Health Officials Axed Amid Probe For Improper Billing

Yoav Gonen | New York Post | August 17, 2015

Three top officials with the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. have been forced out amid a probe of improper billing for a $764 million revamp of its records system, The Post has learned. Chief Information Officer Bert Robles was forced to resign from his $296,000-a-year job in February while investigators were looking into allegations, including claims that his domestic partner received taxpayer-funded training on the new electronic medical records — even though she doesn’t even work for HHC.

Robles’ interim deputy; the head of training for the initiative; and a highly paid consulting firm were also given the heave ho, hospital officials confirmed.
“It’s a big s- -t show,” said one source, who claimed all but one senior official on the information-technology side was canned or transferred. Work on the system began in early 2013, but its launch date at the first two of the 11 hospitals in the city network was pushed from November 2014 to April 2016, sources said...

The actual price tag for the project was set in internal documents as high as $1.4 billion, nearly double the stated cost, sources said. “There were severe issues with the project-management office,” the audit found, according to an HHC staffer familiar with it. “At one point, there were 14 project managers — but there was no leadership.” Former staffers fired back, claiming they were axed as payback for exposing mismanagement...