They essentially outsourced it to Brad Harris with horrible, horrible consequences.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:30] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
With those patient harm concerns, we, we kick into a different gear.
And some of the texts are horrific.
[00:02:48] Tom Cook: Those are just horrifying messages to read.
He got frustrated or he, he just wanted something done.
[00:03:08] Bob: So the FBI takes action almost immediately.
That’s not their style.
It can often lead to destruction of evidence, but there’s no time to waste in this case.
[00:03:25] Bob: Working the case backwards.
So first, they get the patients out of immediate harm.
[00:04:15] Bob: That sounds like a really big step too.
I mean is that, what happens to the patients in a situation like that?
So investigators soon have to explain to all the families involved what’s going on.
That just seems awful.
[00:05:20] Tom Cook: Uh, it’s hard to describe.
[00:05:23] Bob: One of the family members the FBI talked with is Judy Venable-Grogan.
You met her in Part 1 of this story.
First, state investigators reach out to her.
After that conversation I didn’t hear anything again for months until the investigator with the FBI contacted me.
Now that’ll wake you up.
Now they were taking it seriously and I could tell they were going to do an investigation.
Novus had told her that was overkill.
The FBI had a different view.
If they don’t sign the book they’re not there."
And I said, “I kept the book.”
He said, “Do you still have the book?”
I said, “Yes.”
And then I told them about the Excel spreadsheet.
And I, I mean we became a team.
They wanted to know how quickly I could get the information to them.
They were handwriting doctor visits.
And this was done in coordination with Brad and some of the other office managers at the company.
[00:07:57] Bob: The misrepresentations are dramatic.
And the geography of North Texas is such that patients were 60 miles away from each other.
Now that’s a circumstantial case.
It’s something that we had to deal with is proving a negative is very difficult.
It’s hard to say that a certain person didn’t do something on a certain day.
There are many more responsible parties inside Novus.
And, and there’s a lot of focus paid toward the leader.
But there were a lot of other folks who were involved.
There were also a number of nurses.
And they didn’t.
And some of the, you know, Brad Harris wasn’t bedside with patients, the nurses were.
So they’re responsible for the actions that they took at those, at those patients’ bedsides.
[00:10:06] Bob: And a lot of people were making money for doing the wrong thing.
[00:10:23] Bob: Do you know how much they were making?
In addition, they were getting paid $150 for each of those recertifications that they were faking.
And, they recruited people who didn’t even need hospice care.
So we saw fraud in the recruitment phase.
They were, they would go out to facilities and essentially bribe them to send patients to their hospice.
They also would mine patient records from other companies' electronic medical records.
[00:12:22] Tom Cook: I’ll give you an example of a patient.
She was, she was with a third party company.
They accessed her medical records through their log-in multiple times.
They contacted her, they signed her up.
Provide her the service, but don’t, don’t tell her that she’s on hospice."
I think she’d spent maybe two, two or three months on, on service with Novus.
This occurred in 2014.
In the spring of 2021, she was still alive.
She’d never had a terminal illness.
They had never talked to her primary care doctor, or any doctor associated with her care.
In addition to CEO Bradley Harris and Drs.
It displays a shocking level of depravity."
They, they essentially outsourced it to Brad Harris with horrible, horrible consequences.
[00:14:22] Bob: Tom finally meets Bradley Harris when he’s taken into custody.
[00:14:36] Tom Cook: It, it’s a very, it’s a very complicated story.
Um… he, he’s a, a very sick person.
Their trial gives Judy a chance to tell her story to the world.
And under intense cross examination, she stands her ground.
And it’s quite surreal, you know.
They kept trying to, to pressure me to say that a doctor could have been there.
But it isn’t about the money for people like Judy.
It’s about the inhumane way their loved ones were treated.
You might remember from episode one, that Judy’s mom had trouble even seeing a doctor at Novus.
I wished it had been longer.
But it was, it was a relief.
[00:18:13] Bob: A long, long time.
The initial search warrant was served in 2015, and the sentences were handed down in 2022.
But, justice was served.
And that, that was very difficult to do.
The taxpayers are on the hook for about $60 million in billings by Novus.
So this was a large financial fraud as well.
[00:20:11] Bob: Wow.
[00:20:48] Bob: That’s, thats fabulous.
I’m, I’m, what a, what a, what a gift to have that.
[00:20:53] Judy Venable-Grogan: Right.
[00:20:54] Bob: Judy got her mom out of Novus and got her mom back.
Did you ever talk to her about any of this?
[00:21:14] Judy Venable-Grogan: Any of that?
Well my sister and I started trying to find a dress, and so we finally did.
I said, “Would you like to see the dress that Joyce and I picked out?”
So I brought it out.
Now we found this dress, although we shopped everywhere, Bob.
At Neiman’s, there was not a shop we didn’t try.
It was perfect, a gorgeous dress.
So we bought it.
I think we paid $2 for it.
And I showed it to her, oh and loved it.
She actually loved it.
Then we picked out all the jewelry she was going to wear.
Now this was mid-morning.
That afternoon about 2 o’clock, she said, “Judy.”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, “I think you better take the dress back and get me a 12.”
(laugh) I go, “I don’t think they have it anymore, Mother.”
(chuckles)
[00:23:30] Bob: Well you want it to fit right, don’t you?
[00:23:31] Judy Venable-Grogan: Exactly.
[00:24:08] Bob: Oh my God.
[00:24:12] Judy Venable-Grogan: So we did have fun.
And it’s important, people like Judy and Tom step forward and work to fix it.
The depravity in the case still haunts Tom.
My, my hope is that this case is unique.
I know for certain it’s not indicative of the hospice industry whatsoever.
Because it’s just, you know, it almost doesn’t seem real sometimes.
Well, in hospice, at a certain point you have a right to see the doctor.
The doctor is required to see you.
[00:26:16] Bob: How simple or difficult is it to change companies?
[00:26:19] Judy Venable-Grogan: It’s really not that difficult.
We didn’t have to change beds.
The only thing that’s changed is the caregivers.
And we are really lucky she decided to talk with us.
It was, “Make them go bye-bye.”
[00:27:48] Judy Venable-Grogan: Hmm.
And then to find it was such a nightmare on top of what you thought it was.
But every time I was contacted with the FBI, it all had to come back.
And my prayer before this call … was that I could talk about it one more time.
But it’s going to do so much good that you’re having this conversation with me.
[00:28:50] Judy Venable-Grogan: I hope so.
That’s my prayer, that’s my hope.
But to investigate it.
There are agencies that they can reach out to.
And it’s not them, they’re not the problem.
If you feel there’s something not right, trust your gut.
Of course you don’t want your loved one to leave.
It doesn’t mean you don’t get any care.
Palliative care means that your loved one is not hurting.
If they’re hurting, question it.
That’s what I would want them to know.
But in reference to The Perfect Scam, um, that was, they thought, The Perfect Scam.
But uh, luckily there’s no such thing.
Someone that, you know, the truth always comes out.
If not in the wash, in the rinse.
And it can really be a beautiful, emotional time, full of love and acceptance for everyone involved.
So we invited Dr. Charlene Harrington, to speak with us.
Charlene is both a nurse and an academic who has studied elder care for decades.
And I personally have experienced using hospice in my own family.
So I know that it can be really, tremendously useful.
And they have unusual skills that many other health professionals don’t have.
And they’re very good at communications.
There’s a lot of emotions and, and fear.
[00:33:13] Dr. Charlene Harrington: It was nonprofits and many visiting nurses associations that offered the service.
And so it was truly a calling for people that worked in that area.
[00:33:42] Bob: Today roughly two-thirds of hospice care is provided by for-profit companies.
Is that what we’re seeing?
Often the family is expected to hire their own assistants or provide the care directly themselves.
And the hospice mostly oversees the care that’s provided.
So there’s a huge variation in the amount of services that hospices offer.
[00:35:40] Dr. Charlene Harrington: Well ideally you would have a registered nurse visiting every week.
And sometimes the hospices substitute licensed vocational nurses for the registered nurses.
It’s better to have the registered nurse because they have higher training.
And then they should be able to call if they wanted a physician to come out.
They should be able to ask for that anytime.
And I asked, is that typical?
[00:37:20] Dr. Charlene Harrington: Yes, I think that’s common.
And I could mention some specific things that I would look for, for my family.
[00:37:35] Bob: Yes, kindly.
The for-profit hospices have less services and poorer quality of care.
And I would avoid a hospice that’s part of a chain.
[00:38:18] Bob: That all makes good sense to me.
So, so like give me an example of a sign that something is wrong.
So those, those would be the first signals of, of a problem.
[00:39:04] Bob: And there are systemic problems in hospice care right now, Charlene said.
For one, some complaints about providers are never examined because investigators are just stretched too thin.
[00:39:15] Dr. Charlene Harrington: Unfortunately, the Medicare oversight is very poor.
But unfortunately they, for various reasons, are not doing that.
So a hospice may not even be assessed every, more than every three years.
And sometimes less frequently than that.
So that’s a big problem because the, the oversight is not there.
[00:40:02] Bob: And also, the way Medicare compensates caregivers creates fat incentives.
Incentives to seek out certain kinds of patients and neglect others.
That’s what ultimately drove the choices that Novus CEO Bradley Harris made.
And so that they will stay, can stay in hospice for a longer time period.
And that patients that they don’t have to provide much care to.
And so that’s definitely a problem.
In other cases, the hospice, they are overmedicating patients and hastening in the death of patients.
[00:41:13] Dr. Charlene Harrington: Yes.
[00:41:14] Bob: And that creates these crazy incentives.
[00:41:17] Dr. Charlene Harrington: Yes.
[00:41:18] Bob: Wow.
That means families must always question the advice they’re getting and do their own research.
And that is the Medicare’s oversight information on hospices.
And there are two types of information they have there.
And the second one is the quality of patient care.
So you should look at that information, and you’re free to compare across hospices.
[00:43:55] Bob: It bears repeating, hospice can be a wonderful, crucial service.
We don’t want stories like this Novus scandal to scare people away from considering hospice.
But it is important to have a clear understanding of the risks.
So each patient is a little different, and this care is quite complex.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch internet Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
But the other begins to have doubts.
A Texas Hospice Providers Deadly Scheme, Part 1
