Blow the Whistle Pitch Deck
© 2021 Syncro Studios LTD.
Episode 3: The Money Man
Cold Open: “Is this really okay behavior at a nonprofit hospital? Shouldn’t we be talking about patient care?” Elin Baklid-Kunz remembers watching as they sang about profits.
The Crime: Innocent patients were being harmed by getting medically unnecessary, risky surgeries, and by being charged for services never provided while Halifax employees reaped millions in bonuses per year
The Witness: Elin Baklid-Kunz
Gathering the Evidence: Gathered documents and reported issues of potential Medicare fraud multiple times only to be rebuffed internally
Blowing the Whistle: Baklid-Kunz filed a lawsuit and reported the Medicare fraud to the government
The Retaliation: Was punished severely punished, silenced at work, and shunned company wide
Unsolved: Nobody has been fired. Elin did receive a settlement
At Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, Florida Arvin Lewis, VP of Patient Business and Financial Services, a short, balding man announces that the “Million Dollar Hour” has arrived. “Here comes the Money Man!” he crooned. He switches on a boom box, and “Show Me the Money,” blasts out.
As the music played, three women, all senior hospital officials, approached Lewis holding ritualistic objects, like some bizarre cult initiation. The Chief Nursing Officer pins a green towel decorated with gold dollar signs around his shoulders like a cape. The Director of Patient Financial Services sets a black hat covered in dollar signs on his head. And the Associate Legal Counsel hangs a thick gold chain around his neck with bling as big as a Mercedes hood ornament.
Elin Baklid-Kunz, director of Physician Services, steals a glance around the room. “I was watching all this,” she remembers, “and I was wondering whether anyone else saw what I was seeing, or thought it was unusual. Is this really okay behavior at a nonprofit hospital? Shouldn’t we be talking about patient care?”
The cause for celebration? Innocent patients were being harmed by getting medically unnecessary, risky surgeries, and by being charged for services never provided while Halifax employees reaped millions in bonuses per year.
After raising the alarm multiple times only to be rebuffed, Baklid-Kunz reported Medicare fraud to the government and was punished severely for it.
Sitting down with Tom Mueller, author of the expansive study, Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud he shares insights into the driving motives of whistleblowers and the shared commonalities that unite them. “Many people who blow the whistle are able to do so precisely because they are not like most of us, or how we’re told to be,” writes Mueller. “They’re not ‘team players’, not ‘go along to get along’ personalities. They can be prickly and doctrinaire. They can seem obsessive, even unstable.”