It started with two disgruntled hospital accountants, one in Fort Myers, the other in Montana, accusing the nation's biggest hospital chain of rampant Medicare fraud. It became public when the FBI raided 39 hospitals and offices of what was then known as Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., seizing truckloads of documents in the summer of 1997. And it ended last week with the payment of nearly $1.8-billion in fines by the company now known as HCA.
With a brief news release last week, the Nashville company, which has nine hospitals in the Tampa Bay area, announced the completion of the largest, most far-reaching and most expensive health care settlement in history.
Jeff Prescott, the HCA spokesman who has fielded reporters' calls since new management was installed shortly after the FBI searches, said the case against HCA is now closed. "For years, there was always "one more thing,' outstanding," he said of the multilayered settlement process. "Now there's no "one more thing.' "
Prescott said he regrets he didn't keep a journal of events during HCA's six years of negotiations with the government. "I didn't have time to take notes," he said. "I'd be on the phone from the time I hit my chair in the morning until I finally decided it was time to leave at night. The calls would start in the morning from the East Coast and just come in waves from across the country."
