Hospital District Employee Charged
By Mike Glenn And Matt Schwartz, The Houston Chronicle
Police on Tuesday arrested a Harris County Hospital District employee they said participated in a scam to sell “gold cards” that enable purchasers to get free health care.
The female employee and a man also arrested will be charged with tampering with government documents and bribery, police said.
Indigent or low-income patients holding the hospital district’s gold cards can receive virtually free care at any of its medical facilities.
“It’s a valuable card to have. Who knows how much money it (the scheme) has cost the county,” said Sgt. Doug Osterberg of HPD’s Major Offenders Division.
The woman, a 10-year employee of the district, worked as an eligibility counselor for its health care for the homeless program, a spokesman said.
Customers usually bought the illegal cards, police said, because they couldn’t meet the hospital district’s criteria, such as residency or income levels.
Police began the investigation after county officials received an anonymous tip last September.
“For $300 to $400, this guy would sell you” a gold card, Osterberg said. “He’d tell you he had a contact within the Harris County Hospital District.”
An undercover officer contacted the man and bought several in the last several months.
“Every time we met with him (the man), he had a stack of gold cards,” Osterberg said.
The pair also offered customers other illicit services, including erasing medical bills from district computers, police said.
The investigators took them up on that offer and, with cooperation of district officials, established a dummy billing account.
“We got our balance taken off the record -- it was several thousand dollars,” Osterberg said.
Dinah Massie, director of communications, said the district would review its procedures and probably make some changes. It may also initiate random fraud checks on its patient registration and billing systems, she said.
The district is phasing out its gold card payment system in favor of one asking all patients to foot a portion of their bill.
The change is expected by year’s end.
KHOU-Channel 11 contributed information for the origination of this story.