With insider business deals, conflict of interest concerns and questionable bylaw changes swirling around Manatee Rural Health Services, the nonprofit organization must establish strong ethical standards to restore its damaged credibility.
Board members, agency employees and family members are reaping fat profits from contracts with the agency, which provides comprehensive medical services to hundreds of indigent, uninsured and under-insured people in Manatee, Sarasota and DeSoto counties, and ranks as the largest community health agency in Florida.
By receiving millions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid annually, Manatee Rural Health must be held to high standards.
The messy ethical entanglements came to light in a Bradenton Herald investigation by reporter Duane Marsteller, with the first in-depth report Aug. 22 and another Sept. 5.
In the wake of the initial revelations, Walter “Mickey” Presha Sr., the chief executive officer of Manatee Rural Health, announced several positive steps aimed at reforming the organization. But those measures fall short of a complete ethical overhaul.
In that first report, Manatee Rural Health board members shrugged off conflict of interest charges with an unsettling ease. Marsteller examined the agency’s tax returns filed since 2004 and found some $2 million steered to businesses owned by agency officers, board members, employees or their relatives.
Canceling some contracts
Two recipients received more than $500,000 apiece over that time span. John Lewis, a board member, received $558,121 for optometry services. The Pinnacle Group of West Coast Florida Inc. pocketed $536,591 for construction, maintenance and repair work. One of its principals is Trina Presha-Rosier, the chief executive’s daughter.
The two blatant examples of conflict of interest involve agency employees who also hold contracts with the organization to provide work they oversee at Rural Health.
Wardell Jackson, the agency’s vice president of support services, is a principal in The Lawn Authority of Manatee County Inc., which was paid $344,766 for lawn care at the agency’s facilities.
Chris Mullinex, Manatee Rural Health’s facilities director, owns A to Z Complete Property Management Inc., which received $387,673 for janitorial cleaning and maintenance services.
Presha plans to cancel those agency contracts once a procurement officer is hired to supervise major purchases and deals. Still, that raises the question about a corporate culture that found these two arrangements acceptable in the first place.
The hiring of a procurement officer will remove department heads and a board committee from the approval process, now ripe with abuse since those individuals routinely authorized agency contracts with one another.
Manatee Rural Health board members are required to sign a conflict of interest statement that prohibits such agency business dealings. Family members are also banned from engaging in business with the nonprofit.
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