A Dallas-area hospice owner is under investigation by the FBI after nurses revealed that they were ordered to hasten the deaths of hospice patients with drugs such as morphine in order to maximize profits, a practice that is far more prevalent in the industry than most people know.
According to KXAS TV in Dallas, an accountant named Brad Harris, 34, who founded Novus Health Care Services in July, 2012, is under investigation after nurses said they were instructed to administer lethal overdoses in order to make a patient “go bye-bye”.
In one case, a nurse was told to overdose three patients but refused. In another case, an employee was instructed to increase a patient’s medication to four times the maximum allowed.
It is also alleged that Harris told other health care executives that he was looking for “patients who would die within 24 hours” so he could make the maximum profit off of their care.
According to the FBI, hospice organizations are subject to what’s known as an “aggregator cap” which limits Medicare and Medicaid payments based on the yearly average hospice stay. If patients live longer than the cap, the provider must pay back part of their payments to the government.
“Hence, hospice providers have an incentive to enroll patients whose hospice stays will be short relative to the cap,” an agent wrote in an affidavit obtained by KXAS.
Even though the majority of hospice providers in the US are praiseworthy, that some hospice organizations opt to hasten death when a patient appears to be lingering is not news.
Known as “quiet” or “stealth” euthanasia, patient advocate Ron Panzer of the Hospice Patient’s Alliance (HPA) says it has been going on for years and has affected thousands of patients.
“Hospice has been infiltrated by euthanasia and assisted-suicide advocates,” Panzer writes. “I’ve spoken with thousands of individuals, family members, patients, hospice professionals, physicians, administrators and others who confirm that hastened deaths in hospice are common today. I’ve searched for years to find a truly pro-life hospice that affirms the sanctify of life from the top administration level down to the staff in the field and find that they are very few and far between today, whereas they were the norm thirty years ago.”
The National Catholic Bioethics Center has also reported on what appears to be “a clear trend toward hastening the deaths of patients” in hospices.
As for the investigation into Harris and Novus Health Care Services, the hospice issued a statement saying: “We have not and would not – ever – willfully harm any patient.”
It went on to say that the KXAS report was based on “unsubstantiated information” taken from a sealed affidavit that was leaked to the press. However, KXAS confirms that the information comes from an FBI search warrant which was publicly available on the federal court’s website. It was only sealed after the news organization contacted the FBI for comment.
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