Suit: CON board favored bank, construction firm

Edward Hospital, Naperville, Ill., has filed a civil whistleblower lawsuit alleging that representatives of investment bank Bear Sterns and Kiferbaum Construction Corp., Deerfield, Ill., have swayed votes by the state certificate-of-need board on new hospital projects, the Associated Press and Chicago newspapers reported. The lawsuit, filed May 24 in U.S. District Court in Chicago, is under seal. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the sealed lawsuit alleges that individuals with connections to the board and the firms told Edward Chief Executive Officer Pamela Meyer Davis that the hospital would not win CON approval for a new $200 million hospital in Plainfield, Ill., unless it employed Bear, Sterns and Kiferbaum. Davis did not hire the firms. The project was rejected by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board earlier this year. Modern Healthcare reported on its Web site last week that members of the board had received subpoenas for information on past CON decisions. Edward's officials and its attorneys declined to comment on the suit. Kiferbaum officials had not returned a call by deadline. A Bear, Sterns official said the company hadn't seen the suit and couldn't comment. -- by Mark Taylor