A welcome takeover
Published December 1, 2017
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, November 28, 2017.
It should not be surprising that the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has temporarily taken over daily operations of Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions and removed Cardinal’s board of directors, as the Journal’s Richard Craver reported on Tuesday. Though given extensive opportunities to right its ship, Cardinal couldn’t manage to do so. Now DHHS is in control of the state’s largest behavioral health managed-care organization.
“I am deeply disappointed in the actions of Cardinal Innovations’ leadership and board,” Health Secretary Mandy Cohen told the Journal. “They are entrusted with the responsibility to care for some of our most vulnerable residents.”
She said the Cardinal leaders “lost the public’s trust by violating the law and mismanaging public funds.”
Cohen said services will not be interrupted. The DHHS and county commissioners from Cardinal’s 20 county-region, which includes much of our area, will choose a new Cardinal board.
Cardinal officials have defended their work.
But Cardinal has received bipartisan criticism for more than a year, and its spending problems were made clearer by a state auditor’s report in May, followed by internal audits by the DHHS. Rep. Donny Lambeth, R-Forsyth, and other legislators have tried to resolve the problems legislatively.
A lot of attention has gone to the inflated salaries of top executives at Cardinal, including that of former Executive Director Richard Topping -- and rightly so. The DHHS determined that the salaries and severance packages for executives “poses a substantial risk (to Cardinal) and may not be in the best interest of Cardinal, beneficiaries and/or the state,” as the Journal reported.
Cardinal oversees providers of services for mental health, developmental disorders and substance abuse for Medicaid enrollees, including more than 96,000 in the Triad, the Journal reported, and handles more than $675 million in annual federal and state Medicaid money.
DHHS must finally lead this crucial agency out of the dark.
December 3, 2017 at 6:30 pm
Norm Kelly says:
There's a huge, monumental difference between recognizing failure and being able to turn that failure around.
We have here a 'private' organization that failed, and it appears failed miserably. State agencies recognized this and took action. As it should.
Now the hard work begins. A government agency, staffed by government employees, is responsible for righting the ship called Cardinal. What is their expertise? How will government staff manage to pull this off? What skills do these government employees have in righting something like this?
OK. So, we all know the least efficient way to get anything done is to get government involved. The other fact of life relevant to this story is that if there's a budget that needs to be met, the last group that is responsible are government agencies and employees. Government people have NO IDEA what a budget is, how to maintain a budget, how to stay within a budget, or even where money comes from. I remember when my boys were in elementary school and we were discussing some purchase. Which we could not at the time quite afford. Being disappointed, one of my boys suggested we simply go to the ATM and withdraw the money. Of course, being in elementary school they had no concept of what they were talking about or suggesting. I mention this story because it relates perfectly to government knowledge of money: none. Whenever government wants more money, they simply tax us for it. Whenever a government agency goes over budget on ANYthing, no one is held accountable. When some government employee embezzles money (from us taxpayers), they MAY be held accountable but the money may not be recovered. The solution is simple: the government agency writes off the loss, and gets money from somewhere else to cover the loss. They know not where the money comes from, they care not where the money comes from.
So, asking some government agency and government employees to right the ship called Cardinal just seems like it's a disaster following a disaster.
Will any of the ex-Cardinal Board be held accountable? Or will government simply move on? After all, it's just funny money, no one is really impacted by a loss of government funds. Funny money. Kinda like using monopoly money!
