Hospital lets 2019 ‘Volunteer of the Year’ award winner go

Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services fired Dr. Phyllis Miller,  its Health Information Management Director, July 21, allegedly because she was a whistleblower that reported HIPAA violations and medical billing and coding irregularities that would invalidate the hospital’s invoices, according to a reliable source.

In an interview with the Gallup Sun, Miller said that for many years, the hospital billed patients and submitted invoices to Medicare and Medicaid using medical procedure codes that were not verified with providers’ signatures which guaranteed that the procedures, tests, exams and other medical...

President Donald Trump announced that the White House will send more federal agents into Albuquerque, citing the city’s high violent crime rate.

Trump said the deployment of agents to cities “plagued by violent crime” is part of what he called Operation Legend.The federal government had already sent agents to Kansas City as part of the program.

He said state and local officials should accept the federal law enforcement officers.

“They should call, they should want it,” Trump said. “They’re too proud or they’re too political to want it.”

U.S. Attorney General William Barr said that they would send 35 agents to Albuquerque, with more going to Chicago and 200 already...

The Indian Health Service and The University of New Mexico School of Medicine have partnered to create a family medicine residency program at the Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock. The announcement was made on July 22.

“I want to extend my most sincere congratulations to the Indian Health Service for establishing this unique and crucially important training program,” Paul B. Roth, MD, MS, UNM’s Chancellor for Health Sciences said. “It reflects the commitment and creativity of our faculty working side-by-side with IHS and the Navajo government to address their medical workforce needs.”

“The Indian Health Service is excited to work with the University of New Mexico...

Drilling, sand mining, herbicides imperil rare lizard in New Mexico, Texas

SILVER CITY — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced July 15 that the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act and initiated a year-long status review.

Found only in the Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the lizard historically possessed the second-smallest range of any North American lizard. It was first identified as needing protection in 1982 and proposed for listing as an endangered species in 2010. However, opposition from the oil and gas industry has prevented that much-needed step.

Over the years this three-inch lizard lost more of...