Maxim

When Maxim Healthcare Services settled one of the government's largest-ever medical fraud cases last week, the Medicaid and Veterans Affairs contractor agreed to pay $150 million and implement a host of corporate reforms. But Maxim, a Columbia-based home health and medical staffing company founded by Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, avoided the penalty that would have the biggest impact on its bottom line: disbarment from federal health care programs. That's the case with nearly all of the companies ever charged with cheating government programs — including thousands of health care companies that are defendants in most of the cases and that settled civil charges for a record $2.5 billion in the 2010 fiscal year.

A staffing company owned by Columbia-based Maxim Healthcare Services created a false email to make it appear it had informed state health officials about unethical conduct by contract worker David Kwiatkowski, who is accused of exposing hundreds of Maryland patients to hepatitis C. State investigators divulged the information in a report about Kwiatkowski's time in Maryland working at four hospitals from 2008 to 2010. Kwiatkowski is accused of stealing narcotics-filled syringes and filling them with saline to be used on patients in several states.

Having been present at the revolution, I can tell you: The outcome was far from certain at the time. What revolution am I talking about? The revolution in men's magazines that has seen upstart British import Maxim surge to the top of the category with a circulation of 1.6 million and growing, leaving big-name men's titles Esquire and GQ reeling, and actually killing off P.O.V., Icon and (at least temporarily) Details. Meanwhile, would-be Maxims including Gear and British rival FHM have opened for business, along with Stuff, a Maxim spin-off aimed at a slightly younger demographic.

Today is the first Giving Tuesday, a national event that encourages charitable donations and hopes to become as popular as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. GiveCorps.com is a Baltimore nonprofit crowdfunding program that is helping donors to maximize their giving today through a matching program. It has more than 50 Baltimore nonprofits trying to raise money on its site . These nonprofits include Real Food Farm, Maryland SPCA, Living Classrooms Foundation, Child First Authority and Athletes Serving Athletes.

JUST WHEN we're starting to get used to shopping on the Web, along comes a mystery crook, "Maxim," to remind us that life isn't safe. And it's not only Web shoppers who have to worry. So does everyone who uses a credit card. Maxim is a cyberthief, possibly in Eastern Europe. He claims to have stolen more than 300,000 credit-card files from an online music retailer called CD Universe. He demanded that CD Universe pay $100,000 for him to destroy his copy of the files. When the company refused, he started posting customers' names, addresses and credit-card numbers on the Web. Maxim's site has been closed.

RETIREMENT IS sweet for Edwin Maxim. The 78-year-old Davidsonville resident and his wife, June, love their five children and 10 grandchildren, and their life enriched with good friendships. Their yard is alive with chickens and geese, and flowers and songbirds. And then there's the motorcycle. Maxim's pride and joy is a two-tone teal, Honda Gold Wing 1500. From Canada to Mexico, the bike has carried him through beautiful countryside and great adventures. The motorcycle, which Maxim has owned since 1993, is a gadget-lover's dream come true.

The Coppola family, which helms Pasticcio Italian Kitchen, has clearly taken to heart that business maxim about location, location, location. The first Pasticcio, which opened about two years ago, is in a beautiful historic building in Glen Arm. And the second, which opened in January, is in the Can Company, the former can factory that now hosts super-trendy stores and restaurants. Poor:]

People in glass houses throw stones -- Political maxim, circa 1998.Don't forget, Linda R. Tripp is still a public affairs specialist with top-secret clearance.Wall Street's good news: The crisis of brokerage computers' inability to read a 10,000 Dow-Jones average is postponed.When a Hopkins physician made a house call, it was page one news in yesterday's New York Times.Pub Date: 9/25/98

Who knows the mystery of the winter heart? Not even Claude Sautet, the gifted French filmmaker who explores its hurtfulness in "Un Coeur en Hiver," his exquisite new film opening today at the Rotunda.The winter heart belongs to Stephane, played by the great Daniel Auteuil. Stephane is a craftsman of extraordinary skill, a world-class luthier: He fixes broken violins. Not just any violins, either, but those mournful vessels of aged resonance and mahogany echo that only the truly great violinists can master.

Sin is back big-time.That's the message of the new wave of magazines for twentysomethings swamping newsstands and the mails, especially the magazines for young men.Esquire, GQ and Details -- and geezer titles that purvey young flesh, like Playboy and Penthouse -- are being forced to share an increasingly crowded field. There's David (son of designer Ralph) Lauren's Swing, Times Mirror Corp.'s new boys and toys title Verge, Bob Guccione Jr.'s anticipated version of Italian men's mag Max, and British publisher Felix Dennis' new guy book Maxim.

A patient believed to have contracted hepatitis C from a rogue medical worker has sued Columbia-based Maxim Staffing Solutions Inc. for failing to report the traveling technician to legal authorities even though the company knew he had stolen narcotics and put patients at risk. The lawsuit, filed by Kansas resident Linda Ficken and her husband, William, says that Maxim was one of three medical institutions that enabled worker David Kwiatkowski's illicit behavior. The institutions' inaction allowed him to repeat his behavior for four more years at hospitals around the country, where he came in contact with thousands of patients, the lawsuit claims.

The preliminary approval of an extension and increase in Baltimore's bottle tax is a welcome sign that the city is committed to addressing one of the most significant long-term drains on its vitality: a system of decrepit school buildings desperately in need of renovation, modernization and replacement. But as important a step as the City Council is taking, it must not be the last one for the city. The bottle tax by itself is expected to raise about $10 million a year - a pittance compared to the system's estimated $2.8 billion in needs.

I am a proud product of the Baltimore City public school system. My high school years at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute prepared me exceptionally well for the rigorous academic studies that led to a career in medicine, health policy and economics, and now higher education. Unfortunately, my education in Baltimore during the 1970s contrasts sharply with the experience of many urban students across America who are mired in underperforming K-12 school systems that poorly prepare them for higher education and the world of opportunities beyond.

Most of us know some basics about Social Security. We understand retirees can start taking retirement benefits at age 62. We realize we'll get a bigger monthly check if we wait a few years more until our normal retirement age to tap benefits. And who hasn't heard that Social Security has a long-term financial problem that Congress needs to address? "When you scratch beyond the surface, the knowledge really plummets," says Jean Setzfand, vice president of financial security for AARP, which recently polled older adults on their Social Security knowledge.

When Maxim Healthcare Services settled one of the government's largest-ever medical fraud cases last week, the Medicaid and Veterans Affairs contractor agreed to pay $150 million and implement a host of corporate reforms. But Maxim, a Columbia-based home health and medical staffing company founded by Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, avoided the penalty that would have the biggest impact on its bottom line: disbarment from federal health care programs. That's the case with nearly all of the companies ever charged with cheating government programs — including thousands of health care companies that are defendants in most of the cases and that settled civil charges for a record $2.5 billion in the 2010 fiscal year.

Something didn't look right. Maxim Healthcare nurses were showing up at Richard West's house according to one schedule. But Maxim was billing the government according to another. West complained to the state: The company was charging for hundreds of hours of work it never did. Officials blew him off, he said. He alerted Medicaid, the state and federal program that paid for his care. Nothing happened. He told a social worker. She expressed concern, but did nothing. But West, a Vietnam vet with muscular dystrophy, kept pushing and pushing, building a giant, accusatory snowball that landed last week — eight years later — on Maxim's Columbia headquarters.

Shut the libraries. The City That Reads can do it on the benches.What good is democracy if people only vote wrong? -- (Algerian military maxim.)South Africa's army drafts whites but not blacks. No one can decide who should be angrier about it.Bush is home from Japan and if his polls don't improve, he will return and denounce them again.They call it a Super Bowl, when it is between two towns that don't even have Major League baseball.

With her story Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier the novelist had some definite advantages over Daphne du Maurier the playwright. For starters, the setting for this suspenseful tale of a tenuous present overwhelmed by a painful past is Manderley, an estate on England's fog-shrouded southwestern edge - and what novelist could resist embellishing her plot with evocative descriptions a playwright could only envy? But du Maurier's play, penned 10 years after the novel was published in 1930, isn't slouchy as the folks at Colonial Players of Annapolis proved Friday evening when Rebecca opened at Colonial's intimate, state-of-the-art theater off State Circle.

A Columbia-based health care firm has agreed to a $150 million settlement with the federal government and 43 states to resolve criminal and civil charges that it submitted claims for millions of dollars of work that it did not perform and operated offices that were not properly licensed, officials said Monday. A five-year federal investigation found that Maxim Healthcare Services Inc., one of the country's largest providers of home healthcare services, submitted $61 million in false claims for services to the federal government's Medicaid and Veterans Affairs health programs over an 11-year period from 1998 to 2009.

So,it sounds like there's a respite in store for those who have been struggling with rising gas prices , according to Mike Dresser over at Getting There. While the average price around the state has exceeded $4 a gallon, it's not expected to stay there, Dresser reported. Whether it will drop by Memorial Day remains to be seen, but hopefully this summer won't be as painful for drivers as it has been in the past. But regardless of whether gas prices are over or under $4 per gallon, it makes good fiscal sense to improve the fuel economy of our vehicles.