Audit finds Western State Hospital overpaid employee $71,753

A Western State Hospital employee routinely didn’t show up for one of the scheduled shifts he was paid to work, according to a state audit released Thursday.

The state overpaid $71,753 to the doctor over four years starting in 2011, the Department of Social and Health Services and State Auditor Troy Kelley’s office found.

The DSHS-run psychiatric hospital made arrangements for Dr. Suleman Aziz to pay back the money over a matter of years, without interest, auditors found. A collective-bargaining agreement with doctors limits overpayment deductions to $200 per paycheck, DSHS said.

A manager told auditors he had known about overpayments to Aziz since 2012 but “he feels the employee is a ‘precious asset’ to the hospital, despite his timekeeping deficiencies, because he provides good medical treatment for patients and recruiting and retaining medical staff is very challenging,” the audit says.

The Lakewood hospital has struggled to recruit and keep staff, including doctors, contributing to safety problems that threaten the facility’s federal funding.

Aziz failed to submit forms required for taking leave without pay, according to the audit.

The hospital and Aziz have had disputes over his schedule for years. He told auditors he asked to cut his hours by eliminating his scheduled Saturday night shift, but managers denied his request.

No one appears to have been punished over the problem, although a “directive” was placed in the doctor’s personnel file. “Employer expectations on employee behavior were reiterated to those involved,” a DSHS spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail.

Auditors said they would refer the case to prosecutors in Thurston and and Pierce counties.

“We find it unconscionable that a doctor, or any health care provider, would seek payment for providing medical services to very vulnerable clients when, in fact, the doctor wasn’t even working,” DSHS assistant secretary Carla Reyes said in a news release. “This placed both patients and staff at risk of harm because it left fewer staff members to provide treatment to patients.”

DSHS said in the news release it has worked to improve monitoring of attendance and would notify the auditor’s office of future overpayments, which it failed to do in the case of Aziz.

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Audit finds Western State Hospital overpaid employee $71,753."