photo by: LMH Health

LMH Health CFO Mike Rogers is pictured alongside the hospital's main campus at 325 Maine St.

Updated at 4:35 p.m. Monday, Nov. 13

The chief financial officer for LMH Health, who was hired and fired in the space of a month after failing to disclose his criminal history, “took elaborate steps to conceal his true work history and criminal record,” the Lawrence hospital said Friday as it sought to assure the public that it was investigating the matter and indicated that it would be as transparent as possible “without compromising ongoing investigations.”

On Thursday, the hospital disclosed in a news release that Mike Rogers, who was hired at the end of September, had been terminated Oct. 30. The release indicated that Rogers, who had been the regional CFO for St. Mary’s Hospital’s Texoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City, had not only failed to disclose his status as a felon but had legally changed his name a year ago from his given name of Michael Patrick Brunton, apparently in an effort to avoid detection.

The hospital’s release did not disclose the nature of the felony convictions, but as the Journal-World reported, Rogers had been convicted of mail fraud in Oklahoma City in 2005 in a scheme involving the sale of football tickets, then, while on probation in the Oklahoma case, he was arrested in 2007 in Louisiana, where he was CFO at Franklin Parish Medical Center, after being accused of using hospital credit cards illegally.

LMH Health told the Journal-World Friday that LMH’s compliance officer, Greg Meredith, and its risk director, Danel Cupps, began conducting an investigation known as a Root Cause Analysis, or RCA, on Nov. 1 and they anticipate its completion before the Board of Trustees meeting on Nov. 29.

When asked whether the RCA’s findings would be made public, the hospital said that they would not.

The RCA, it said, is “a proprietary document which contains both personnel and security information that if made public could compromise the security of LMH. For these reasons, the document will not be made public. We will however be as transparent as we can without compromising ongoing investigations of this matter.”

The Journal-World asked LMH Health what types of background checks it does on employees — not only administrators but on other types of workers such as care providers and office workers.

The hospital said, via spokesperson Autumn Bishop, that LMH performs background checks via a third-party vendor on all potential employees.

Rogers, the hospital said, “took elaborate steps to conceal his true work history and criminal record from the hospital,” but it did not detail any of those steps beyond the name change.

As to employees more generally, LMH said in an email: “Our physicians, nurses and providers who care for patients not only have a background check run by LMH Health’s third party vendor they are also licensed by national boards and undergo background checks before licenses are granted. All staff are vetted carefully to determine whether or not they have been excluded from working at a hospital by Medicare.”

LMH said some of the background checking work is also done “internally.”

The work includes using the individual’s date of birth and Social Security Number.

“In addition, we check references and verify prior work history,” the email said. “We use public and private resources which are standard in the industry and utilized by most facilities our size.”

The hospital, however, would not provide further detail on the process, saying it preferred “not to discuss in detail our background search process to avoid future efforts to circumvent our systems.”

With respect to Rogers, LMH said that it was standard in the industry to look back at the previous seven years in a background check, a time period that it said “would not have included his convictions” in the early 2000s.

When asked about any repercussions beyond losing his job that Rogers might face, LMH’s spokesperson said she was not able to speculate.

“This is an individual who had the knowledge to avoid detection of his prior history. We were informed by another hospital where they too were misled and hired Mr. Rogers,” she said. “We made this matter public to avoid this happening again to another potential employer. We do not wish to comment further on repercussions to Mr. Rogers so as not to interfere with any pending investigations.”

The hospital said on Thursday, when it first disclosed the circumstances of Rogers’ termination, that financial protections were in place such that its financial assets were never in jeopardy and that Rogers had no administrative access nor control over its banking accounts.

LMH Health declined to provide Rogers’ annual salary package, but told the Journal-World that the “net salary” paid to Rogers to date — for working approximately one month — was $33,379.

LMH is an independent entity of the City of Lawrence. It receives no city funding, but the city appoints its Board of Trustees.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include Rogers’ salary to date.