Breaking down the problems at Grady Hospital into broad strokes you have several problems including: a lack of oversight, a consistent pattern of conflict of interest (for instance Robert Brown, then prominent board member awarded his own architecture firm a lucrative contract), retaliation against whistleblowers and a lack of protection for whistleblowers (for instance whistleblower Joyce Harris was the only one to loser her job as a result of the Charles Walker fiasco), and a lack of accountability on the part of Grady Hospital and its partners. (for instance Emory University gets paid a lump yearly sum to staff Grady and that sum has no contingencies) Keep these things in mind as I analyze the two laws that just moved through the Georgia Senate.
The first bill, S.R. 722, would create a Senate Oversight Committee over Grady Hospital. The second bill, SB 353, would prohibit an individual from serving on a hospital authority board if that individual or any immediate family member of that individual were an employee or contractor of the public hospital or an employee, director, or contractor of a major vendor of the public hospital.
Now, if you are veteran of my work on this story, these two bills should sound familiar. That's because these two ideas were two of several pillars that were part of my own recommendations for fixing Grady. (Of course, when I say my own, I really mean those that my colleagues made as suggestions) Here is what I said about an oversight committee...
Grady also needs to be held accountable, so money will be given in tiers. The state legislature will choose a committee to oversee upgrades in infrastructure, and money will only be given if standards are met.The Grady Board, currently chosen by the Dekalb County CEO (currently Vernon Jones), needs to be elected and it must be split up by districts so that it evenly represents the folks currently treated by Grady Hospital. This board, which would serve four year terms, would be in charge of hiring and firing the Grady CEO.Here is what I said about eliminating a conflict of interest...
Grady would develop a new position called the Office of Conflict Interest. Each transaction, each finance, each so called deal, would be scoured by this office to make sure that say a board member's architecture firm isn't getting the deal because the owner is on the board. I believe there are many such deals like the one I refer to with Robert Brown and the addition his company got, and that can't happen. This hospital didn't just find itself in financial crisis for no reason. It got there because its financial dealings were corrupted. This office would be in charge of making sure every deal was on the level.
I doubt this is a coincidence and I suspect that many of the same people that have my ear have also made their concerns known to Shafer. None of these folks will be found on the board of Grady, its hierarchy, or in the Grady Task Force. Many of them were run out of Grady by the same folks that corrupted it in the first place.
Meanwhile, the Fulton County Board approved a plan to privatize Grady's board. Now, no one that supports the privatization of Grady has ever explained why or how it will help the situation.I firmly believe that the Grady Task Force has been currupted and that it is NOT looking out for the best interests of the hospital. Furthermore, I believe that the privatization plan is nothing more than an attempt to make Grady even more corruptable.
Of course, the readers can judge for themselves. Compare the two bills brought up by Shafer to the privatization plan and see for yourself which one will have a positive effect on Grady and which one will have a nebulous one.
Epilogue:
The Grady story has many twists and turns, and if you catch it in the middle you are likely to get lost. As such, I have developed this summary to help everyone understand how this hospital got to the brink of disaster.
1 comment:
Well Mike.
That's a suprise. Although you attribute Grady's problems to dirty pool on the Board you do not think the solution is the 501(c)(3).
I agree that there has been misuse of Grady's funds. Indeed, large amounts of monies misused in the past ought to be reclaimed through litigation or whatever, perhaps taking some of those folks out and shooting them.
But the truth of the matter is it is not possible to run a hospital caring largely for the poor, the indigent, and now a large and growing larger group of middle class people who are being priced out of health insurance.
If one looks at New York City, with 11 main hospitals and umpteen outlying clinics that feed those hospitals, or the entire NY State for that matter, large amounts of State funding go into those hospital systems.
Just like water works, transport; whatever services proved unable to exist without state funding, Safety Net hospitals can only exist with State funding input in sufficent amounts to keep those hospitals, Grady is just one, in business.
The safety net hospital in Savannah, whose name I cannot immediatly recall, underwent the change to a 501(c)(3). For 2007 alone it is in the hole for 30 millions and it is a much smaller hospital than Grady with a smaller pool of desparately poor.
It is proposed, but possibly blocked by the new legislation, that the 501 Board Chair be Georgia Pacific ex-CEO Pete Correll who, talk about conflict, is a member of Emory Universities Medical Advisory Board.
In an interview with the LA Times, Jenny Jarvis for her The Nation column, November 26, 2007 Jarvis writes 'While any board "would be very hesitant to cut services in order to survive," Correll said, it also had to confront the question "How do we decide what is a reasonable level of health."
I wonder if any of Emory Medicals patients are aware that a member of their hospitals Medical Advisory Board considers he has the right to decide when the cost of maintaining their life is too much?
Your readers will of course remember that Emory is the main provider of medical staff, along with Morehouse Medical School.
That is being concealed or denied by Correll, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce who are pushing him for that position. That is exactly what the 501 is supposed to eliminate underlying once again the probelm is state financing, given which corruption will get its time to be dealt with.
Even better is the rumored source of the 200 mil being put forward to help Grady, i.e., The Woodruff Foundation (WF) whose own Board is intimately interwoven and interlocked with Emory and Emory Medical.
Trustee Charles B. Ginden is Emory Foundation Trustee Secretary.
Trustee Wilton D. Looney is involved wit Emory Health Care's Carlyke Fraser Heart Center.
Trustee Charles H. McTier is an Emory Foundation Trustee.
The list goes on.
In terms of integrity, if the rumor is true, is it appropriate for such a foundation's trustees to hijack their foundation's funds to benefit an entity, Emory, whose own endowment funds are three times as large as the Woodruff Foundation's, nearly six billion dollars.
Something smells in Denmark and it ain't the fish.
Now, everybody is being presented with the argument that their are only two choices, i.e., let Grady fail,or take the two hundred mil deal and "Save Grady" which without additional major ongoing funding won't happen.
The fallacy here is that there were or are only two choices.
The third choice, which Emory has assiduously kept from their own students who dutifully and fearfully, after seeing what happened to Doctors Murtagh and Newcom for whistle blowing, chant the mantra, there are only two choices take the deal or fail; instead of the third choice, organize all of Emory's and Morehouse students, organize the patients of Grady, help unionize and organize Grady's employees and staff, themselves and their medical teachers and instructors and Grady doctors join a doctors union (There are two extant, units of AFSCME and of the SEIU, and having done all that, (Leaving cover for patients) line up the buses and take all to the Govenors mansion for a picnic on the lawn and refuse to leave unitil he pony's up the needed funds which he has in hand, and advocate state wide for State funding for all the State's Safety Net Hospitals.
The con is the usual. Tell everybody there are only two choices (Like the three in the shell game where the pea is in hand, not under any shell) and thus divert them from the third choice, organizing and taking self action to force the hand of government as opposed to Perdue's dancing and praying for rain onthe street.
Jack Jersawitz
404-892-1238
bigjackjj@yahoo.com
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