The former senior vice president of finance at Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital on St. Croix has filed a whistleblower suit alleging millions of dollars in lost Medicaid funding and the illegal and unethical use of federal funds to cover payroll and other shortfalls, among other claims.
The lawsuit, filed by Christopher Lewis on Monday in V.I. Superior Court, names Juan F. Luis Hospital and Medical Center and the V.I. Government Hospital and Health Facilities Corporation, which oversees the territory’s health facilities, as defendants.
Lewis’s 23-page suit details his increasing alarm at the hospital’s financial straits amid its transition to JFL North, the $130 million temporary facility that was built to serve patients while JFL rebuilds after it was severely damaged in the 2017 hurricanes.
Among his frustrations were trying to convince hospital and board officials that they needed to change course to recoup more Medicaid funding, and to not use Federal Emergency Management Agency and American Rescue Plan Act funds for items outside of their intended scope, according to the suit.
For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic officially ended in April 2023, so did a stay that had prevented patients from being removed from Medicaid rosters during the health emergency, according to the suit. Despite this, the hospital’s human services department “failed to do the massive removal of non-qualified Medicaid persons,” it says.
As a result, in April 2024 the hospital began to receive...
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