The seventh floor of the Bienville Building on North 4th Street in Baton Rouge became a beehive of activity recently when employees of a temporary personnel service moved in to begin shredding “tons of documents,” according to an employee of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH).
DHH is headquartered in the Bienville Building and the source told LouisianaVoice that the shredding, undertaken “under the guise of being efficient and cleaning,” involves documents that date back as far as the 1980s.
“The significance of this is that this is occurring in the midst of a lawsuit (that) DHH is filing against Molina in relation to activities that go back to the ‘80s,” the employee said. “Everyone is questioning the timing. Westaff temporary people have been in the copy room of the seventh floor for approximately two weeks now, all day, every day, shredding documents.”
https://www.westaff.com/westaff/main.cfm?nlvl1=1
The employee said so many documents were being shredded “that the floor is full of dust and employees have been ordered to clean on designated cleaning days” and that locked garbage cans filled with shredded documents “are being hauled from the building daily.”
LouisianaVoice submitted an inquiry to DHH that requested an explanation “in light of the current litigation involving DHH, Molina and CNSI”—two companies the agency contracted with to process Medicaid claims.
CNSI (Client Network Services, Inc.), which replaced Molina as the contractor for those services in 2011, had its $200 million contract cancelled by the Jindal administration after allegations of contact between then-DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein and CNSI, his former employer, during the contract selection process. Investigations by the Louisiana Attorney General’s and the U.S. Attorney’s offices ensued but little has been heard since those investigations were initiated. Meanwhile, CNSI filed suit against the state in Baton Rouge state district court in May of 2013, alleging “bad faith breach of contract.” http://theadvocate.com/home/5906243-125/cnsi-files-lawsuit-against-state
Molina, meanwhile, was reinstated as the contractor to process the state’s Medicaid reimbursements but last month the state filed suit against Molina Healthcare and its subsidiary Molina Information Systems, alleging that the state paid Molina “grossly excessive amounts” for prescription drugs for more than two decades because the firm engaged in negligent and deceptive practices in processing Medicaid reimbursements for prescription drugs.
Prescription drugs account for about 17 percent of the state’s annual Medicaid budget, the lawsuit says.
The state’s lawsuit says that Molina has processed the state’s Medicaid pharmacy reimbursement claims for the past 30 years but from 1989 to 2012, Molina neglected to adhere to the state formula for payments and thereby committed fraud and negligence, violated the state’s consumer protection and Medical Assistance Programs Integrity laws. http://theadvocate.com/news/business/9579038-123/la-sues-medicaid-drug-payment
Olivia Watkins, director of communications for DHH, told LouisianaVoice by email on Wednesday that the Division of Administration maintains a contract with Westaff for temporary workers which can be used by different state departments. “DHH requested temporary workers through the existing contract to assist with various projects, including shredding,” she said.
A search of LaTrac, the state’s online directory of state contracts, failed to find either Westaff or Molina listed as contractors among either its active or expired contracts.
“With regard to the shredding,” Watkins said, “those documents that were shredded were old cost reports, statements and facility documents that were outside of their document retention period (anywhere from 5-10 years). The files being shredded were in no way related to the department’s previous contract with CNSI.”
Watkins, while denying any connection to the CNSI contract, failed to mention whether or not the shredded documents involved Molina’s contract or the state’s litigation against the company even though the LouisianaVoice inquiry specifically mentioned both companies.
In June of 2002, the nation’s largest accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, was found guilty of unlawfully destroying documents relating to the firm’s work for its biggest client, the failed energy giant, Enron.
And while that conviction was eventually overturned, the damage from its actions doomed the company and it ultimately shut its doors for good.
In the weeks leading up to the Enron collapse, Andersen’s Houston practice director Michael Odom presented a videotaped talk—that was played many times for Andersen employees—on the delicate subject of file destruction.
In that video, Odom said that under Andersen’s document retention policy, everything that was not an essential part of the audit file—drafts, notes, emails and internal memos—should be destroyed immediately. But, he added, once a lawsuit was filed, nothing could be destroyed. Anything could be lawfully destroyed, he advised Andersen employees, up to the point when legal proceedings were filed (emphasis ours). http://www.mybestdocs.com/hurley-c-rk-des-law-0309.htm
“If it’s destroyed in the course of the normal policy and litigation is filed the next day, that’s great,” he said, “because we’ve followed our own policy, and whatever there was that might have been of interest to somebody is gone and irretrievable.”
In a matter of days, Andersen’s Houston office began working overtime shredding documents, according to authors Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin in their book The Smartest Guys in the Room (The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron).
Perhaps the DHH shredding had nothing to do with the CNSI contract with DHH or with the litigation filed by CNSI over cancellation of its contract.
And it may be that the shredding was in no way connected to the Molina contract, even though Watkins failed to address that specific question by LouisianaVoice.
It could well be, as Watkins said, the document destruction was purely a matter of routine housekeeping.
But the timing of the shredding flurry, coming as it did only days following the July 10 filing of DHH’s lawsuit against Molina, and DHH’s murky and adversarial relationship with the two claims processing contractors do raise certain questions.
And Watkins’ assertion that the shredded records consisted of “old cost reports, statements and facility documents,” the dates of which fall within the time frame of the allegations against Molina, would seem to make those questions take on even greater relevance.
Louisiana Voice 
The Medicaid Director, Ruth Kennedy has always been “good” about getting rid of documentation. In the contract with Mercer and at the time (proposed) Bayou Health, Ruth directed staff and the contractor not to take notes due to potential requests for documents. Business as usual.
If DHH has initiated suit against Molina, shouldn’t that create a condition whereby DHH must cease shredding documents?
That’s precisely the point.
Could it possibly be that the material was scanned as ORM had to do its files?? Or I wonder what could they possible want to destroy? Time will tell and I guess we just have to follow the money!!!
Interesting… DHH was once the home of Pi. Things are getting sticky.
I don’t know who the “mole” is over here, but I can promise you that you were fed poor information. Clearly this is an exercise in poor journalism and the entire article reeks of speculation and unfounded opinions. The truth is that it was a routine housekeeping exercise, and nothing more and all shredded materials were done in accordance with established policies and HIPAA standards.
I speculated nothing. The facts are:
• There is ongoing litigation between DHH and CNSI and between DHH and Molina;
• Documents were shredded following the filing of legal action against Molina
• There is precedent (Arthur Andersen) for shredding documents when there is litigation involved.
• And Arthur Andersen was indicted for destroying documents, even though their shredding also was in accordance with established procedure.
Moreover, I said there may be no connection to the litigation or the Molina contract and that “It could well be…the document destruction was purely a matter of routine housekeeping.”
I then said the timing of the shredding, given the lawsuits, does raise questions.
I accused no one of anything; I merely questioned the wisdom of the shredding in light of the ongoing litigation. You said my post is “an exercise in poor journalism” and that the story “reeks of speculation and unfounded opinions.” I offered no “opinion” anywhere in the story and I published Ms. Watkins’ explanation to my written inquiry in full. I suppose poor journalism is in the eye of the beholder.
It’s not the “mole” we are concerned with it’s the conspirators that ordered the shredding. Also, your promise means nothing. When you raise that right hand and swear to God to tell the truth then maybe, only maybe, you may be believed. Keep it up, Tom, the temperature is rising!!!
It is poor journalism! You draw comparisons with DHH and Enron and then you pretend to sound like your are being unbiased. You are a joke. Your source fed you a load of bull chocked full of speculations and unfounded opinions and you regurgitated it here. And DHH always has several lawsuits pending, some of them going back for over a decade, so your Arthur Andersen non-sense doesn’t apply; otherwise we’d never be able to destroy anything. Obviously, the documents regarding the lawsuits that you mentioned were seized and secured long ago and the dusty clutter on the shelves and cubicles here had been vetted and / or scanned in to digital records before destroying.
You have the right to print whatever you want, just like the Enquirer does, but hopefully it will be held with the same levity if you keep putting this kind of junk out on the internet without doing a thorough investigation into the facts of the matter first.
With an administration as opaque, vindictive, and apparently corrupt at the top as the Jindal administration, this article about shredding is appropriate. Another thing, I believe it is safe to say you don’t know what the source of the info told Louisiana Voice. You cannot “promise” anything with regard to the “mole.” Lastly, Louisiana Voice is far from a joke. To call it such is flailing on your part.
It’s pretty obvious YGBK works in the agency and wants to tout its internal procedures. If they’re that great, YGBK, how’d Ms. Loper pull off her million dollar heist so easily? (http://theadvocate.com/news/7831206-123/dhh-rejuvenates-internal-audits).
Though your commentary isn’t worthy of dignifying with a response as long as I’ve already composed, I have a suggestion: email Col. Mike Edmondson of LSP (mike.edmonson@dps.la.gov) with one simple question: “Do you think Louisiana Voice is a joke?” You won’t get a response, but care to take a bet how he (or the esteemed Bobby Jindal, for that matter) respond when only their inner-circles are in their midst?
YGBK sounds like you supplied false info in a false flag operation to cast suspicion on a source of regime pain.
I think it’s cute and noble that you all rush to defend your Consipracy Theory author blog thingy. But it’s very nice to be evidently the only person on this page with a first hand recollection of what actually happened. None of you have the slightest clue what you are talking about, and so I’ll leave it at that. Have a nice weekend.
One last thought, and one you might want to consider, before you start to type whatever paragraph you feel supports the misleading article that got us all stirred up in the first place. Have you even considered why I don’t use my real name on here? It’s not from fear of retaliation from this Louisiana Voice readers, I can promise you that. It’s from fear of retaliation from my own agency, for speaking to the media, even in its own defense could be seen as cause for disciplinary action – I don’t know. So, why on earth would I risk my own neck to cover up some corruption over here that I get zero profit from? Because I was here and I saw it happen. And what’s being written up there in this blog was misleading and false and I weighed in to set the record straight. You guys can scream about conspiracies and corruption and all that if you want to, and I’m not saying that in your examples that you’ve given that you’re entirely wrong, but- this article involving some rush shred job to destroy the evidence in the midst of a lawsuit- all of your presumptions on this is way off the mark and your source tried to stir up controversy where there was none. So I don’t care if you disagree. You weren’t here. I know I’m right and all you can do is wonder what’s the truth. So go look some place else for your “corruption”, because in this scenario, there was none.
I am a solid supporter of LouisianaVoice and the work Tom Aswell does. His coverage fills a gap left by the mainstream media, providing news and information that is not covered elsewhere, or certainly not in the detail he reports it.
You seem sincerely offended by this report and have clearly articulated your belief that it reflects bias and attempts to misrepresent reality. You have also done a good job establishing your own credibility..
The only fault I find with your comments are your ad hominem attacks on Tom and LouisianaVoice, in general. It is patently unfair of you to insult the blog and its author and to dismiss it as “a joke”, based on your take of this one piece.
Stephen, I appreciate your criticism on this. In retrospect, I was wrong to use insulting remarks, and you are right – I haven’t viewed enough of the site to get an understanding of the larger picture, so Tom, if you are reading this, I want to apologize to you for calling your webpage “a joke”, because I myself was guilty of being uninformed when I typed it and I had done so in frustration, which is never a good idea when making public statements. Thank you for the services that you provide to the citizens of Louisiana as a watchdog for corruption and foul play. I pray that my own contribution has at least shed some further insight and given your readers a clearer understanding of the news that was being reported on.