Two government executives charged with monitoring the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs have spent up to two months each year traveling to popular vacation spots at public expense, a leading senator has charged.
In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services administrator Mark McClellan, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says that Drs. Stephen Jencks and William Rollow spent 325 days over the last five years on the road.
“There appears to be a clear discrepancy between the amount of time spent on travel to popular vacation destinations … and those that could be deemed less popular,” Grassley’s letter states.
For instance, Jencks spent a week in San Juan, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in February 2002, Grassley’s
letter states. In August of that same year, Jencks went to Little Rock, Ark., but only spent two days there, the letter states.
The letter also says that Grassley is “troubled” that there’s little documentation of how the money was spent on these trips. Between them, Jencks and Rollow spent $75,000 traveling in the last five years, Grassley’s letter states.
Jencks and Rollow are the director and deputy director, respectively, of the Medicare Quality Improvement group. Medicare pays 53 state-based quality improvement groups to investigate complaints about patient care.
Most of the trips were to conferences hosted by trade groups at posh resorts and hotels, The Washington Post reported and staff at the Financy Committee confirmed.
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, chairs the Senate Finance Committee. He’s been an outspoken critic of the quality improvement program because he says there’s little public scrutiny. The groups are forbidden by law from sharing results of their investigations with patients, and Medicare has refused to make public the results of its audits of the quality improvement groups in the states.
The Finance Committee opened an investigation into the matter last year. Grassley’s letter, dated July 28, states that he has “a seminal question: What did American taxpayers and Medicare beneficiaries get for the travels of Rollow and Jencks?”
Rollow couldn’t be reached for comment. A voice mail message at Jencks’ Baltimore office said that he was at a Boston institute until after Labor Day. He did not respond to a message left at that number.
Health and Human Services Department spokesman Don McLeod said his agency was drafting a response to Grassley’s letter. He refused further comment.
