Even before nightmare, Bronx hosp was plagued
It’s New York’s sickest hospital. Long before a doctor opened fire inside Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, the place was under a federal corruption probe, mobsters controlled the construction of its new outpatient center, execs were enjoying million-dollar pay packages and fat bonuses, doctors were allegedly offered per-patient bounties to drum up clinic business and staffers’ reports of poor patient care were ignored.
Friday’s shooting rampage — in which Dr. Henry Bello, a disgruntled former resident, killed one person and wounded six others before turning his gun on himself — was the latest stain on the sprawling medical center that mainly cares for the poor and gets most of its funding from taxpayers in the form of state Medicaid.
Its hiring of Bello is being held up as the latest — and most tragic — example of questionable recruitment at Bronx-Lebanon.
Bello, 45, had been arrested in a sex attack on a 23-year-old woman in Manhattan, pleading down in 2004 to a misdemeanor charge of unlawful imprisonment. He was sentenced to community service, law-enforcement sources said.
Amazingly, the hospital is claiming it was unaware of Bello’s record — which also included a 2003 burglary arrest and a 2009 arrest after two women reported he tried to look up their skirts with a mirror, a case that was eventually sealed.
A hospital spokesman said Human Resources and security did a background check before hiring Bello, including running his fingerprints, but would not address how they missed his record, saying only, “There was no record of any conviction for sexual abuse.”
Bronx-Lebanon has been headed for decades by Miguel Fuentes, described by some as an imperious CEO who rarely leaves his office at the hospital’s Fulton Avenue campus to visit the main facility on the Grand Concourse. When he does travel, he has a hospital-funded car and driver.
“This isn’t the Mayo Clinic,” one hospital observer noted bitterly, referring to the prestigious, and well-funded, health organization.
Fuentes, 67, raised eyebrows with oversize incentive and retirement payouts that he was able to collect while still working. He took home $4.8 million in 2008, including $2.7 million in “other compensation.” In 2015, his total compensation came to $1.7 million, according to the hospital’s latest tax filings.
Fuentes has homes on the Upper East Side and in Southampton, LI. He had a $20,000 shower installed in his office bathroom but had it removed over concerns about how such an amenity might be viewed by the public, a source told The Post. The hospital said he has a modest shower.
Federal investigators have been eyeing the hospital’s leadership in connection with a mob kickback scheme, sources have said.
The probe concerns the construction of Bronx-Lebanon’s new nine-story outpatient-treatment center, which houses the hospital’s clinics.
Work on the $42 million annex began in 2009 and was financed mostly through the sale of taxpayer-backed state Dormitory Authority bonds. The hospital is paying back the authority over 25 years.
The project was supposed to be finished in 19 months but wasn’t completed until 2014.
Construction costs were padded, with cash allegedly ending up in the pockets of the Luchese crime family and hospital executives, sources told The Post.
A takedown of Luchese mem-
bers in May included charges of wire and mail fraud against underboss Steven “Wonder Boy” Crea Sr. and associate Joseph Venice. The federal indictment linked the charges to a project at “a major New York City hospital.”
The indictment did not name the hospital, but sources have identified it as Bronx-Lebanon. The hospital has denied any knowledge of the allegations.
A source told The Post that Sparrow Construction, the project’s general contractor, billed Bronx-Lebanon $26 million for $21 million worth of work using falsified invoices and change orders.
The hospital did not question those change orders, according to the source.
Bronx-Lebanon, which dates to the 1800s, found itself in dire financial shape in the 1970s. It nearly declared bankruptcy but was saved by a state bailout.
The Bronx-Lebanon health system now includes a 642-bed hospital, two nursing homes and a mental-health facility.
It boasts that it has more than 1 million clinic visits a year, but how it attained that number was questionable to at least one former high-ranking staffer.
Dr. John Cosgrove, a former chief of surgery, said the hospital offered bonus payments to doctors of up to $60 for every patient treated in the clinics.
He said the incentives came from Medicaid payments and were made at a time when Fuentes was pushing to reach 1 million visits.
Cosgrove said he found the system distasteful and that it was open to abuse from doctors who might schedule unnecessary visits to get more money.
He also questioned the hospital’s vetting of key employees.
He objected to Fuentes’ decision to hire Dr. Ira Kirschenbaum in 2008 as head of orthopedic surgery without consulting him first.
“I told Fuentes I could not sign off on a surgeon I didn’t even meet and had no idea how safe he was,” Cosgrove said.
He added that Fuentes responded by telling the head of the medical staff to change the bylaws and to make orthopedics its own department. “Just like that,” Cosgrove said. Kirschenbaum raised alarms among staffers when four patients died in a short period after he came on board.
Sources said complaints were made to both hospital leadership and the state Office of Professional Medical Conduct. The state did not take disciplinary action against the doctor, and Bronx-Lebanon also took no action against the surgeon.
“There was no reason to do any such thing,” said Fred Miller, the hospital’s lawyer.
Kirschenbaum said all four patients were sick before surgery.
The controversial doctor was brought in to do hip and knee replacements, both moneymaking operations. He said he did 3,000 at the hospital. He got a $314,210 bonus in 2014 and a $180,940 bonus in 2015, Bronx-Lebanon’s tax filings show. The extra pay came on top of his $851,000 salary.
The Post received a copy of an anonymous letter that seven hospital employees — identifying themselves as doctors, nurses and technicians — sent to the state with more recent allegations against Kirschenbaum. It discusses patients injured in his care, including one who lost a leg.
Kirschenbaum denied the allegation to The Post and said he wasn’t aware of any recent state investigation of him.