RICHMOND, Va. — In late July, Norman Otey was rushed by ambulance to Richmond Group Hospital. The 63-year-old was doubled over in ache and babbling incoherently. Blood exams advised septic shock, a grave emergency that required the sources and experience of an intensive care unit.
However Richmond Group, a struggling hospital in a predominantly Black neighborhood, had closed its I.C.U. in 2017.
It took a number of hours for Mr. Otey to be transported to a different hospital, in keeping with his sister, Linda Jones-Smith. He deteriorated on the way in which there, and later died of sepsis. Two individuals who cared for Mr. Otey stated the delay had almost definitely contributed to his demise.
“He ought to have been capable of go to the hospital and get the remedy he wanted,” Ms. Jones-Smith stated. “He ought to have been saved.”
Ringed by public housing tasks, Richmond Group consists of little greater than a strapped emergency room and a psychiatric ward. It doesn’t have kidney or lung specialists, or a maternity ward. Its magnetic resonance imaging machine often breaks, and was out of service for seven weeks this summer season, stated two medical employees on the hospital, who requested anonymity as a result of they nonetheless work there. Customary instruments like an otoscope, a tool used to examine the ear canal, are sometimes exhausting to come back by.
But the hollowed-out hospital — owned by Bon Secours Mercy Well being, one of many largest nonprofit well being care chains within the nation — has the best revenue margins of any hospital in Virginia, producing as a lot as $100 million a yr, in keeping with the hospital’s monetary information.
The key to its success lies with a federal program that permits clinics in impoverished neighborhoods to purchase pharmaceuticals at steep reductions, cost insurers full value and pocket the distinction. The overwhelming majority of Richmond Group’s income come from this system, stated two former executives who have been accustomed to the hospital’s funds and requested anonymity as a result of they nonetheless work within the well being care business.
The drug program was created with the intention that hospitals would reinvest the windfalls into their amenities, bettering look after poor sufferers. However Bon Secours, based by Roman Catholic nuns greater than a century in the past, has been slashing providers at Richmond Group whereas investing within the metropolis’s wealthier, white neighborhoods, in keeping with greater than 20 former executives, docs and nurses.
“Bon Secours was mainly laundering cash by way of this poor hospital to its rich outposts,” stated Dr. Lucas English, who labored in Richmond Group’s emergency division till 2018. “It was all about income.”
Greater than half of all hospitals in the US are arrange as nonprofits, a designation that permits them to generate profits however keep away from paying taxes. Though Bon Secours has taken a monetary hit this yr like many different hospital techniques, the chain made almost $1 billion in revenue final yr at its 50 hospitals in the US and Eire and was sitting on greater than $9 billion in money reserves. It avoids a minimum of $440 million in federal, state and native taxes yearly that it could in any other case should pay, in keeping with an evaluation by the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan assume tank.
In change for the tax breaks, the Inner Income Service requires nonprofit hospitals to supply a profit to their communities. However an investigation by The New York Occasions discovered that lots of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital techniques have drifted removed from their charitable roots. The hospitals function like for-profit corporations, fixating on income targets and expansions into prosperous suburbs.
Many of those hospitals have for years slashed staffing ranges, leaving them unprepared for a flood of severely sick Covid-19 sufferers. Others, borrowing methods from enterprise consultants, have educated employees to squeeze funds from poor sufferers who needs to be eligible free of charge care.
In an announcement, a spokeswoman for Bon Secours Mercy Well being stated the hospital system had spent almost $10 million on enhancements to Richmond Group Hospital since 2013, together with opening a pharmacy and renovating the cafeteria, emergency division and different areas. The chain additionally invested almost $9 million since 2018 within the neighborhood surrounding the hospital, she stated.
Bon Secours’s chief govt, John M. Starcher Jr., made about $6 million in 2020, in keeping with the latest tax filings.
“Our mission is evident — to increase the compassionate ministry of Jesus by bettering the well being and well-being of our communities and produce good assist to these in want, particularly people who find themselves poor, dying and underserved,” the spokeswoman, Maureen Richmond, stated. Bon Secours didn’t touch upon Mr. Otey’s case.
In interviews, docs, nurses and former executives stated the hospital had been given quick shrift, and pointed to a decade-old improvement take care of town of Richmond as one other instance.
In 2012, town agreed to lease land to Bon Secours at far under market worth on the situation that the chain develop Richmond Group’s amenities. As an alternative, Bon Secours targeted on constructing a luxurious condominium and workplace complicated. The hospital system waited a decade to construct the promised medical workplaces subsequent to Richmond Group, breaking floor solely this yr.
‘Glorified Emergency Room’
For Dr. Richard Jackson, 69, an inner drugs specialist whose household has been caring for sufferers on this metropolis for greater than a century, strolling the principally empty halls of Richmond Group Hospital is a painful reminder of what has been misplaced.
The hospital was based in 1907 by Black docs who weren’t allowed to work on the white hospitals throughout city. Within the Nineteen Thirties, Dr. Jackson’s grandfather, Dr. Isaiah Jackson, mortgaged his home to assist pay for an growth of the hospital. His father, additionally a health care provider, would take his youngsters to the hospital’s fund-raising telethons.
In 1980, Richmond Group moved to its present website within the East Finish neighborhood, the place there was no different hospital. The modest constructing didn’t have an emergency room or a maternity ward. However along with the intensive care unit, it had specialists in most cancers in addition to coronary heart and lung illness. Dr. Jackson recruited a lot of them from Howard College, the place he had attended medical faculty.
However within the Nineteen Nineties, the altering well being care business threatened the hospital’s survival. Massive insurance coverage corporations started requiring clients to make use of particular networks of hospitals and docs, in a bid to stress suppliers to decrease their charges. Impartial establishments like Group — as it’s identified within the neighborhood — couldn’t compete with bigger chains, and the hospital struggled to draw sufferers.
The docs, who owned the hospital as a part of a for-profit partnership, offered it to Bon Secours in 1995.
Bon Secours was one of many dominant gamers in Richmond, with main medical facilities all through town. It initially invested within the hospital, opening the emergency division, in keeping with a historical past of Richmond Group by Cassandra Newby-Alexander at Norfolk State College.
However because the years handed, Bon Secours started stripping the hospital’s providers, together with the I.C.U. The unit had solely 5 beds, however docs regarded it as the guts of the hospital, the place to supply vital look after the sickest sufferers and people recovering from main surgical procedure.
Eradicating the I.C.U. “actually takes the meat and potatoes out of being a hospital,” Dr. Jackson stated. “It’s a glorified emergency room.”
With the I.C.U. closed, the hospital’s two lung specialists had nowhere to deal with critically sick sufferers. They retired, and Bon Secours didn’t substitute them. A staff of cardiologists left just a few years later. Different specialists, together with gastrointestinal docs and neurologists who have been a part of Bon Secours’s broader community, hardly ever handled sufferers at Richmond Group.
Docs and nurses stated that after they had protested the closure of the I.C.U. and different cuts, Bon Secours argued that sufferers may nonetheless obtain care on the chain’s different hospitals.
However that promise was undermined by the arrival of the coronavirus, which disproportionately affected Black and low-income residents within the East Finish. Within the census tract that features Richmond Group Hospital, the Covid demise charge has been 81 % larger than town’s general charge, in keeping with information offered by the Virginia Division of Well being.
In the summertime of 2021, because the Delta variant surged by way of town, a girl within the emergency room with Covid declined and wanted an I.C.U. with a ventilator, in keeping with three folks concerned in her case.
For hours, the employees couldn’t get her to a different hospital. Finally, she was transferred to Memorial Regional Medical Middle, additionally owned by Bon Secours, however died after arriving. Her demise left some who had cared for her at Group questioning if she would have survived had she proven up at a unique hospital.
Bon Secours declined to touch upon whether or not the hospital’s lack of an I.C.U. contributed to the Covid demise toll.
The pandemic exacerbated an issue that docs and nurses stated they’d lengthy confronted — getting sufferers entry to different hospitals within the Bon Secours system.
The East Finish is house to Richmond’s largest Black inhabitants and, regardless of latest curiosity from actual property buyers, lacks some primary providers. In 2019, it bought its first grocery store.
In among the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital, greater than half the households don’t have a automotive, in keeping with analysis accomplished by Virginia Commonwealth College. The general public bus path to St. Mary’s, a big Bon Secours facility within the northwest a part of town, takes greater than an hour. There isn’t a public transportation from the East Finish to Memorial Regional, 9 miles away.
“It grew to become unimaginable for me to ship folks to the superior coronary heart valve clinic at St. Mary’s,” stated Dr. Michael Kelly, a heart specialist who labored at Richmond Group till Bon Secours scaled again the specialty service in 2019. He stated he had pushed some sufferers to the clinic in his personal automotive.
Richmond Group has the texture of an urgent-care clinic, with a small ready room and a tan brick facade. The distinction with Bon Secours’s close by hospitals is placing.
On the chain’s St. Francis Medical Middle, an Italianate-style compound in a suburb 18 miles from Group, golf carts shuttle sufferers from the foyer entrance, previous a marble fountain, to their automobiles.
In December, Bon Secours kicked off a $108 million building undertaking at St. Francis to develop its I.C.U. and maternity ward. Not lengthy earlier than that, Bon Secours broke floor on a free-standing emergency room that may be an extension of St. Francis in suburban Chesterfield County. The information launch boasted that it could provide CT, M.R.I. and ultrasound imaging.
Dr. Samuel Hunter, 81, who labored for greater than 4 many years as a pathologist at Richmond Group till he left in Could, stated the disparity reminded him of his childhood in segregated Florida, the place Black youngsters like him discovered from textbooks that white college students had already used.
“I do know what it feels wish to have secondhand issues,” he stated.
A Profitable Drug Program
When Bon Secours purchased Richmond Group, the hospital served predominantly poor sufferers who have been both uninsured or lined by way of Medicaid, which reimburses hospitals at decrease charges than personal insurance coverage does. However Bon Secours turned the hospital’s poverty into an asset.
The group seized on a federal program created within the Nineteen Nineties to present a monetary increase to nonprofit hospitals and clinics that serve low-income communities. This system, known as 340B after the part of the federal regulation that approved it, permits hospitals to purchase medication from producers at a reduction — roughly half the common gross sales value. The hospitals are then allowed to cost sufferers’ insurers a a lot larger value for a similar medication.
The speculation behind the regulation was that nonprofit hospitals would make investments the financial savings of their communities. However the 340B program got here with few guidelines. Hospitals didn’t should disclose how a lot cash they comprised of gross sales of the discounted medication. And so they weren’t required to make use of the revenues to assist the underserved sufferers who certified them for this system within the first place.
In 2019, greater than 2,500 nonprofit and government-owned hospitals participated in this system, or greater than half of all hospitals within the nation, in keeping with the impartial Medicare Fee Advisory Fee.
Beginning within the mid-2000s, huge hospital chains found out supercharge this system. The essential thought: Construct clinics in wealthier neighborhoods, the place sufferers with beneficiant personal insurance coverage may obtain costly medication, however on paper make the clinics extensions of poor hospitals to benefit from 340B.
Since 2013, Bon Secours has opened 9 such satellite tv for pc clinics in wealthier components of the Richmond space, in keeping with federal data. Although the outposts are miles from Richmond Group, they’re legally structured as subsidiaries of the hospital, which entitles them to purchase medication on the discounted charge.
The Bon Secours Most cancers Institute at St. Mary’s, for instance, administers most cancers medication to sufferers in an workplace suite on the tree-lined campus of St. Mary’s Hospital.
Because of 340B, Richmond Group Hospital can purchase a vial of Keytruda, a most cancers drug, on the discounted value of $3,444, in keeping with an estimate by Sara Tabatabai, a former researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Most cancers Middle.
However the hospital costs the personal insurer Blue Cross Blue Defend greater than seven occasions that value — $25,425, in keeping with a value record that hospitals are required to publish. That’s almost $22,000 revenue on a single vial. Adults want two vials per remedy course.
The best way hospitals use the 340B program is “nakedly capitalizing on packages which might be supposed to assist poor folks,” stated Dr. Peter B. Bach, a biotechnology govt and researcher whose work has proven that hospitals taking part within the 340B program have more and more opened clinics in wealthier areas for the reason that mid-2000s.
Bon Secours didn’t disclose how a lot cash it earned by way of this system, however stated the funds “assist us tackle well being disparities whereas offering group help and outreach.” It stated it had offered almost $18 million in free care to poor sufferers at Richmond Group Hospital since 2018. In 2020, the hospital offered $3.8 million in free care to low-income sufferers, or about 2.6 % of its complete bills, barely above the nationwide common.
The federal company that oversees the 340B program, the Well being Assets and Companies Administration, stated that hospitals and clinics have been commonly audited, and that the Biden administration had proposed requiring them to report how they spent income generated by way of this system. Such a change would require congressional approval.
In 2020, the latest yr for which information is obtainable, Richmond Group Hospital — together with its satellite tv for pc workplaces — had a revenue margin of almost 44 %, the best within the state, in keeping with an evaluation by Virginia Well being Info, a nonprofit group that collects monetary information from hospitals.
That yr, the hospital introduced in additional than $110 million in income, after bills and losses have been deducted, in keeping with Virginia Well being Info. In accordance with two former Bon Secours executives accustomed to the hospital’s monetary operations, the overwhelming majority of Richmond Group’s revenue since 2013 has come from the 340B program.
Bon Secours’s different hospitals haven’t accomplished as effectively. St. Mary’s, thought-about probably the most prestigious Bon Secours facility in Richmond, introduced in $83 million in 2020.
‘Unabashedly Revenue-Oriented’
On a sunny October day in Richmond in 2012, two cheerleaders for Washington’s Nationwide Soccer League staff smiled for cameras as they gripped a big signal between them.
“Bon Secours Coaching Middle,” learn the signal, which mixed the Bon Secours fleur-de-lis brand with a bust of a Native American, the soccer staff’s brand on the time.
The staff, Bon Secours and the State of Virginia have been unveiling a significant financial deal that may carry $40 million to Richmond, add 200 jobs and preserve the Washington staff — now generally known as the Commanders — within the state for summer season coaching.
The deal had three major components. Bon Secours would get naming rights and assist the staff construct a coaching camp and medical workplaces on rather a lot subsequent to Richmond’s science museum.
Town would lease Bon Secours a major piece of actual property that the chain had lengthy coveted for $5,000 a yr. The parcel was on town’s west aspect, subsequent to St. Mary’s, the place Bon Secours wished to construct medical workplaces and a nursing faculty.
Lastly, the nonprofit’s executives promised metropolis leaders that they might construct a 25,000-square-foot medical workplace constructing subsequent to Richmond Group Hospital. Bon Secours additionally stated it could rent 75 native employees and construct a health heart.
“It’s going to be a fast timetable, however I believe we are able to accomplish it,” the mayor on the time, Dwight C. Jones, stated on the information convention.
At the moment, bodily remedy and docs’ workplaces overlook the soccer area on the coaching heart.
On the west aspect of Richmond, Bon Secours dropped its plans to construct a nursing faculty. As an alternative, it labored with an actual property developer to construct luxurious flats on the positioning, and delayed its plans to construct medical workplaces. Residents at The Crest at Westhampton Commons, a part of the $73 million undertaking, can swim in a saltwater pool and work out on communal Peloton bicycles. On the bottom ground, an upscale Mexican restaurant serves cucumber jalapeño margaritas and a Drybar presents salon blowouts.
The land subsequent to Richmond Group Hospital, against this, remained inactive till February of this yr, when Bon Secours broke floor on the complicated.
Former executives on the chain stated a sequence of administration modifications in Bon Secours’s Richmond area, coupled with a change in mayoral administrations, had distracted consideration from the undertaking. And a merger with an Ohio hospital chain in 2018 accelerated the push for larger revenues, in keeping with former directors and docs.
“There was a significant shift from being mission-oriented to being unashamedly, unabashedly profit-oriented,” stated Dr. Jones, the previous mayor who helped dealer the unique deal.
Bon Secours stated that since 2018, it had spent greater than $19 million supporting organizations and initiatives all through metropolitan Richmond, together with greater than $8 million on native companies and charities within the East Finish. The work close to Richmond Group Hospital is projected to be completed by the tip of this yr. Hospital executives have stated they plan to deal with psychological well being, hospice and different providers there.
Catastrophe Drugs
For years, docs and nurses at Richmond Group have typically felt as in the event that they have been engaged on a battlefield, doing their finest with severely restricted provides and amenities.
Kristen Schnurman, who started her profession as a doctor assistant at Bon Secours in 2014 and left in 2019, stated she had as soon as confided in a health care provider that she was not studying correct medical care.
“He stated to me — and this can all the time follow me — ‘You’re not studying drugs, you’re studying catastrophe drugs,’” she stated.
In the summertime of 2016, with temperatures hovering previous 90 levels, the hospital’s air-conditioning went out for a number of weeks, making it hotter inside than out on the road.
When requested in regards to the air-conditioning and lack of primary provides at Richmond Group, Bon Secours declined to remark. Ms. Richmond, the Bon Secours spokeswoman, stated it could substitute the M.R.I. machine as a part of a $5.3 million capital enchancment plan.
Dr. Kelly, the heart specialist, stopped treating sufferers on the hospital in 2019. However there may be one man’s story that haunts him.
The person, who was in his 50s, arrived on the emergency room exhibiting indicators of a coronary heart assault. To stop everlasting injury, the person wanted to be swiftly catheterized, a process that may insert a balloon into his blocked artery and drive it open.
Bon Secours didn’t have the instruments for the catheterization, so Dr. Kelly organized for the affected person to be transferred rapidly to Memorial Regional.
However Memorial couldn’t assure a mattress could be prepared, Dr. Kelly stated. So the affected person waited for a number of hours within the Group emergency room. “All we may do was watch it occur,” Dr. Kelly recalled.
The affected person survived, he stated, however the delay broken his coronary heart. For the remainder of his life, the person might be in danger for excessive fatigue and dangerously low blood stress, Dr. Kelly stated.
Each time that Bon Secours took away a service from Group, executives gave docs the identical justification: Sufferers have been simply an ambulance experience away from hospitals within the broader system.
However Dr. Kelly and different docs stated many sufferers had wound up like the person with the guts assault. “We very, fairly often have been caught for a lot of hours with sufferers who completely wanted superior care,” Dr. Kelly stated.
Different sufferers confronted a unique drawback: Specialists who noticed sufferers at different Bon Secours areas wouldn’t journey to the hospital.
This spring, Doris Scarborough, 79, went to Richmond Group to have her toe partly amputated. Poor circulation had turned the toe black and gangrenous. She stated her podiatrist had informed her that she would lose a few of her toe, however was more likely to preserve her leg if she had a typical process generally known as revascularization.
Richmond Group didn’t provide this process. Ms. Scarborough needed to have it accomplished on the specialist’s workplace, and it took greater than two weeks to get an appointment. Weeks after the process, Ms. Scarborough misplaced her whole toe.
Dr. Foluso Fakorede, a heart specialist and an professional on racial disparities in amputation, stated many individuals in poor, nonwhite communities confronted related delays in getting the process. “I’m not shocked by what’s transpired with this affected person in any respect,” he stated.
As a result of Ms. Scarborough doesn’t drive, her nephew should take break day work each time she visits the vascular surgeon, whose workplace is 10 miles from her house. Richmond Group would have been a five-minute stroll. Bon Secours didn’t touch upon her case.
“They’ve good docs over there,” Ms. Scarborough stated of the neighborhood hospital. “However there does should be extra amenities and providers over there for our group, for us.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis.