Jersey City Medical Center Documents

Last winter, a doctor on the staff of the Jersey City Medical Center wrote a letter to the board of Trustees of the Medical Center detailing his reservations about some of the management practices of Liberty Health Care Systems, Inc. The hospital belongs to the City of Jersey City and its operation has been entrusted to a Healthcare Management Company, Liberty Healthcare Systems, Inc,. The doctor’s letter details some questionable practices of Liberty and was sent to every member of the board of trustees and key members of Liberty’s management including Jonathan Metsch, CEO of Liberty and Zulima Farber, general counsel to Liberty. Farber is also a member of the Board of Trustees.

Multiple copies of this letter found their way to The Urban Times News. We called Liberty’s head, Jonathan Metsch. Mr. Metsch has never returned a phone call or an email despite receiving more than one hundred messages from Urban Times News. He has had ample opportunity to present any point of view. He chooses to remain silent. Ms. Farber has also chosen not to respond to telephone messages or emails.

The letter details what appear to be a massive and systematic scheme of insurance fraud and Medicare fraud by Liberty Healthcare systems. Urban Times thought that it would be appropriate to include the comments of Liberty’s management and financial managers and legal representatives. None of these persons would respond to our attempts to communicate with them. In fact, during our efforts to provide these persons with the opportunity to rebut the incriminating appearance of the letter we discovered that our email to the staff of the JCMC has been blocked as a prohibited sender. The email system of Liberty healthcare systems has been programmed to exclude email from sglazer@urbantimesnews.com. Apparently management believes that it can prevent contact between JCMC employees and member of the “Black Press,” in this fashion.

Numerous sources within the JCMC, developed independently by The Urban Times News, have confirmed to us that in fact there is a policy of silence ordered by Metsch himself with regard to the press and it is specific to the “Black Press.” The Urban Times News is owned by an African American publisher and is aimed at serving the minority—Black and Hispanic—community. Sources within JCMC both medical and administrative have told us that it has been made clear to them in no uncertain terms that they would be terminated summarily if they were found talking to the press, the “Black Press,” particularly.

We contacted the Doctor who wrote the letter to the board of trustees detailing the apparently unlawful practices of Liberty and found that the Doctor would not speak with us, even though he may have wished to. That doctor continues in active practice with Liberty as head of the Department of Dentistry and is also President of the Medical Staff of the entire hospital. His name and signature appear on the letter that we have reproduced below. In the letter, the doctor details billing practices that reflect invoices for medical services that were not supposed to be billed. Allegedly, members of the financial staff of Liberty Healthcare Systems responded to inquiries about these items saying that they were "statistical reports." Not bills, not invoices, but statistical reports was the terminology applied to the items resembling bills sent to insurance companies, according to our source.

Other doctors have received reimbursement checks sent to them at the medical center address, 50 Baldwin Avenue, for "statistical reports" sent to insurance companies. Some of the statistical reports were submitted incorrectly and reimbursement check were mailed to and made payable to order of the doctor involved. What prompted the doctor to send the letter to all members of the board was such a check mailed to him by an insurance company in payment for a procedure done while he was on vacation in Europe, a fact the doctor mentions sarcastically in the letter.

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