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May 31, 2006

Another audit finds 'questionable' nursing home payments

For the second time this year, federal auditors have identified more than a million dollars in “questionable” payments that a financially strapped nursing home made to a web of companies tied to nursing home owner Antonio L. Giordano.

And this time, the financial mess has cost taxpayers nearly $6.3 million, auditors say.

An audit by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the owner and/or management agent for the former Coventry Health Center made $1.85 million in “questionable” payments between January 1998 and February 2001.

Coventry Health Center’s general partners included Giordano, who also was a general partner in Mount St. Francis Health Center, a Woonsocket nursing home which auditors have accused of making $4.4 million in “questionable” payments.

The latest audit heightens the scrutiny of Giordano, a Providence developer who owned the defunct Hillside Health Center, an East Side nursing home that closed in 2004 after chronic problems with finances and patient care. Giordano, 62, of North Kingstown, also was a major delinquent borrower in Rhode Island’s credit union crisis of 1991.

More to come in tomorrow's Journal and on projo.com ...

-- Journal staff writer Edward Fitzpatrick

Posted by Andrea Panciera  at 6:50 PM | Permalink

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