Texas Hospice Told Nurses To Speed Up Deaths

By ACSH Staff — Mar 30, 2016
Brad Harris, owner of Novus Health Care Services, Inc., in Frisco, Texas, which says it "offers hospice and home health-care services", regularly directed nurses to give hospice patients overdoses of drugs to speed up their deaths, according to FBI documents filed to obtain a search warrant. The FBI says he sent text messages like, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye."

Brad Harris, owner of Novus Health Care Services, Inc., in Frisco, Texas, which says it "offers hospice and home health-care services", regularly directed nurses to give hospice patients overdoses of drugs to speed up their deaths, according to FBI documents filed to obtain a search warrant.

The FBI says he sent text messages like, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye."

Why? Longer stays are unprofitable because Medicare and Medicaid payments have an "aggregator cap" based on the yearly average hospice stay. So short stays mean paying back less money.

The FBI is focusing on four incidents. In at least one, the employee did not comply with the request to increase the medication because it would have killed the patient.

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