Health Commissioner Shereef Elnahal said Thursday that staff at his department have been meeting “weekly” with executives from CarePoint Health, following an audit last month which uncovered questionable management and spending at its three Hudson County facilities.

A March report from the State Commission of Investigation found that CarePoint paid $157 million to management companies, owned by CarePoint’s owners, even though those management companies had no employees and limited operating expenses.

The management fees over a four-year period totaled $99 million from Bayonne Medical Center, $30 million from Christ Hospital in Jersey City and $29 million from Hoboken University Medical Center; all three companies were purchased out of their bankruptcies.

Vivek Garipalli, James Lawler and Jeffrey Mandler own the three hospitals through a confusing layer of limited liability companies and trusts, according to the SCI’s 29-page report.

One company, IJKG, billed Bayonne Medical Center the $99 million figure while Sequoia Healthcare Management billed Hoboken University Medical Center the $29 million figure and Christ Hospital the $30 million figure.

Bayonne Medical Center funneled $5,000 per week to trusts controlled by Lawler and Mandler and another $10,000 weekly to a trust controlled by Garipalli.

One of the hospitals, Bayonne Medical Center, gained national notoriety following a 2015 NBC News report that the facility billed a man’s insurance over $17,000 to stitch a small cut on his finger.  

The report credits CarePoint for bringing the three hospitals back from bankruptcy and the brink of total failure, enabling them to continue providing health care services to southern Bergen County, the Meadowlands and Hudson County residents, a point agreed upon by CarePoke spokesperson Jennifer Morrill.

“Transparency is an integral part of CarePoint Health’s mission to provide high-quality care,” Morrill said last month. “We support the report’s suggestions and have offered our commitment to the Department of Health to share additional information and to help craft supplemental reporting requirements beyond the extensive ones that are already in place.”