kindred purchased Farber's house at a premium after our CFO's neighborhood turned into War of the Roses. Farber received two moving packages from Kindred's executive enriching board. Mednax is in Sunrise, Florida not Louisville, Kentucky. Farber's Kindred buyout winnings of $2.1 million meant he could afford his own move.
It's not clear where Toad will be or what his new role is with Mednax. Open benefit enrollment for 2019 looms and executives used "sustainable" and "harmonize" in their announcement. These are not good words for employees who've gone years without raises. Did Toad get an early peak at benefit cuts and bolt?
Humana offers employer sponsored insurance products and our 40% owners could reverse our ever declining coverage for outrageous sums of money trend. There's no mention of that only the need to harmonize benefits between Kindred at Home and Curo Health Services. That usually means settling on the lower benefit between the two companies.
Curo Health's Larry Graham heads our Kindred at Home hospice division. Under his leadership at Amedisys and Curo unethical acts occurred. As COO at Amedisys Graham oversaw operations during a period of fraudulent Medicare home health billing. Amedisys settled with the Justice Department for $150 million in 2014.
Curo, founded in 2010, paid a $12.2 million settlement with the Justice Department in April 2017 for paying kickbacks in exchange for hospice referrals. The illegal practice began in 2007 but continued until 2014, four years after Curo purchased Dallas based HospicePlus. The settlement does not mention Curo's compliance program or why CEO Larry Graham did not catch this practice.
Admittedly Graham was busy with the sale of the company from financial rapscallion GTCR to fellow rapscallion Thomas H. Lee. Holding onto revenues is paramount in a sale evaluation process. It would be interesting to know if GTCR disclosed Curo's paying for referrals or if Thomas Lee's due diligence discovered anything shady. Financial rapscallions are not forthcoming on those issues.
Our hospice awaits a new executive and our new benefits. It's hard to believe but both can be worse than what we have now. Jingle, jingle go executive pockets (filled on the backs of workers).
Anonymous (from Curo at Home HospiceMinus)
