HHC prober’s files pried open

THE Post’s exposure of a huge backlog of cases gathering dust in the Inspector General’s Office of the municipalhospital system has led to an unprecedented decision to open some records of the secret force for the first time.

Alan Aviles, president of the $6.7 billion Health and Hospitals Corp., said the agency’s board met in executive session Thursday to direct IG Norman Dion to compile closing summaries of all his cases going forward, which the public and press would have a right to access.

Dion will also have to issue a report to the board by Nov. 5 summarizing his office’s operations over the past fiscal year, covering everything from the volume of open cases to the number of cases closed for lack of substantiation to the number of cases referred to prosecutors.

Such reports are required twice a year.

The HHC’s action comes after The Post reported last week that the former head of the IG’s investigative unit asserted that 800 cases dat ing back as far as 2003 had never received proper scrutiny and were being kept open despite the fact that some of the investigators assigned to them had left years earlier.

The IG responded that his caseload included only 400 open matters, which he claimed was routine.

There was no way to assess the truth, since the IG has for years maintained that he’s above outside oversight.

Requests for closed-case records filed through the Freedom of Information Law — which governs virtually every other agency in the city, state and federal governments — were routinely rejected.

HHC General Counsel Salvatore Russo told The Post last year that Dion’s reports “are not final documents. Instead, they are referrals to the president or other senior management of HHC regarding investigations and are part of the deliberative process of the management of the organization.”

Only final reports can be retrieved through FOIL, so that legal mumbo jumbo conveniently put the IG’s Office offlimits to the outside world.

The HHC also cited concerns about patient confidentiality.

No one could explain how the inspector general of the federal Health and Human Services agency — which covers the same sensitive ground for the entire country — could answer FOIL requests without running into those problems.

“An IG’s Office would be subject to the Freedom of Information Act at any agency,” said Tracy Russo, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, which oversees the federal FOIL system.

After The Post asked Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, who is in charge of all health services for the administration, if she agreed with the IG’s secrecy policy, the HHC board altered it.

Aviles said that the board was motivated to counter the “untruths that have now been put out there.”

He said that while he and the board have “complete confidence” in Dion, it was also important to assure the general public that the office operates on the up and up.

That assurance only goes so far.

Past cases will still be hidden from view, since they don’t come with those critical closing summaries.