Hospital absorbed mayor's room fees

Brigham and Women's Hospital wrote off more than $5,000 in room fees accumulated by Mayor Thomas M. Menino for stays in the hospital's deluxe, private unit in 2003 and 2004, according to Menino and the hospital's spokesman.

Menino spent a total of seven days in a suite at the hospital's Shapiro Pavilion -- where such rooms cost as much as $800 per night above insurance -- during his two stays at the hospital last year for stomach ailments and one stay in 2003 for removal of a cancerous growth in his back, hospital officials said.

Brigham and Women's spokesman Peter D. Brown said the hospital had not billed Menino for his time in the pavilion because doctors determined that his recuperation required more security and privacy than he could obtain in a regular hospital unit. During the one day he stayed in a private room in an open unit in July 2003, Menino received so many unannounced visitors and well-wishers that the visits cut into his rest, and impaired the privacy of other nearby patients, said Brown, the hospital's vice president for Public Affairs and Communications.

''We have an obligation [under federal law] to maintain the needed level of privacy and security for all of our patients, and that was the reason for moving the mayor . . . and assuming the cost of that move," Brown said.

Menino, in an interview, said he had not requested the special accommodations, and assumed the hospital had swallowed any extra costs as a ''courtesy" to him. He said that he would make good on any unpaid charges if it were shown that it was improper for him to have stayed in the room for free.

The mayor did not report the waived charges as a gift on his financial disclosure form. The city's corporation counsel has advised him that the upgrade to the pavilion room was not a gift because it was a medical decision made by the hospital, and nothing he sought. Also, two legal specialists on the state's conflict of interest law told the Globe they do not believe Menino violated any ethical provision by accepting the free room.

Brown declined to say exactly how much Brigham and Women's wrote off for Menino, saying the hospital never generated a bill for the mayor's extra room charges. But he confirmed that rooms in the Shapiro Pavilion carry a premium of $250 to $800 a day over insurance rates, depending on the size of the room, and that Menino had stayed in one of the larger rooms during his seven days in the unit. The customary charge for those rooms is at the upper end of the pavilion's price range, Brown said, and seven days at that rate would exceed $5,000.

The pavilion is a 14-room private floor with amenities the hospital touts as akin to a high-end hotel -- a dedicated chef, wood paneling, and sweeping views of Jamaica Pond. The extra cost of staying in the pavilion is not covered by insurance because it is considered an ''added value" to an ordinary hospital visit, Brown said. Since the pavilion opened in September 2001, two other political figures, whom Brown declined to identify, have been accommodated there, for the same privacy and security reasons as Menino, Brown said. Neither was billed for their stays, he said.

Brigham and Women's is not the only local hospital to maintain a VIP ward for patients seeking a measure of indulgence during their recuperation. At Massachusetts General Hospital, patients willing to spend an extra $345 a day may occupy one of the 59 rooms in the hospital's Phillips House. Dr. Britain W. Nicholson, MGH's chief medical officer, said the hospital has occasionally written off the extra charges for political figures who need extra security and privacy as they recuperate.

Menino told the Globe he had not asked for the transfer to a pavilion room at Brigham and Women's, but had gone along with it after hospital staff explained to him that his recuperation was being impeded by the extra flow of visitors to his room in the open unit.

Menino said that he would willingly amend his disclosure forms to include the hospital's payments or repay the hospital for the charges, if the waived charges were determined to be gifts under the state conflict of interest law or under ethics guidelines issued by the city's Office of Human Services that require reporting of all gifts of more than $100 in value.

''Would I repay them? Sure. If there was a problem, I'd do it," Menino said. He reported receiving no gifts in the financial disclosure forms he filed for 2003 and 2004.

Merita A. Hopkins, Menino's chief of staff and corporate counsel, said she did not believe the hospital's room charge waivers were gifts that must be repaid or reported. ''This was a decision that the hospital made based on the best medical care needed for a patient," Hopkins said. ''It was not a benefit that he requested."

In defining a gift, however, the city's ethics handbook does not limit reportable gifts to those that are solicited. Instead, in its instructions for completing the financial disclosure statements, the handbook states a gift is made ''whenever full value is not returned for what is received." It may include any payment, entertainment, subscription, or ''anything of value unless consideration of equal or greater value is given in exchange for it," according to the handbook. The city's guidelines do not specify any penalty beyond ''progressive discipline up to and including dismissal" for failure to comply with the disclosure requirements.

The Massachusetts Conflict of Interest Law also prohibits municipal officials from accepting any gifts in excess of $50 that are given to influence a future official action or reward a past one. In 2003 and 2004, Brigham and Women's sought city approvals for a $315 million expansion project in the Longwood medical district, which the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved in January. However, for the statute, which contains criminal penalties, to apply, the gift has to be given or received with the intention of inducing the approval of the official who makes the specific decision pending before the city.

George D. Brown, former chairman of the Massachusetts Ethics Commission and a professor at Boston College Law School, said that because Brigham and Women's had written off added charges for pavilion rooms for other political figures, he is inclined to accept the hospital's position.

Carl Valvo, a private lawyer who specializes in state ethics cases, said that since the decision to move Menino to the pavilion had been made by medical staff at the hospital -- and not the hospital administration -- he believed there would be no violation of the conflict of interest law.

Menino was adamant that there was no connection between the hospital's paying for his stay at the pavilion and the then-pending approvals for the expansion project. ''It was never a consideration. The hospital has too much prestige, integrity to think about it, and I would never consider it. They never got preferential treatment from me or anyone else in this administration."

Liz Kowalczyk of the Globe staff contributed to this article. Stephen Kurkjian can be reached at kurkjian@globe.com.