Home Health & Hospice Week

Passages Hospice said it would continue to operate after co-owner Seth Gillman was charged with Medicare fraud related to GIP (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXIII, No. 6). But now the Lisle, Ill.-based regional chain has closed its doors.

Passages coordinated with local hospices to take its patients before closing, reports Crain’s Chi-cago Business newspaper. But those hospices say many of the patients actually are ineligible for the benefit.

Passages’ abrupt closure has left many of its employees reeling. "We’ll recover from the paychecks we didn’t receive, the medications that were denied us because we didn’t have insurance coverage, the humiliation of having our reputations compromised by association, the missing 401K contributions," a former Passages employee says in an open letter to Gillman published by the Chicago Tribune. "We’ll come back from the betrayal, the hurt, and the anger we felt as a result of our livelihood being built on a foundation of dishonorable ethics and greed. We are a congregation — a people with a shared mission and that mission does not end here. We are fortified through fire and we will continue to serve with integrity, which is more than we can say for you."