Welcome to Love and Work Coaching with Denise A. Romano, MA, EdM

Please email: denise@loveandworkcoach.com

Denise earned an EdM in Counseling Psychology and an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, and has taught counseling skills to graduate students at Teachers College, Columbia University. She also earned an MFA in Writing from Naropa University.

Denise has provided individual, couple, family, and group counseling to adults and children in the New York City area. She has counseled men who were court-ordered to attend counseling sessions due to domestic violence offenses as well as women who have been sexually assaulted. She also provides volunteer counseling through the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services.

Denise has trained in Gestalt therapy, is a CTA-certified coach, and is a certified PREPARE/ENRICH counselor. PREPARE/ENRICH is a statistically valid assessment and counseling modality that helps couples understand their expectations of and strengths in their relationships while actively helping them find viable solutions to relationship challenges. Denise has also co-presented on Workaholism at the National Association of Social Work Addictions Institute at Fordham University and has presented on Human Resources and Organizational Development for the student chapter of SHRM at Baruch College.

Denise has a strong interest in relationship and workplace ethics and successfully assisted the FBI and US Attorney’s Office as the “whistleblower” or “relator” in a multi-million dollar whistleblower case against Columbia University involving Medicaid fraud, which was settled in 2003. She also assisted the federal government with a second, similar case against New York Presbyterian Hospital from 2004-2007. Denise has over fifteen years of progressively responsible experience working in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector.

v To begin, simply email: denise@loveandworkcoach.com

IMPORTANT: The Coaching services offered by Denise A. Romano do not provide any type of professional, psychological, psychotherapy, counseling, legal, or psychiatric advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you need psychological services, psychotherapy or psychiatric services, please contact a licensed professional physician or therapist in regard to the diagnosis and treatment of your condition. If you need legal services, you are advised to contact an attorney specializing in the area with which you need assistance. This website’s coaching services and content is provided solely for informational and educational purposes. Your health insurance company can help you find a qualified counselor, or you may call a local community service agency if you do not have health insurance. You may find a qualified attorney in your local phone book.

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For more information on Denise’s experience assisting the U.S. Government as a whistleblower, please read below:

Multi-Million Dollar Medicaid Fraud Busted

Geneseo Alumni Blows the Whistle on Her Ivy League School

By Jo Kirk, The Geneseo Scene, S.U.N.Y. @ Geneseo Alumni News Publication

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The case: The United States of America ex rel Romano vs. Columbia University.

The relator: “whistleblower” Denise Romano, represented by attorney Timothy J. McInnis, filing the case on behalf of the U.S. Government, represented by U.S. Attorney’s Office legal staff and Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents.

The defendant: Columbia University, Romano’s former employer (and graduate alma mater), represented by attorney David Spears.

The law: the False Claims Act, also known as “Lincoln’s Law,” which allows private citizens with knowledge of fraud to help the U.S. Government recover ill-gotten gains and additional civil penalties by joining in legal actions commonly dubbed “whistleblower lawsuits.”

The claim: fraudulent Medicaid billing practices by Columbia physicians and administrative officials at the New York and Presbyterian Hospital’s Allen Pavilion.

The settlement: agreement by Columbia to pay $5.1 million to the U.S. and Romano, and to submit to U.S. Government monitoring.

The Evidence Mounts Up:

Only after a long and complex investigation by federal authorities, did

Denise Romano’s allegations of fraudulent billing practices result in a settlement by Columbia University, Romano’s graduate school alma mater and employer.

When Denise Romano ’89 blew the whistle on her employer, lodging the complaint that would earn her more than a million dollars, she was already known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In fact, the agency had approached her as a potential recruit in the mid-nineties, after she assisted with an investigation into a cult group in which a friend of hers had become involved. Health problems - Romano is asthmatic – and doubts about carrying a gun caused her to withdraw from the application process, but she was strongly attracted to the idea of a career fighting crime, she says.

So, several years later, when her employer, Columbia University, moved her to a small community hospital, Allen Pavilion, and “it became clear to me something fishy was going on,” she leapt at the chance to report what she saw. “This was my chance to expose wrongdoing, participate in stopping the wrongdoing, and assist the FBI in some capacity without having to carry a gun.”

In the Obstetrics/Gynecology department where Romano worked as an administrator, she observed that 90 percent of the deliveries were attended by midwives, but that in most cases a doctor signed the note required for billing.

The situation worsened when Romano was instructed by her supervisor to make sure these notes were written, she says. “When a particular doctor quit before signing for procedures she had just performed, I had to nag another doctor to write not only those notes, but more than 50 others for earlier procedures by the same doctor (who had quit). I also had to nag Medicaid-eligible physicians to write notes in charts for doctors and medical residents who were not yet eligible to bill for Medicaid-funded services.”

There was even a system of kickbacks, Romano says. “I had to report to my supervisor how many charts each doctor was signing, and the department would pay him/her $50 for each one.”

Eventually, she took to a lawyer some of the documents that were coming to her, including a memo instructing physicians to sign patients’ charts and write delivery notes for births whether or not they were involved in the birth.

“It was one of many smoking guns,” she says, and the kind of evidence her lawyer said could open the way to a Lincoln’s Law suit – which, if successful, would recoup money for the government and a relator’s share for Romano, as the private citizen filing on the government’s behalf. How much that share might be would depend upon FBI guidelines, under which the amount varies according to how helpful a whistleblower has been, and on the risks he/she has taken.

“I began to assist my attorney and the U.S. Government in what was suddenly an official, federal investigation,” says Romano. As a courtesy to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office, she prefers not to detail investigation procedures or the meetings she had with their agents and legal staff.

She did not become nervous until her attorney arranged for her to present a memo expressing her concern about fraud to her employers, she says. This was followed by the arrival of some of the FBI agents at her workplace, armed with subpoenas for witnesses and documents. They acted as if they were meeting Romano for the first time, “but, even so, people started asking me questions,” she says. “I would change the subject – I wasn’t supposed to lie – but I could feel their eyes in the back of my head as I walked away down the hall.”

At the end of 2002, more than two years after lodging her complaint and more than a year after leaving Columbia, the long proceedings finally came to an end. The Ivy League university admitted no guilt, but agreed to pay out more than $5 million. Romano netted 22 percent of these proceeds, slightly more than the 16-20 percent average earned by private citizens under whistleblower law. The percentage a whistleblower is awarded is determined by how helpful she or he has been to the investigation and how much risk she or he has taken. She made it clear that she would not sign a gag agreement, because “I wanted to be free to tell the whole story,” she says.

“The whole story” began long before she was moved to the hospital where she was involved in Medicaid billing, she says, and in retrospect it seems surprising that she was transferred there at all. On more than one previous occasion she had reported to her supervisors what she alleges were gross infringements of workplace safety laws and other employee rights. On receiving no response, she referred at least one complaint on to an appropriate external agency, bringing down a $10,000 fine on her employer.

“So I was already labeled a ‘troublemaker’ at Columbia,” says Romano, who claims her re-assignment to Allen Pavilion Hospital was done in retaliation for her legitimate complaints. “But they still put me in a position where I would see illegal activity going on.

“The whole process was simultaneously harrowing and fascinating” because throughout it Romano was studying at the university which employed her. She began with a master’s degree in counseling psychology, and – motivated by what was happening to her at work – added another master’s, in organizational psychology. “I was, and remain, struck by the cavernous gap between what I was learning about the workplace in my classes and what I was experiencing as an employee,” she adds.

Romano reflects on the good things that emerged from her difficult experiences as a whistleblower. "I'm much stronger than I ever imagined," she says.

In 2000, as Romano had been determined to do since being hired by Columbia in 1994, she completed her graduate studies and, since 2002, has been in “one of her dream jobs,” as Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development at an organization in Manhattan.

“I chose this career based on some bad experiences, and I now use it to positively influence the culture and community of the place I work,” she says. “From what happened to me at Columbia, I know how important it is to treat those who work for and alongside us with respect, honesty, integrity and fairness.”

There are other things Romano has gained from her “bad experiences,” she says, including “sweet vindication” against her former employer and “the very nice financial reward, which was never a given – but one of the biggest things that came out of all this was learning that I’m much stronger than I ever could have imagined.”

At Geneseo, where Romano earned a double major in English and Theatre, she worked in the Theatre and Dance department as box office manager and was president of Cothurnus, the student theatre club.

Romano also performed in a number of Theatre and Dance department productions including a lead role in “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” by David Mamet and a modern-day version of the Greek drama, “Lysistrata”. Romano also studied ballet, modern, jazz, and African dance. She both choreographed and performed for and in the Black Box Theatre throughout her four years at Geneseo, including experimental theatre pieces working with spoken word, dance and percussion.

Romano continued literary studies at Naropa University in Boulder, CO, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing and studied with Allen Ginsberg, her “poetry hero.” In 1994, she published a book of poems, titled “Paper over Flames,” and for several years wrote, choreographed, and directed performance art pieces, which she performed extensively in Rochester, NY and Boulder, CO.