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Nursing home to pay $1.75 million settlement after allegedly giving COVID shots to ineligible board members, wealthy donors

South Florida Sun Sentinel - 7/1/2022

A South Florida healthcare company has agreed to pay a nearly $2 million settlement after claims that it gave COVID vaccines to more than 500 people who were ineligible — many of them board members and wealthy donors, the Department of Justice said.

In October 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched its program to vaccinate staff and residents at long-term care facilities, a population exceptionally vulnerable to the virus.

MorseLife Health System applied for the program and held a vaccine clinic in December 2020 for residents and staff of one of its facilities in West Palm Beach, the Justice Department said.

But more than half of the shots doled out by the clinic were given to ineligible people, including board members, their family and friends and donors, the department said.

The settlement agreement will resolve MorseLife’s potential liability under the False Claims Act and resolves allegations that the company knew the vaccines they were given were intended for long-term care facility residents and staff but gave them to ineligible people anyway.

“MorseLife strongly denies the allegations set forth by the government but chose to settle this matter to avoid the expense and distraction of protracted litigation,” a company spokesperson said in an email Friday. “MorseLife’s top priority is to promote and protect the health, safety and wellbeing of everyone in our community, and the staff of MorseLife, as well as the Vice Chairman and his brother, acted in the best interest of the community to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Importantly, any nursing home resident or staff member who wanted the vaccine and was eligible according to federal and state guidelines at that time received it free of charge.”

The Justice Department said MorseLife allegedly “invited and facilitated the vaccination of hundreds of ineligible persons at the clinic by characterizing them as ‘staff’ and ‘volunteers,’ many of whom MorseLife targeted for donations.”

The government claimed that board members were categorized as “staff,” that the company invited donors and prospective donors to the clinic and that the company board’s vice chairman and his brother invited nearly 300 ineligible people to get vaccinated at MorseLife.

“In addition to actual board members, MorseLife invited emeritus board members, as well as board members’ spouses, children, family members and friends to the vaccination clinic,” the department’s release says.

MorseLife’s CEO wrote in a text message to an ineligible person that the person would be made “an employee of Morse … Guarantee you get the vaccine,” the Justice Department said without identifying the CEO.

State business records show Keith Myers is the president and CEO of Joseph L. Morse Health Center Inc. and Joseph L. Morse Geriatric Center Inc. in West Palm Beach.

More than 100 board members and their family and friends got vaccinations through MorseLife, along with others, the Justice Department said. It is also alleged the CEO urged employees of the company’s fundraising arm, the MorseLife Foundation, to target billionaires and millionaires for donations using the vaccine, the department said, writing in a text, in part, to “go after the billionaires first.”

“Do not be weak be strong you have the opportunity to take advantage of everyone who needs the shot and figure out what they have and what we can go after and what their affinity [sic] as that’s what I would do [sic] I was running the foundation,” part of the CEO’s text message said.

The company board’s vice chairman and his brother were also accused of inviting nearly 300 people to the vaccine clinic, of which a “significant number” belonged to their same country club, according to the Justice Department. Some flew from out of state to get the shot.

None of those people invited lived on the MorseLife campus or worked there, and most had not volunteered or had any prior affiliation with the company, the department said.

MorseLife facilitated vaccines to 976 people at its December 2020 clinic. Of those, 567 were ineligible under the CDC’s program.

“This specific vaccination program was designed to protect some of the nation’s most vulnerable individuals at a critical time when the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating that population,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, wrote in the release.

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