The attorney general of New Mexico announced on Tuesday that Memorial Medical Center, a hospital run by Lifepoint Health in Las Cruces, would be the subject of an investigation to see if the facility—which was featured in an NBC News report—broke any laws by refusing treatment to low-income and destitute patients.
Raúl Torrez, the attorney general, said that his office is looking into Memorial’s patient policies to make sure they comply with state law and how well the hospital is doing in terms of the New Mexico legislation that controls providing treatment to patients in need.
During the Tuesday press conference that revealed the probe, Torrez said that he had just visited with Memorial’s clinicians and patient to hear about their concerns.
He said, “It is obvious to me that the management of this facility has failed to place the patients’ safety, well-being, and care in the proper place and in the proper priority.” “It seems to me that choices have been made with little regard or deference for the patients in their care and with a profit-maximizing mindset that prioritizes the bottom line.” Additionally, he forewarned hospital administration not to take revenge on anybody who exposes the facility’s activities.
Allegations were made last month by NBC News that Memorial Medical Center turned away cancer patients when it was operated by Lifepoint Health, a private equity business located in New York that Apollo Global Management later purchased. 13 patients’ interviews and medical records described how the hospital had refused to treat them or demanded upfront fees in order to get treatment.
One patient, Barbara Quarrell, a former Memorial nurse, said that after receiving a cancer diagnosis in 2022, the hospital denied her treatment. At the attorney general’s announcement, she told her experience.
Quarrell told NBC News that the attorney general’s probe gives her hope. It’s almost time, she said. “At Memorial, the patients are no longer the main priority—money is now everything.” If health care is not for patients, then why are they even in the field?
“Memorial Medical Center was surprised to learn of this investigation by Attorney General Torrez during his press conference today,” a hospital spokesperson stated in a statement. We will be completely participating with this inquiry and staying dedicated to providing more access to treatment and being a good community partner in Las Cruces and Doña Ana County.
Two of Memorial’s senior administrators contacted to apologize to two patients who had informed NBC News that they were turned away, but Memorial assured NBC News before the article was published and aired in June that it did not refuse treatment.
An email requesting comment was not answered by an Apollo spokesperson.
Memorial is operated by Lifepoint Health, which also manages the biggest network of largely rural hospitals in the US, with 62 acute care institutions spread across 16 states. According to NBC News, Lifepoint and other health care organizations under private equity ownership are the focus of two probes by the US Senate.
The inquiries seek to determine if the transactions hurt physicians and patients in addition to evaluating the financial gains Apollo and other companies made. Apollo has said that it would assist with the investigations.
While Lifepoint manages Memorial, Doña Ana County and the city of Las Cruces own the building and the land it is situated on. Refusing to treat patients could be against Memorial’s 2004 40-year contract with the county and the city. According to the agreement, the institution is required to keep treating “those unable to pay the full cost of healthcare services rendered to them” in general.
The urban and rural territory Memorial serves has around 225,000 residents, of whom over 15% do not have health insurance, according to data from the most recent census. Approximately 23% of county inhabitants are impoverished, whereas the national rate is 11.5%.
According to Torrez, a primary area of interest for the state probe is whether Memorial provided underreported health care services to persons in need. “Providing care to all of our neighbors, regardless of their ability to pay, is foundational to our mission and our commitment to our community,” the hospital said in its most recent annual report to the town.
Additionally, Torrez is looking into possible violations of a New Mexico statute pertaining to patient financial aid programs by Memorial. He said that “patients who are turned away without screening would constitute a violation of the law” and that hospitals are required by the people Debt Collection Protection Act to screen for financial help. A few of the individuals that NBC News spoke with for the June story said they were turned away from doctors without first having their financial needs assessed.
Memorial was a community nonprofit hospital until 2004. Memorial is a very successful for-profit company under Lifepoint. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, released the most latest data available in 2021, and it charged 6.7 times its expenditures for services. Professor Ge Bai of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Washington, D.C., specializes in health policy and management, says the average fee for for-profit hospitals in the country is less than five times their expenditures.
Memorial’s Medicare expenses per beneficiary exceed both the state and national averages by about 20%, according to the CMS hospital comparison website.
Yolanda Diaz started the nonprofit organization CARE Las Cruces, where she works as a patient advocate and assists low-income people with covering their medical costs. Since 2021, Diaz has been alerting county and local authorities about Memorial’s patient turn-away policy, which she described as cruel and unfair.
Diaz sent an email stating, “I had hope, but I was disappointed that no one in Las Cruces and Doña Ana County leadership stepped forward to take needed action.” “I think the best course of action is for the New Mexico Department of Justice to open an official investigation. I hope for public disclosures, necessary change, and justice.”
Memorial’s written indigent care policy, which was made available through open records requests, directed the hospital for years to treat patients who could not afford their treatments in full and to discuss cost-sharing or discounts for those who met certain income requirements. That changed last year, according to the data, five years after Lifepoint was acquired by Apollo, the massive private equity firm that Leon Black co-founded.
In recent years, private equity groups like as Apollo have largely taken over the health care sector. Usually, the corporations who purchase them inflate their debt, then reduce expenses in order to boost profits and attract future purchasers. A nonprofit organization that examines the effects of the private equity business on consumers, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, found that private equity corporations control almost 25% of New Mexico’s hospitals.
The private-equity advocacy organization American Investment Council claims that the sector enhances healthcare. However, independent academic research demonstrates that the industry’s participation by private equity companies drives up costs significantly for patients and payers like Medicare. Research indicates that the companies’ health care investments have been linked to worse quality treatment, with instances of infections, blood clots, and falls at hospitals increasing by 10% and private equity-owned nursing homes having 10% higher death rates.
