... Title page: HealthSouth and the Scrushy Way p. 1 3. Table of Contents p. 2 4. Introduction p. 3 5. Government Subsidies p. 3 6. Signs of Corruption p. 4 7. Ethical issues of HealthSouth p. 5 8. Management of HealthSouth p. 5 9. Intimidation and Cooperation p. 6 10. Culture of Corruption p. 7 11. Lavish Lifestyle and Philanthropy p. 8 12. Impact on Stakeholders p. 9 13. Charges p. 10 14. Outcome and Fairness of Punishment p. 10 15. Conclusion p. 12 16. References p. 13 HealthSouth and the Scrushy Way Richard Scrushy overcame challenging teenage years, dropping out of high school and later obtaining his GED to become one of the most successful executives in the United States. Scrushy did so by subsequently getting his respiratory therapist certification and opening his own rehabilitation center, an all-in-one medical facility that led many to copy his idea. Scrushy founded HealthSouth in 1996 using $1 million in seed capital and turned it into a hugely successful medical services empire worth over $4 billion at its prime (Haddad, Weintraub, & Grow, 2003). HealthSouth had become the largest provider of outpatient surgery, rehabilitation, and diagnostic and imaging services as well as the third largest publicly held company in Alabama (Chaubey, 2006). Scrushy is best known...
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...Health South: The Scrushy Way It is a cliché that “crime does not pay.” Seemingly when one has the charisma to lead a multi-billion dollar corporation, and power to affect the well-being of thousands, perhaps crime does pay – in the short term. It’s easy to rationalize that what one does is not a crime “if it hurts no one,” or if one is doing amazing amounts of charity work. Richard M. Scrushy is a case in point – he seemed to have it all, the all-American success story, yet dishonesty, and unethical practices, when engaged in hurt everyone – for a long time. As this author has explored through this Business Ethics class, unethical behavior looks only at the short-term, what can one get now? The Carpenter taught, regarding those who did not follow wisdom, that they were “like unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:26-27, King James Version). The character of the individual who cheats, or takes advantage of others, gets bent out of shape and distorted, until it is no longer strong enough to provide a sure foundation, and without that they fall and they hurt themselves and those around them. Impact on Stakeholders In the house that Scrushy built, this author identifies several stakeholders impacted by the dishonesty, including: Richard Scrushy, his management team, his board of directors, his employees, the patients...
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...Health South: The Scrushy way Troy Elliott Northcentral University MGT7019-8 Mentor: Janet Jones September 23, 2012 Table of Contents A.) INTRODUCTION…….…………………………………………………………………. 4 B.) Defining the Ethical Issues Involved with HealthSouth…………………………………. 5 1.) HealthSouth Founder and CEO Richard Marin Scrushy………...………………. 5 a.) Trailer Park to Charismatic Leader……………………………………. 5-7 b.) Leadership Tactics……………………………………………………….. 7 2.) Corporate Culture at HealthSouth………………………………………………... 8 c.) Following Directions for Failure……………………………………........ 9 d.) Faking corporate profits………………………………………………… 10 C.) The Impact on Stakeholders…………………………………………………………….. 10 3.) Employees and Executives……………………………………………………... 10 e.) Many Lost Jobs as a result……………………………………………… 10 f.) Top Level Management Complacency.………………………………… 11 4.) Investors and HealthSouth Stock……………………………………………….. 11 5.) HealthSouth Patients and Customers….………………………………………... 11 D.) Outcome and Fairness of Punishment…………………………………………………... 12 6.) 2003 SEC Civil Law Suit against HealthSouth………………………………… 12 g.) Charges of Fraud………………………………………………………... 12 h.) Inflated Earnings on Financial Statements ...…………………………... 13 7.) Punishment: Does it fit the crime? ...................................................................... 13 i.) CEO Richard Marin Scrushy’s sentence...
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...Running header: HEALTHSOUTH: THE SCRUSHY WAY 1 Business Ethics HealthSouth: The Scrushy way—Activity 8 Melinda S. Whitman Dr. Jennifer Scott Northcentral University May 19, 2013 HEALTHSOUTH: THE SCRUSHY WAY 2 Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….. 3 Richard Scrushy Represented the American Dream…………………………………… 3 The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002…………………………………………. 4 What caused the demise of HealthSouth?...……………………………………. 5 Characteristics of Unethical CEOs……………………………………………………… 6 Was Richard Scrushy narcissistic?.……………………………………………………. 7 Impact on Stakeholders………………………………………………………………… 8 Outcome and Fairness of Punishment…………………………………………………. 9 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………... 10 References……………………………………………………………………………… 12 HEALTHSOUTH: THE SCRUSHY WAY 3 Introduction For at least 20 years, HealthSouth represented a new concept in health care. Its founder, Richard Scrushy was the embodiment of the American dream. His rise was meteoric, yet ultimately the empire he created collapsed due to fraud of his creation. Richard Scrushy Represented the American Dream Richard Scrushy came from humble beginnings...
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...HealthSouth: Fraud, Greed & Corporate Governance Marilyn J. Bordeaux HCS 5339 Rachael Kehoe HealthSouth: Fraud, Greed & Corporate Governance During the 1990s, Richard M. Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, engineered many acquisitions of rehabilitation clinics, outpatient surgical care operators, nursing homes and other health care companies. In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the company and Scrushy of inflating earnings to the tune of $1.4 billion since 1999. In November 2003, a federal grand jury indicted Scrushy on 85 counts including conspiracy, securities fraud, money laundering and charges related to overstating HealthSouth’s earnings by nearly $3.0 billion. According to federal investigators, the company overstated earnings to meet analysts’ earning estimates, while hiding the accounting fraud from the auditors. However, questions were raised whether the auditors failed to find or simply overlooked the fraud at HealthSouth. Central to the investigation was the issue of what role Scrushy played in “cooking the books.” However, as the case unfolded, it highlighted many other issues such as: The role of Board of Directors in corporate governance; the role of the auditors; the effect of conflict of interest between an accounting firm and its consulting arm on auditing; whether the relationship between an investment bank and a company affects the quality of the bank’s research reports on the company; whether the executive...
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...academic dismissal. | | MGT7019-8 | Dr. Janis McFaul | | | Ethics in Business | Assignment 8 | | | ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Faculty Use Only ------------------------------------------------- Layla: ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Paper- Health South: The Scrushy way Layla O. Mora Northcentral University MGT7109-8 Janis McFaul, PhD November 15, 2012 Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Fraudulent activities perfumed by HealthSouth 2. Impact on stakeholders a. Impact on internal employees b. Impact on shareholders c. Impact on government and other involved parties 3. Factors affected HealthSouth culture 4....
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...HealthSouth Corporation: Fraud, Greed and Corporate Governance Manmohan D. Chaubey, Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University One College Place Du Bois, PA 15801 (USA) Tel: 814-375-4846 Fax: 814-375-4784 Email: mdc13@psu.edu Case for ICMC2006 International Conference on Management Cases 4-5 December 2006 IMT Ghaziabad, India HealthSouth Corporation: Fraud, Greed and Corporate Governance During the 1990s, Richard M. Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, engineered many acquisitions of rehabilitation clinics, outpatient surgical care operators, nursing homes and other health care companies. In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the company and Scrushy of inflating earnings to the tune of $1.4 billion since 1999. In November 2003, a federal grand jury indicted Scrushy on 85 counts including conspiracy, securities fraud, money laundering and charges related to overstating HealthSouth’s earnings by nearly $3.0 billion. According to federal investigators, the company overstated earnings to meet analysts’ earning estimates, while hiding the accounting fraud from the auditors. However, questions were raised whether the auditors failed to find or simply overlooked the fraud at HealthSouth. Central to the investigation was the issue of what role Scrushy played in “cooking the books.” However, as the case unfolded, it highlighted many other issues such as: The role of Board of Directors in corporate governance; the role of the auditors; the...
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...| #8| || Faculty Use Only TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Abstract --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4 Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 & 6 The role of Auditors at HealthSouth ---------------------------------------- 7 & 8 SEC Investigation ----------------------------------------------------------------------------9&10 Impact on Stakeholders ---------------------------------------11, 12, 13 & 14 Outcome and Fairness In Punishment ---------------------------------------- 15, 16 & 17 Conclusion -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------18 References-------------------------------------------------------------------------------19, 20 & 21 ABSTRACT This paper will investigate the financial reporting scandals of the past decade at HealthSouth and the resulting U.S. legislative attempts to impose ethical behavior and control the incidence of new reporting problems via Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. This paper begins with a brief historical perspective followed by assertions of...
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...INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY HealthSouth Corporation is the nation’s largest provider of inpatient rehabilitative healthcare services1; it was founded in 1984 by Richard M Scrushy along with four other people as Amcare, Inc., it opened its first facility in Little Rock Arkansas and another one a year later in Birmingham Alabama. In 1986 the company went public and was listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under ticker symbol HSRC. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s the company expanded rapidly through mergers and acquisitions. By 1992 the company had $400 Million in annual revenues and by the end of 1999 the company’s annual revenues exceed $1 Billion and it had expanded to 118 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, 5 medical centers, 1,379 outpatient rehabilitation centers, 230 surgery centers, 129 diagnostic centers and 124 occupational medicine centers.2 HealthSouth has always participated actively in the Medicare program and they’ve received Medicare reimbursements since the eighties and nineties, to extent that over 40% of their revenues came from the Medicare program and beneficiaries in that time period, and in their more recent filings this percentage has increased to a whopping 70% in 2010.3-4 HealthSouth’s stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol HLS, with a December 9, 2011 closing price of $16.94, a market capitalization of roughly $1.61 Billion. In 2010 their revenues were $1.99 Billion and their Net Income $899 Million.5 From 1996...
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...ETHICS: HEALTHSOUTH CORPORATION SCANDAL Dannie Lover Professor Seedgrass Financial Accounting South University October 9, 2013 THE ORGANIZATION In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged HealthSouth Corporation, the nations’ largest provider of outpatient surgery, diagnostic and rehabilitative healthcare services, and its Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Richard M. Scrushy with a massive accounting fraud. Scrushy, along with several of his former colleagues allegedly inflated HealthSouth’s pre-tax earnings. [Knapp] Founded in 1984 in Birmingham, Alabama, with more than 50,000 employees and nearly 2000 facilities across all states, HealthSouth earned recognition as a top-five performer in the S&P 500 index. This thriving company grew rapidly and became publicly traded within two years of existence. The company is believed to have overstated its profits by at least 1.4 billion since 1999, in order to meet or exceed Wall Street earnings expectations and maintain market price for stock. [Press Release 2003] THE ALLEGIATION The allegation came just after an earnings restatement and insider-trading charge triggered the investigation, sending HealthSouth stock tumbling to a record low. [Romano 2003] Many attempts at whistle blowing were suppressed, when employees expressed concerns due to falsification of documents. One accountant in particular, was quickly silenced and moved to a dead end job outside of Accounting. Scrushy had no tolerance...
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...Assignment 1: Review of accounting ethics 1 Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics By February 1, 2013 ACC 557: Financial Accounting Oleksii Morgun Strayer University at Arlington Campus School of Business Administration (M.S. Accounting Program) Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics 2 Abstract This research writing is to describe the following: 1. Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conductive to ethical behavior. 2. Based on research, describe organization, the accounting ethical breach and the impact to the organization related to ethical breach. 3. Determine how the organizational ethical issue was detected and how management failed to create ethical environment. 4. Analyze the accounts impacted and/or accounting guidelines violated and the resulting impact to the business operation. 5. As a CFO, recommend which measures could have been taken to prevent this ethical breach and how each measure should be implemented in future. Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics 3 Before the Enron and Andersen scandals, relatively little public attention was paid to the truthfulness of financial reporting. Of course, no one believed every...
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...Intro to HealthSouth Fraud Case Review In 2003, HealthSouth was accused of one the largest accounting fraud cases in healthcare history and those involved are still being tried today, nine years later. HealthSouth was founded in Birmingham, Alabama in the year 1984 by a respiratory therapist name Richard Scrushy. By the year 1999, HealthSouth had grown to house 230 surgical centers, 120 inpatient hospitals, 5 medical centers, 129 diagnostic centers and 1379 outpatient rehab centers and was worth an estimated billion dollars. It was revealed that HealthSouth started their downward spiral in the year 2002, which paralleled the timeframe that Scrushy sold of ~ $100,000 in HealthSouth Stock Options. Within the following 6 plus months to follow, the FBI announced allegations against HealthSouth and opened a criminal investigation for probable SEC violations. The FBI investigation initially uncovered wrong doings from the years 1999-2002 where Scrushy had overstated his salary 1 million + dollars to meet expectations of shareholders and Wallstreet. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning, and as forensic accountants dug deeper, the FBI soon found that HealthSouth’s corporate accountants were adjusting entries to offset liabilities, reduce expense accounts and state elevated salaries to balance their bookkeeping. It was reported ~$373 million dollars of cash on the books was fictitious. It was eventually revealed that all four Accounting Statements were incorrect and that...
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...There has been five HealthSouth CFOs that have pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, Beam being one of them. Richard Scrushy, founder and former CEO of HealthSouth Corp., denied that he was involved in this fraud and 36 of his fraud charges were dropped. But the following year, in 2006, Scrushy and former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman were found guilty of federal bribery charges and are now serving a six-year sentence at a Teaxas prison. Aaron Beam is a co-founder of HealthSouth. In 2005, Beam was convicted of Bank Fraud. He was sentenced to three months in jail and was fined for insider trading. He admits he made mistakes at HealthSouth and he documented the birth, the rise, and eventual crash of HealthSouth. Investigation started focusing on accounting fraud of HealthSouth in 1996, Beam decided to leave in 1997. Aaron Beam then wrote a book where he states the following information: Beam has said that fraudulent and unethical behavior has been going on for a while in the Business Industry. He also says that he wrote the book because he knows that there is a lot of unethical behavior in the leading markets and has also lead to banks closing. “What are some necessary checks and balances for ensuring accounting fraud doesn’t happen?” Board of directors plays a big role. An auditor’s job did not use to include fraud activity before. Accounting firms today are turning to forensic accountants because of this. Beam explains that the Board of Directors does a very poor job...
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...HealthSouth Corporation Case Study Managerial Communication Dr. Ben Busbee Dwight Frazier December 12, 2013 A. Executive Summary: The paper highlights the case analysis on one of the big financial fraud which occurred from 1986-2003. The case of HealthSouth is based on fraud, greed and corporate governance. The HealthSouth case shows that unethical management cannot succeed; sooner or later the truth comes out. The case highlights many key points and the major reason for the fraud was the result of failures of various standard mechanisms of control including the external auditors, the underwriters, and the board of directors, the financial market regulators and the analysts. HealthSouth was one of the country's largest providers of outpatient surgery, diagnostic imaging, and rehabilitation services, operating over 1,800 locations and reporting revenues of $4 billion. The company's management improperly accounted for some $2.7 billion of assets and earnings. Seventeen HealthSouth executives agreed to plead guilty to various charges in connection with this massive accounting fraud. B. Statement of the Problem: Thus, in the HealthSouth case, the research shows that it was close to the real life examples of the people who were “just employed”; however at the same time their transformation from the line of law-abiding citizens towards the law-breaking villains. Apparently the small compromises in morality and ethics led towards the greater compromises and as a result...
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...very proud of not only what you have accomplished, but also the way you all have represented Auburn University. I want to thank all of you and especially Dean Hardgrave for inviting me to come speak. My name is Carter Mize and I graduated undergrad from Auburn University and then came back and got my masters in accounting here at Auburn as well. I currently work for Ernst and Young in Birmingham, Alabama in the assurance practice. Today I am here to talk about Business and Accounting Ethics, which is an extremely important topic that can sometimes be easily overlooked. You all are about to enter the business world where there will be ethical decisions you guys will have to make everyday that could have a huge impact on your career. I first want to start off by reading the definition of business ethics to kind of lay the groundwork. Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations. I kind of want to take a different approach to this talk and give you guys a real life example on how a very large company went from fame to shame due to high executives not making the right ethical decisions. The company I would like to talk about is HealthSouth. You all have probably heard of HealthSouth and might know some people who were either directly affected...
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