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Tag: Inova Health

Inova breaks ground on Alexandria, Springfield hospitals

In late September, Inova Health System broke ground on two new hospitals — one in Alexandria and the other in Springfield, the start of a new phase for the Falls Church health system.

Both acute-care hospitals are expected to be completed in 2028, officials say. Inova Alexandria, which will sit on the former Landmark Mall site, will replace the existing Inova Alexandria Hospital, and Inova Franconia-Springfield will join Inova HealthPlex as the health system’s first hospital in Springfield.

The new hospitals aim to update Inova’s offerings to patients, says Heather Russell, Inova’s vice president for eastern region development.

“Our current Alexandria hospital … is out-of-date and needs to be replaced. [This project provides] us an opportunity to rightsize our facilities,” Russell says. “It has really provided us an opportunity to look at the future of health care delivery and standardize our processes.”

Combined, the two projects are expected to cost $2 billion and span more than 1.4 million square feet, with Alexandria’s facility measuring in at 838,000 square feet. Initially, neither of the hospitals will be designated as trauma centers, but Inova will likely pursue trauma certification in the future, according to Russell.

In addition to the new hospital, Alexandria’s Inova campus will include a new cancer center, medical office building and garage, taking up about half of the former Landmark Mall’s 52-acre lot, which the health system is leasing from the City of Alexandria.

The other half of the site is being developed by real estate developer Foulger Pratt into WestEnd Alexandria, a retail and residential community.

“[The hospital complex] will very much be a sort of town center with a medical theme, because you’re going to have this acute-care hospital and cancer center as the anchor,” says Stephanie Landrum, president and CEO of the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership.

Inova’s plans for Springfield are more straightforward. The health system purchased the site years earlier and is planning to include a hospital, medical office building and garage there, according to Tom McDuffie, president of Inova Realty, the health system’s real estate branch.

In November, Inova is also set to open a health center near Potomac Yard and National Landing, a facility that will include an emergency room, outpatient services, doctors’ offices and an ambulatory surgery center.   

Inova makes acting CFO permanent

After serving in an acting capacity since March, Rick Talento is now Inova Health’s permanent chief financial officer, the Falls Church-based regional health system announced Wednesday.

Talento will continue to be responsible for the system’s financial operations and will also be responsible for planning and forecasting. He succeeds Alice Pope, who is now CFO of Novant Health.

“I am honored to be named chief financial officer of Inova,” Talento said in a statement. “This is an exciting time to be part of an organization that is deeply committed to excellence in patient care, innovation and community impact.”

Talento, who has 35 years of finance experience, joined Inova as corporate controller in the mid-’90s. After 10 years, he left Inova to enter the private equity sector and later served as a hospital senior vice president and CFO at Ascension, a health system based in St. Louis.

Talento returned to Inova in 2013 and has held several leadership positions since, including vice president of finance for Inova Mount Vernon, Inova Alexandria and Inova Fairfax hospitals. Before he was named acting CFO, Talento oversaw finance for Inova’s acute hospitals and service lines.

“We are thrilled to have Rick assume the role of chief financial officer,” Inova President and CEO Dr. J. Stephen Jones said in a statement. “Rick brings not only a wealth of experience and a proven track record of strategic financial leadership but also a deep institutional knowledge of Inova’s financial operations.”

Talento holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Maryland and is a certified public accountant.

Inova Health has more than 24,000 employees across its five hospital campuses and multiple other care facilities, including Northern Virginia’s only Level 1 trauma center. The system treats more than 1 million patients a year, with more than 4 million patient visits annually.

Inova pays $2.37M to settle False Claims Act allegations

Three Inova Health entities have agreed to pay more than $2.37 million to settle claims that Inova submitted Medicaid claims containing falsified information.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced on Friday the agreement with Inova Health System Foundation, Inova Health Care Services and Inova Physician Partners, settling the False Claims Act allegations.

The Falls Church-based Northern Virginia regional health care system submitted written disclosures to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Virginia Attorney General’s Office stating that between Jan. 1, 2020, and Aug. 31, 2020, it submitted claims to Medicaid for reimbursement — including resubmitted claims  — for sterilization and hysterectomy procedures containing improperly modified documentation. One or more Inova employees improperly modified the documentation or requested the modifications, according to the disclosure, resulting in falsified information in the claims.

After an internal investigation, Inova “took remedial actions” and agreed that more than $1.58 million it’d received from Medicaid was improper, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In a statement, Inova said: “Inova identified an error in how certain Medicaid claims were submitted for reimbursement and we promptly self-reported and took corrective action to resolve the matter. As noted in the [Department of Justice] press release, ‘Inova received full credit under the Justice Department’s guidelines for taking disclosure, cooperation and remediation into account in False Claims cases.’”

The civil claims settled are allegations only, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and no determination of civil liability has been made.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the Virginia Office of the Attorney General coordinated on the case, according to a news release.

Inova Health has more than 24,000 employees across its five hospital campuses and multiple other care facilities, including Northern Virginia’s only Level 1 trauma center. The system treats more than 1 million patients a year, with more than 4 million patient visits annually.