Former JFL Executive Sues Hospital for Wrongful Discharge, Claims Financial Mismanagement and Retaliation

A former senior executive at Juan F. Luis Hospital has filed a lawsuit against the hospital and the Territorial Hospital and Health Facilities Corporation, alleging wrongful discharge, violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act, and financial mismanagement.

The civil complaint, filed on Monday by attorney Lee Rohn, details serious claims regarding the hospital’s handling of funds, improper directives from leadership, and retaliation against the plaintiff for refusing to engage in unlawful financial practices.

According to the complaint, Christopher Lewis was hired into the accounting department at JFL in 2018. By 2023, he was the senior vice president of finance. By April of that year, “the COVID pandemic had ended, and the stay from removing persons from the Medicaid rosters that were no longer qualified had expired,” the lawsuit says. However, as Mr. Lewis claims in his complaint, an employee of the Department of Human Services “failed to do the massive removal of non-qualified Medicaid persons.”

As a result of that reported failure, the payment of Medicaid claims from JFL became inconsistent between October 2023 and April 2024. This, the lawsuit says, had knock-on effects that ultimately resulted in a $3 million loss of revenue for the hospital.

The ramifications of this loss unfolded in several ways, the lawsuit says. One of these was reportedly an improper directive from the executive branch of government in 2023, to use federal dollars earmarked for other purposes to pay outstanding vendor invoices. Approximately $1.2 million was needed because improper documentation resulted in a reported refusal by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to foot those bills, and thus the opening of JFL North was in jeopardy. Former CEO Douglas Koch passed the directive down to Mr. Lewis, the lawsuit says, promising that the funds would be returned within months.