A special investigation by State Auditor of the Delaware County Memorial Hospital found nearly $300,000 in hospital money that was misspent.
Auditor Rob Sand says the spending was linked to former hospital CEO, Doctor Lon Butikofer, and former Development Director Mike Briggs.
“There were a lot of expense vouchers that were not properly recorded, for events that did not occur,” Sand explains. He says the two were reimbursed for mileage, travel and meal costs for events that were supposed to be linked to the hospital.
“Most of the material we located was for trips that was not directly work related,” Sand explains. The investigation identified around $192,000 of improper payroll costs for unrecorded paid leave used by Doctor Butikofer and nearly $53,000 for Briggs.
Briggs was fired from his position on February 23, 2017 and Doctor Butikofer resigned as the CEO on February 27, 2017. Sand says his office made recommendations to the hospital on how to prevent future issues. “The number one recommendation that we always have for everyone is ‘trust but verify,'” Sand says. “Fundamentally there’s a lot of ways to get away with misusing public money — but if someone is following up and looking at everything that someone else is doing — it gets a lot harder to do that.”
Copies of this report have been filed with the Division of Criminal Investigation, the Delaware County Attorney’s Office, and the Attorney General’s Office.
Here’s the report: Delaware-County-Hospital-investigation-PDF