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Pretzel Logic
The Carmen Bolden affair reaps an unexpected benefit.
Carmen Bolden, the more-than-titular head of the Centro Ayuda mental health clinic, may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the city’s impoverished Latino community.
I know this concept may be tough to swallow, considering how much harm she has already done to that community.
It was Bolden, after all, who was twice convicted of stealing money from community service organizations she helped create. Her actions left both the Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations and Congresso de Latinos Unidos on the verge of collapse. Hundreds of people who needed help could not get it while those agencies fought to regain trust and fiscal security.
And it was Bolden who, despite her background, snookered state officials into giving her a license to run Centro Ayuda, a mental health clinic on North Broad Street. Within months, employees there began complaining to the state’s Office of Mental Health and the district attorney’s office that Bolden was providing shoddy care, operating without a required psychiatrist, playing fast and loose with billing records and misrepresenting her position with the clinic to the state. As a convicted felon, Bolden is not allowed to run the clinic. On its application, the clinic lists Bolden’s husband James, a contractor by trade, as the chief executive officer. However, numerous internal memos obtained by City Paper — memos that sources at the clinic also turned over to state officials — listed Carmen as the boss.
Despite these complaints, the state renewed Bolden’s license in March. More business as usual.
But the story didn’t end there.
A number of former and current employees came forward, first to the state and, when they got no satisfaction, to me. Armed with a seemingly incontrovertible load of documents pointing out Bolden’s alleged wrongdoing, I wrote a story raising questions about how a twice-convicted felon could get back into the business of collecting public funds at a social service organization.
Results came swifter than I could have imagined.
Even before the story was published, the state attorney general’s office, reacting to my phone call asking for comments, launched a criminal investigation of Bolden — based on information voluntarily turned over by my sources. High-ranking state sources with direct knowledge of that investigation tell me that the AG’s office is now looking beyond Bolden, checking into whether other mental health clinics serving poor Latinos have similar problems.
Sources say some of those clinics are getting nervous, threatening to sue anyone who makes accusations against them.
“They are worried that if their names get into the paper, they will lose contracts,” says a source close to the situation.
There is good reason for trepidation.
Three weeks after the City Paper story ran, the state’s Office of Mental Health (OMH) decided not to renew Bolden’s license, which expired the day the story was published.
Neither Bolden, nor her attorney Obra Kernodle, returned several calls seeking comment for this article.
Michael McGaffin, a spokesman for OMH, says the decision not to renew Centro Ayuda’s license “was pretty much in relation to the story in City Paper.”
David Lapan, another OMH spokesman, adds while the clinic is still open pending a hearing into the appeal it filed, HMO providers pulled their contracts and the state Office of Medical Assistance, which provides Medicaid payments to clinics on behalf of the poor, ruled that it would no longer reimburse Centro Ayuda.
So the lights may still be on over at the clinic, but it appears that Carmen Bolden — who had already collected more than $300,000 in reimbursements from the state — is not getting her hands on any more taxpayer money.
But the real silver lining here is that Latino community leaders say Bolden opened a lot of eyes.
In the wake of the Centro Ayuda scandal, state and local officials are now paying much closer attention to those who prey on the most vulnerable members of our society.
“It is clear that, if the allegations in the City Paper about Carmen Bolden are true, it is appropriate to have her license revoked,” says Alba Martinez, executive director of Congresso.
Martinez was largely responsible for rebuilding Congresso from the havoc created by Bolden’s conviction. She says the real issue raised by the Centro Ayuda mess is, “How can we improve the system?”
The charges against Centro Ayuda — exorbitantly high quotas for counselors, forcing them to see patients for merely a few minutes; promises of Social Security disability payments to prospective patients if they would agree to come to the clinic; overmedication of children so that parents could either get Social Security disability or welfare benefits; false billing practices — may not be unique to Centro Ayuda.
Martinez says the Carmen Bolden saga served as a warning bell.
“The city and the state are taking a harder look at these clinics,” says Martinez. “A few months ago, after the Carmen Bolden story came out, there was a meeting between city and state officials and advocates from the Latino health consortium. The result was that there was an understanding of the need for more oversight and higher standards for all clinics receiving state and city funds.”
Martinez says the meeting was long overdue and highly positive. She says that state and city officials promised to “gather data that will reveal specific instances of problems of misconduct. It was the very first time we had a common agenda about the problem of exploitation going on around mental health services.”
Mike Cavone, deputy city health commissioner, says as a result of the meeting, the city has promised to create a task force of state and city officials and local health experts to examine clinic records.
“This is not something routinely done,” says Cavone, who attended the meeting with Martinez. “These clinics are not licensed through the city, but we agreed to work jointly about this problem.”
Cavone says this task force will begin looking at clinic records in January. If it uncovers falsified billing or inadequate care, it will ask the appropriate state authorities to take action, which could result in license revocation or an order to improve care.
So, a thank you of sorts is owed to Carmen Bolden.
Without you, baby, none of this would have happened.
