Gary Newsome, the CEO of Naples, Fla.-based Health Management Associates, has said there is “no merit whatsoever” to a lawsuit that has caused the company to lose a fifth of its value in two days, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report.
Paul Meyer, the former director of HMA’s corporate compliance department, recently filed suit against HMA for allegedly firing him after he identified fraudulent billing at one of its entities. Shortly after that suit, HMA submitted a regulatory filing that disclosed the resignation of its general counsel — a development the system says has no link to the lawsuit.
Still, the company’s shares fell 7.1 percent on Jan. 9 after news of the lawsuit. After the general counsel’s resignation, stocks fell 13 percent — the largest single decline for the company in nearly three years, according to the report.
Mr. Newsome commented on the lawsuit during a healthcare conference in San Francisco yesterday, saying the system feels “very comfortable” in discrediting the lawsuit’s merit publicly. “I think that’s unusual in lawsuit cases,” Mr. Newsome said, according to the report.
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