PPE. In February 2022 cleaners at HCA's London Bridge Hospital launched a campaign calling for living wages, fair treatment, provision of PPE and an end to the bullying and overwork culture at the hospital. In March 2022, the North Carolina Department of Justice notified the Mission Health System, an HCA system in Asheville NC, that it was “extremely concerned” about ongoing citizen complaints over high prices, lack of transparency, anti-competitive behavior, chronic under-staffing, and declining quality of care at HCA-managed medical facilities in western North Carolina. In April 2022 Corporate Watch collated a list of HCA scandals and controversies in the USA and UK including privatisation lobbying, discrimination employment tribunals, complaints from workers, and fraud. Physicians at HCA Bayonet Point allege that cost-cutting by HCA executives has made the hospital an unsafe environment for patients. In January 2022, there were 18 near misses among patients about to undergo surgery. In 2021, HCA executives cut the number of full-time anesthesiologists from 15 to 1. Doctors have noted unsanitary conditions, such as cockroaches in the operating room. Legal liabilities In 1993, lawsuits were filed against HCA by former employees who alleged that the company had engaged in questionable Medicare billing practices. In 1997, with a federal investigation by the FBI, the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services in its early stages, the Columbia/HCA board of directors forced Rick Scott to resign as chairman and CEO amid growing evidence that the company "had kept two sets of books, one to show the government and one with actual expenses listed." Thomas Frist, a co-founder of HCA and brother of U.S. Senator Bill Frist, returned to the company as CEO in 1997 and called on longtime friend and colleague Jack O. Bovender, Jr. to help him turn the company around. The federal probe culminated in 2003 with "the government receiving a total of over $2 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties for systematically defrauding federal health care programs." Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and admitted to systematically overcharging the government. The federal probe has been referred to as the longest and costliest investigation for health-care fraud in U.S. history. 2005 insider trading suit In July 2005, U.S. Senator Bill Frist sold all of his HCA shares, which were held in a blind trust, two weeks before disappointing earnings sent the stock on a 9-point plunge. At the time, Frist was