Details from the investigator’s report that led to firing of MetroHealth CEO Akram

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Dr. Akram Boutros, the fired CEO of MetroHealth System, failed to disclose his full annual compensation – including bonuses – on at least two occasions, according to an investigative report.

We’re talking about Boutros’s salary, raises and bonuses on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

Following the strongly worded insistence of our Editorial Board, MetroHealth relented and released the investigation report involving ousted CEO Akram Boutros. What does is show

The incoming Ohio house speaker actually voted against ousting former house speaker Larry Householder, which should be distressing to anyone who cares about integrity in politicians. What else do we know about this relatively young politician?

What’s going on with a lawsuit by a large group of school districts to halt Ohio’s school voucher program?

If Chris Ronayne keeps his promise to ask voters for approval of a tax increase, through the extension of a sale tax increase, what are the chances voters will say yes?

How did our brick and mortar shopping malls do during the opening weekend of holiday shopping?

Do the folks at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport believe they will successfully persuade the airlines to pay for a $2 billion expansion and revitalization of the airport?

Why is the Cleveland Museum of Natural History buying land in Ashtabula County?

We published a story about turkeys for the Thanksgiving weekend, the wild ones that have been popping up in the suburbs? Why are they suddenly becoming numerous as our neighbors?

We have an Apple podcasts channel exclusively for this podcast. Subscribe here.

Do you get your podcasts on Spotify? Find us here.

If you use Stitcher, we are here.

RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here.

On Google Podcasts, we are here.

On PodParadise, find us here.

And on PlayerFM, we are here.

Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

Chris: [00:00:00] We’re back from our long break. It’s today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn. I’m here with Lisa Garvin, Laura Johnston and Leila Tossi. It’s been what, five, six days since we last talked about the news, and we still have lots of news to get to.

Let’s start. Following the strongly worded insistence of our editorial board, Metro Health Relented and released the investigation report involving ousted CEO Akron Buttross Leila. It is a very detailed report by John McCaffrey, an attorney with. Tucker Ellis laying out what became the cause for Akron Buttross firing.

What does it say? Well,

Leila: the report showed that at least twice Akron Buttross failed to disclose his full compensation, and one of those times was during a meeting with the Plain dealer editorial board. He had never reported paying himself an extra [00:01:00] $400,000 in annual supplemental bonuses to the board of trustees, to consultants who were paid to review his total compensation or to members of the media like us, and that it seems could make him vulnerable to criminal liability according to this investigative report.

Buttross is accused of course, of granting himself 1.9 million in bonuses after conducting his own performance evaluation and in 2018, the plain dealer editors and a reporter had invited him to a meeting to discuss a series of raises and bonuses granted to the hospital’s top 14 liters, including himself.

These were based on the hospital’s performance based variable compensation plan, which awards incentives for meeting certain goals and finance and quality strategy in a bunch of different categories. And Buttross during this meeting had highlighted records that showed he was paid. [00:02:00] Just under $400,000 for helping to raise Metro Health’s operating income by 381% in 2017 and revenue by 8%.

But the investigative report says that what he didn’t tell us was that that was only one of the bonuses he had received that year. He had given himself another $400,000 bonus. The report calls a supplemental performance based bonus. That bonus relies on self evaluations that senior executives are supposed to review for approval Altogether.

His bonus compensation far exceeded what his contract allowed. His contract entitled him to annual incentive performance compensation limited. 35% up to 52.5% of his million dollar base pay. But what he granted himself exceeded 90% of his salary according to this report. And you know, [00:03:00] the board says they were unaware of that.

They had hadn’t given Buttross permission to conduct his own evaluations. Buttross insists that he ran all of those decisions past his senior leadership team, but investigators say, no, that’s not true. They interviewed two of those top execs and they both said they had nothing to do with his performance evaluations.

Chris: Yeah. Uh, we actually have audio that we’ll publish today of that entire meeting. It’s nearly an hour and a half. Most of it was Akron and the then board share, I think it, the name was Tom McDonald discussing. The five years that Akron had been in charge and the huge improvements he had brought to the hospital, and they’re astounding.

If you listen to it, you’re gonna think, man, this guy. Mm-hmm. was a whirlwind of good for Metro Health, but they, but they explain in this that the bonus system that they had in place was the result of scandal involving the [00:04:00] previous CEO who had a bonus written into his contract. And it was incredibly controversial when he.

While the hospital was losing money, it had two rounds of layoffs. Mm-hmm. . So when Akron came in, they built this new bonus system based on performance. But somewhere along the way, the, the Metro Health created a supplemental bonus program. It’s not clear to me still how that came about and. In addition to the standards and measuring yourself against metrics, they could give money, extra money to people for going above and beyond the call.

And when this was submitted to the board, the aggregate number was submitted and they never asked for the spreadsheet. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. and arom. Buttross was putting an extra 400 K on that spreadsheet for himself, right? Right. And the board

Leila: didn’t know it and was baked into that slate of bonuses that they approved in 2018, but it didn’t itemize them.

And that’s where they say he was trying to slide [00:05:00] it past.

Chris: Well, and he acknowledged to McCaffery, they were not aware of it and the, the, but the answer is, well, they didn’t ask, but come on, think. Okay, you might have a technicality, right? Okay. You, they approved it. But we all have buses. And I don’t think any of us would unilaterally take huge amounts of money out of our employers and not let our boss know.

Well, and our bosses would know because most places have much better accounting systems than evidently Metro Health did Well. So even

Leila: if you gave him that benefit of the doubt and say, okay, well it was somewhere in that spreadsheet that the board didn’t ask for. Why did he conceal it from the Plain Dealer when the Plain dealer asked about it in 2018?

Well, he says he didn’t. He says he’s not responsible for responding to public records requests, and he says he’s pretty sure the reporter requested only a certain kind of bonus and not the supplemental kind. But you know, I’m here to say that’s not how we make requests. We cast our nets as [00:06:00] widely as we can.

If RA is to find out how much hospital executives are making, we’re asking for any and all. Bonuses and sources of income. We’re not just asking for a

Chris: specific kind. Well, In the McCaffrey report, he says, the reporter specifically asked for their bonus program. But, and what, what you’re hearing now is that that Ackerman Strang that differentiate that program from the supplemental program, but when you read all the documents, the supplemental is part and parcel to the program that the Plain dealer reporter asked about.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So this is shady. And there look, you’re gonna hear a moment when people listen to this audio. It’s like 95% of it isn’t about the bonuses, but the part that is McDonald is talking about how they hired two salary consultants, right? This is in the McCaffrey report too. One was hired by by Buttross and his staff, the other was hired by the board to verify the one that Buttross and his staff [00:07:00] hired.

Well. The these, these consultants determined based on the growth of Metro…