"Watching My Father Die Now"

Earlier in the summer, Grady Hospital announced that come September the hospital would be closing down their dialysis unit.

Grady Health System officials on Monday, July 13, 2009, set in motion a series of steps that could lead to a change in how Grady delivers dialysis treatment.

Officials also announced the merger of two neighborhood health clinics in order to maximize efficiency and save money.

Grady Hospital is in a perpetual state of financial dire straits. This past summer is its latest reincarnation. There was a report earlier that Medicare overpayments are coming due and Grady owes the government about $20 million from prior Medicare overpayments. (that's not illegal but rather an accounting trick. The hospital collected too much up front and the bill is now due)

Grady Hospital is one of the world's largest hospitals in the world. It's one of the five biggest hospitals in all the U.S. It is primarily for the poor, Medicare, Medicaid, and undocumented/illegals in the area of Atlanta. In such a hospital, dialysis is one of the most difficult parts of medicine to maintain. That's because dialysis is extremely expensive. It can run north of $20,000 a year. Yet, Grady serves the poor. Many of those have no insurance. Even those with insurance are unlikely to have the sort of insurance that will allow Grady to keep this profitable.

So, cutting off dialysis in a time of dire financial straits. There's two things that raise my eyebrows. First, Grady is always in a period of financial straits but kept this division open. Second, I documented a history of systemic corruption at Grady Hospital. I don't have the sources I used to on that story, however, I have seen absolutely no evidence that the systemic corruption that occurred at Grady Hospital has been fixed. Neil Shulman , a professor at Emory University who's been following this particular situation closely, told me that he believed that most of the corruption has in fact been cleaned up in the last year or so.

For most people, this issue doesn't affect them. All those on insurance will be referred to another hospital in the area. There are, however, about 60 people that are either undocument/illegal that are facing death if this goes into effect. Grady told those folks that other arrangements will be made. Yet, those arrangements include a list of dialysis centers in the area. Of course, these folks have no insurance and so that will do them little good. Grady is also willing to buy these folks plane tickets to go home and get dialysis there. One lady was offered a ticket back to Honduras however her village has no dialysis.

There was recently a meeting about this sponsored by the Grady Coalition. I spoke earlier today with another Emory University professor, Doug Bremner. He attended the meeting. Here's the most poignant story he heard at that meeting.

Another social worker said she was working with a man who was a legal immigrant from Ethiopia but had lived in Georgia only three years, five years short of the time required to qualify for Medicaid. He had a social security number but hadn’t paid into it enough to qualify for Medicare. He was also on dialysis and was on the list of those who were being cut off.

His daughter asked, “So am I supposed to watch my father die now?”

It's important to note that the individual that is facing having their dialysis cut off is here legally. They have only been in Georgia for three years, however. In Georgia, you need residency for five years and then you qualify for Medicaid. As such, they have no insurance and so they will have no place to get dialysis if this goes through.

Grady is due to close its dialysis center later in the month. If nothing happens between now and then, about sixty people will be facing their dialysis treatment being cut off. Right now, legendary local retired surgeon, Elbert Tuttle, has been calling to many of the proteges he's created in his years to see if some or all are willing to take these folks on and eat the cost. Right now, however, about sixty lives are in danger and the clock is ticking for them.

This case raises several policy issues and I almost fear some of the feedback of some of my more conservative readers. Those should be debated but as Mr. Shulman told me, "there are sixty people about to die and we need to fix that first".

Emory University in the Crosshairs?

For at least a year now, Emory University has been the subject of two separate though similar investigations. The first focused on Dr. Charles Nemeroff. Nemeroff, for more than two decades, took money from drug makers while working on making examinations of drugs from the drugmakers that were paying him. He failed, systematically, to disclose the conflicts of interest that these mixed relationships created to the public. He rarely disclosed it when he published articles that spoke favorably in articles that analyzed said drugs in medical journals. Nemeroff gained a reputation in the early 1980's and used that reputation to corrupt the system. The payoffs would up in the millions. The administration at Emory were lax in their controls and then tried to cover up the corruption when it began to surface. The second investigation is on Dr. Stowe who also did something similar also at Emory University.

I can confirm that both investigations are still open, and I can also confirm that the committee knows that both these investigations are the tip of the ice berg. I can also confirm that at least two sources I have spoken with also spoke to the committee. That means that the committee is aware of all of the criminality I have covered.

Emory provides about 90% of the staff at Atlanta's Grady Hospital. Grady, in turn, is one of the biggest hospitals in the world and it serves, primarily, the indigent community in the Atlanta metro area. The hospital has been mired in an endless stream of financial difficulties and corruption. The committee has its sights set on much more of the corruption that Emory is involved in than they've investigated so far. As I reported a couple weeks back, Dr. Nemeroff was allowed to roam free because the University was using his reputation in psychiatry to orchestrate negative psychiatric diagnosis of whistle blowers. These bogus diagnoses would lead to ruined reputations which made their charges less powerful.

Grady Hospital has been involved in medicare fraud and has been investigated by both the NIH and HHS. One investigation concluded that...

the conditions at Grady hospital pose an immediate and serious threat to the health and safety of the patients

Keep in mind that the staff at Grady Hospital is overwhelmingly from Emory University. The line between the two is further blurred because often employees move fluidly between the two. For instance, the Chief Medical Officer at the time of the HHS report who's conclusions was so damning is William Casarella. Casarella is currently an Associate Dean and Professor at Emory University. I've also identified at least fifteen whistle blowers that have been paid off and silenced.

Grady and Emory have each been involved in all sorts of complicated and conflicted relationships which have corrupted the hospital for decades. Emory enjoys a very advantageous financial relationship with Grady Hospital while Grady Hospital is always in need of funds, which are often paid by the tax payers. At the same time staff like Cassarella move between the hospital and the university fluidly. More recently, Emory received a $200 million grant from the Woodruff Foundation. The Woodruff Foundation is a well established non profit first founded by former Coke CEO Robert Woodruff which enjoys a very close relationship with the university. (a great deal of the Emory buildings are named after Woodruff as well) Coke makes their headquarters in Atlanta where Emory is also located.

There is overwhelming evidence that patient care at Grady is wholly below par. They were put on notice by JCAHO at the end of 2007, an unprecedented step only done once before. There is overwhelming evidence that Emory professor MDs don't spend time there that they are supposed and often the hospital is run by the medical students with little and no supervision. There's been at least twenty whistle blowers that have come forward. Emory engaged in systematic campaigns to discredit them. During these campaigns professors were targeted including having the psychiatry department issue a diagnosis against the targeted professor that would conclude essentially that the whistle blower was crazy.

Meanwhile, Grady bleeds hundreds of millions in deficits yearly, patient care is totally sub par, and the hospital is old and worn down with elevators broke and their HVAC system being totally outdated.

I've been told be several folks that the only way to have all of this corruption be uncovered is through a Congressional investigation or if it got out of the Georgia court system. (there is even evidence of a corrupt court system) This on going investigation into Emory University may be the confluence of events that will finally unravel all the corruption that continues to go on there. I expect the findings of another investigation to be completed within a year.

The problem with this being such a maze of corruption is that its impossible to predict how an investigation will go. So, while I firmly believe that Senate Finance Committee is aware of exactly just how much corruption there is going on at Emory University, it's impossible to predict how quickly all of it will be unraveled.

Dr. Agwunobi Then and Now

This story appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

In a “body blow” to efforts to save the cash-strapped Grady Health System, the facility must pay $20 million to the state due to Medicaid overpayments made to the center years ago, officials said.

Grady CEO Michael Young said the hospital is paying for desperate decisions made by his predecessors. He said Grady officials in 2004 and 2005 aggressively maximized the amount of Medicaid they received, leaving the current regime to pay back the extra millions.

“They were kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Young said. “They took their money when they could ... and now it’s become someone else’s challenge.

This article is talking about Medicare billing and manipulation at Grady Hospital. Back in 2004-2005, the powers that be at the hospital maximized the billing on Medicare. This was all done within the confines of the law. In fact, all the hospital did was take too much up front with the agreement to pay later. Later is now.

This may seem harmless but it's actually a very effective way to pervert the current financial condition of a hospital and then leave before its true nature is realized. That's exactly what current Grady CEO Michael Young was complaining about. He was complaining that his predecessors had created this scheme leaving him with the bill. In fact, the CEO running Grady Hospital in 2004-2005 was perverting the financial health of the hospital. He was charging Medicare the maximum which created inflated earnings. The credit back from the hospital wouldn't happen for years. As such, the budget could look good during their term and they could high tail out of there before the bill came due. In a sense, that's what the CEO during this period did.

Who was that CEO? It was Dr. Andrew Agwunobi. I've recently tracked Dr. Agwunobi to Providence Health Care in Eastern Washington State. His first official act as CEO of that region was to send an organization wide email that warned staff that cuts were imminent.

We as a system have experienced significant investment losses; the state budget cuts to hospitals and health care will be drastic; and, in keeping with our Mission, it is inevitable that we will treat many more uninsured and under insured individuals in the months ahead. What you may not be aware of is that Providence Health Care is already experiencing significant financial challenges year-to-date in 2009. At this point, we are $9 million behind budget and this gap is increasing monthly. The economic recession is part of the cause, but we also have some productivity and expense overruns that have contributed to our poor financial performance.

As such, in addition to curtailing as many non-mission critical expenses as possible, we have made the difficult decision to implement some level of staff reductions in the Spokane hospitals during the months of April and May. As a faith-based organization, we consider any action that impacts our employees as an extremely serious step and, therefore, a great deal of work is being done to ensure that we minimize the number of people who will be directly affected. At this point we do not know how many staff will be impacted, but we will keep you informed as our internal analysis and that of the Wellspring consultants continues.

He's proclaiming the hospital is strapped for cash and unable to afford the current staff load despite the fact that the hospital system sits on nearly $2 billion worth of bonds. Dr. Agwunobi's tenure at Grady Hospital ended when an HHS report concluded that

Grady presents an immediate and serious threat to the health and safety of the patients

Now, we find out that on top of that he was also essentially cooking the books to make Grady appear more strong. About two and a half years after he left, Grady Hospital required a bailout of $200 million from the Woodruff Foundation. As such, one could say that Dr. Agwunobi was cooking the books to avoid the inevitable and make sure he was no longer there when it does happen.

Dr. Agwunobi has made it a career, you see, of finding high profile positions and then over staying his welcome very quickly, sometimes a year and less. In between, Grady Hospital and his current role at Providence, he spent a year as COO of St. Joseph's in California, six months on the board of Wellcare, about a year as Secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. His first act as Secretary was to sign onto a raid on his former employer at Well Care. That raid just happened to be a couple months AFTER Agwunobi cashed out a million dollars worth of WellCare options that were part of his package when he left. Those same options were worthless after the raid.

Now, Agwunobi is attempting significant job cuts at a hospital that is financially healthy. Their latest financial statement showed that the system has nearly $2 billion in bonds. They made an operating profit of just more than $300 million last year. There's no logical reason for a hospital to say they need to impose job cuts when they sit on so much in bonds. Keep in mind that Providence is a non profit hospital and so they pay no taxes on any of this money. If a non profit hospital cut staff, even though they were financially viable, and these staff cuts lead to poor patient care, that would violate both the spirit and letter of their commitments in keeping their non profit status.

So, the same CEO that inflated his hospital's revenue in a shameless attempt to mislead the financial health of that hospital five years ago is now cutting staff on a financially viable hospital. Worse yet, the administration at his new hospital, Providence, knows all this, doesn't care, and supports Dr. Agwunobi 100% in his attempt to cut staff now.

Dr. Charles Nemeroff and Emory University's Culture of Corruption

Imagine if a school principal insisted year after year that their school use textbooks made only by one company. even though there were plenty of textbook companies out there. Imagine that this principal defended this company's textbooks and made public statements about how valuable they were in the classroom. Imagine if it is later revealed after more than a decade that while the principal was demanding that this company's textbooks be used at their school the company was paying the principal money to give speeches, advertise for them, and promote their product. Furthermore, it's revealed that the principal didn't even disclose a substantial portion of this income on their taxes. It's not hard to imagine how we would all perceive the principal. Now, imagine if the school board did remove that principal but allowed them to keep another cushy six figure job in the school's administration department even though these revelations came out. In this case, you'd not only determine that the principal was corrupt but you'd also likely conclude that so was the school's entire administration.

For more than a decade, the scenario I just described played out in a much more obscene way between Dr. Charles Nemeroff and Emory University. At the end of last year Senator Chuck Grassley finished an investigation of Dr. Charles Nemeroff. The conclusions were clear. For years, Dr. Nemeroff wrote positive reviews of drugs from companies like Cyberonics, Glaxo Smith Kline, and Pfizer all the while receiving speaking fees, advertising fees, and other gifts of monies from these companies. All toll, Dr. Nemeroff received about $2.6 million. While he wrote all these positive reviews, he never disclosed his financial relationship with these pharmaceutical companies. In other words, while writing about positively about a drug made by Pfizer, Dr. Nemeroff never disclosed that he was receiving money from Pfizer. Furthermore, emails and other correspondences revealed that Emory stonewalled the investigation and mislead the media about their involvement and Dr. Nemeroff's culpability. Finally, and most damning, once Grassley's investigation wrapped, Emory did remove Dr. Nemeroff from head of his department, Psychiatry, but allowed him to stay on as a professor earning six figures. In fact, Grassley uncovered documents that showed that Emory knew about Nemeroff's conflicts for years and did nothing.

The question must be asked, why would Emory allow Dr. Nemeroff to stay on after all this damning evidence was revealed. In the early, 1980's, Dr. Nemeroff earned a reputation in the field of psychopharmocology. He traded on this reputation by getting into bed with the drug companies and getting very wealthy by essentially endorsing their products when he was supposed to be giving objective analysis of them. For at least the last eight years, Emory University knew what he was up to and did nothing. In fact, the only reason that Dr. Nemeroff was even removed as head of the Department is because Grassley's investigation was so damning that they had to do something.

So, the key question is, why did Emory allow all this and why did they keep him on as a professor after all of this was revealed. After all, Dr. Nemeroff is now toxic in his field. He isn't going to get any grants or any money from anyone. He is essentially worthless to the university and his presence only reminds the world of the stain of this scandal.

To understand the answers to these questions, we must put all of this into context. I have written extensively about the scandal at Grady Hospital. That hospital is staffed overwhelmingly by Emory University professors. I stand by my reporting and I believe my series of exposes leave no doubt that Grady Hospital has a systemic culture of corruption in which Emory University plays a critical role. (it is too long to prove in this post so I encourage you to go this link and read all attached links there if you aren't convinced)

I have identified 15 whistle blowers that had psychiatric evaluations done after they blew the whistle on corruption at Grady Hospital. Each and everyone of these evaluations was done by someone at Emory's Psychiatric department. (how's that for INDEPENDENT) That's the department that Dr. Charles Nemeroff ran until late last year. At least four were done by Nemeroff himself though as head of the department he would have been in a position to know and direct each evaluation. Each evaluation painted the whistle blower as having some sort of psychological problem. At least three, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Diane Owens, and Jim Murtagh, were eventually paid off and silenced by Emory University. It goes without saying that a psychiatric evaluation, especially one by someone as respected as Nemeroff was then, would devastate the career of any academic.

The most significant evaluation was done on Dr. Jim Murtagh. That's because for several years Dr. Murtagh was a part of the Conflicts of Interests committee at Emory University. In fact, the conflicts were so obscene and brazen that medical students doing their psychiatry rounds would be shown promotional videos by the likes of Pfizer in which Dr. Nemeroff appeared to pitch whatever drug he happened to be praising at the time. This group discovered the very conflicts that Dr. Nemeroff was later damned by in the Grassley investigation. Furthermore, Dr. Murtagh later blew the whistle on serious corruption at Grady Hospital to the National Institute of Health. After he blew the whistle, Dr. Nemeroff personally evaluated Dr. Murtagh. (talk about an ironic conflict of interest) In fact, this article describes how Dr. Murtagh was ordered to see a psychiatrist that Emory had chosen. The evaluation described Murtagh as unstable and dangerous and as he (Murtaugh) says in the article.

I will never get an academic job again. . . . My life and dreams have been uprooted.

The article goes on to point this out.

Jan Gleason, assistant vice president in Emory's office of communications, said the administration cannot comment on Murtagh's case. She also declined to comment on what procedures the university uses to determine when a mandatory psychiatric examination is warranted, when the administration began using such exams, or how many exams it has ordered. According to an account in the Emory student newspaper, Emory Wheel, in the last three years the administrators ordered five tenured faculty, who were critics of administration policies, to undergo psychiatric examination as a prelude to breaking their tenure and firing them.

We wouldn't know much of this because Dr. Murtagh was silenced, except State Senator David Shafer fought to release the documents related to Murtagh's case because of his own ongoing investigation of corruption at Grady Hospital and Emory University.

So, in fact, Dr. Nemeroff's case is much more than merely a corrupt psychiatrist getting into bed with drug companies. In fact, you could think of Dr. Nemeroff as a hired psychiatric hitman against any threats to Emory. For years, Emory University corrupted Grady Hospital. Whenever a professor stepped forward to blow the whistle, Emory would send in Dr. Nemeroff to call them crazy and thus smear them and thus ruin their reputation. For this, Emory looked the other way while he corrupted his profession. That's why they can't fire him. He knows too much. They're in bed together in the corruption.

The Inside Story of ACORN 8

There is an old saying, "it's not the crime but the cover up". Martha Stewart is a good example. Her initial crime would have likely lead to a somewhat hefty fine had she admitted to it. Because she attempted to cover it up, she wound up going to jail.

The story of the formation of ACORN 8 can be summed up by a new saying, "it's the crime AND the cover up".

In May of 2008, it was first revealed to the board of ACORN that nearly a decade earlier Dale Rathke had embezzled about one million dollars from Citizens Consulting Inc., the financial services arm of ACORN, and Wade Rathke, the long time CEO of ACORN, along with 8 other lieutenants, had covered it up. As such, at the next board meeting, Karen Inman, board member from Minnesota, brought a motion to remove Dale Rathke from the organization as well as remove Wade Rathke from his post as CEO. The motion was seconded by about twenty other board members and motion eventually passed later in the meeting.

Because of the seriousness of the crimes, ACORN also decided to form an investigative committee. The committee was given the duty of investigating the embezzlement and anything related to it, so that such criminality would never happen again. The committee would consist of Ms. Inman, who would focus on legal issues. Marcel Reid , board member from Washington D.C., would focus on the organizational structure of ACORN. Meanwhile, Carol Hemingway would focus on financial issues.

For the next two months, the three ladies began investigating ACORN in order to make sure that any systemic and structural problems were removed. They found all sorts of anecdotal evidence that the organization was involved in much more criminality than simply the embezzlement. For instance, in an email, ACORN's attorney, Steve Bachmann. indicated to Inman that ACORN had been involved in ERISA violations. Bachmann indicated that ACORN employee pension funds were mismananged. Inman also found instances of lesser embezzlement. (between $6000 and $9000) She found instances in which affiliates that were 501 (C)3's were mingling their funds with those that were of other tax structures. (that's a tax violation because 501 (C)3's enjoy special tax protection that other organizations do not) Often, when people within ACORN would reveal past criminality, that admission would be followed by this quote "but that doesn't happen anymore". (which is interestingly enough what Mike Jones, Comptroller of CCI told Inman about the events that lead to another piece of criminality discovered outside this investigation)

Meanwhile, Marcel Reid found evidence that CCI, Citizen's Consulting Inc., was much more than merely the accounting and financial services arm of ACORN. She found evidence that CCI was the financial weigh station of all ACORN funds. Any monies, be it from charities or even government grants, would wind up at CCI first and then be transferred to anyone of several hundred ACORN affiliates. Reid even found evidence of co mingling and misuse of funds. There was again anecdotal evidence that earmarked monies weren't winding up where they were supposed to go. In other words, the government might give millions to fund health care projects in poor neighborhoods but it would wind up funding a media campaign.

What was missing was the financial evidence that would tie all of this together. That evidence lied in the financial statements of ACORN. In fact, Inman believed that a full forensic accounting audit would be necessary to get to the bottom of things. So, Ms. Inman decided to approach Liz Wolff, the Research Director of ACORN to request viewing the books.. When she came to see Wolff, Inman found her door closed. Minutes later, the door opened and walked out Wade Rathke, the same Wade Rathke that was supposedly removed from ACORN only months earlier. After meeting with Inman, Wolff refused to allow her to see ACORN's. books.

At roughly the same time, the board was also made aware that ACORN was about $2 million behind in state and federal taxes. Weeks later, both Karen Inman and Marcel Reid were witnessed to a meeting between the new CEO of ACORN, Bertha Lewis, Maude Hurd, who headed the ACORN board, and Alton Bennett of ACORN Housing. Lewis told the group that she had secured both a loan and a grant from Forest City, a loan of $1.5 million and a grant of $500,000. She wanted their approval to accept the deal. Ms. Hurd expressed reservations because the terms of the loan stated that if it ever fell behind the rate would jump to 18%. To which Bennett pronounced, "if your struggling to pay in any given month, ACORN Housing will make the payment." Hurd ultimately denied the request to allow the loan and instead ordered Lewis to gain approval of the entire board in order to approve the loan. (I chronicle the details of this loan and the backstory of what maybe a quid pro quo here)

Inman and Reid met privately following this exchange. They were very concerned by what they witnessed and they decided to immediately seek a temporary restraining order against destruction of any financial records related to the embezzlement, any communication between Wade and Dale Rathke regarding the embezzlement, and any other records related to the embezzlement. They eventually won this TRO and their lawyer indicated to them that the judge indicated that as BOARD MEMBERS THEY HAD A RIGHT TO SEE ACORN'S BOOKS.

The TRO would cost all sorts of money to maintain, however, and so if Reid and Inman wanted to see the books they would need to get a writ of mandamus. The writ was signed by eight board members, Reid, Inman, Adriana Jones, Fannie Brown, Robert Smith, Ivonne Strattford, and Stephanie Cannady.

Now, things became very contentious between these eight and the rest of ACORN. So, in early October, a negotiating committee was created between these eight and three other members of the board of ACORN. Reid, Inman, and Mobley represented the eight and the rest of ACORN was represented by three other board members including Frank Beatty of Las Vegas and Sonia Merchant of Massachusetts. The two sides met for the better part of a full day. They attempted to hash out their differences. After the meeting, Karen Inman, at least, felt as though real progress was made and she felt that things were heading in the right direction. Instead about two weeks later, they were all removed from the board of ACORN. Since they were no longer on the board, the judges interpretation of the law no longer applied either.

ACORN 8 was officially born. It's since grown and includes many more members than eight. The group is now determined to bring all of ACORN's criminality to light. Carol Hemingway, the individual in charge of investigating the financial portion of ACORN, the part that was missing in putting the pieces together (at least from the perspective of Karen Inman), is now the Treasurer of ACORN.

Whenever, either Reid and Inman, the most prominent members of ACORN 8, are interviewed people like Glenn Beck often dwell on their courage and heroism. I, for one, think that is beside the point. ACORN itself would love nothing more than to have Inman and Reid's heroism be the story. That would make this a human interest story. It isn't a human interest story. The story is very simple. The CEO's brother embezzled a million dollars from the organization. The CEO covered it up. Marcel Reid and Karen Inman were elected to investigate the matter and everything related to it. That's what they did. That was their fiduciary duty. That was their job. There's nothing heroic about doing your job. They did their job. In fact, they did it too well. As such, ACORN removed them from their board positions. You can draw your own conclusions but as my favorite Latin phrase goes, Res Ipsa Loquitor (the facts speak for themselves)

I, however, have a unique perspective to judge these lady's heorism and courage. That's because I have had the privilege of chronicling the stories of whistleblowers all over the country. Kevin Kuritzky brought to light crimes at Atlanta's Grady Hospital and his life has been ruined because of it. Dr. Blake Moore reported on a nurse at his hospital, Williamsburg Regional Hospital, that was acting as an "angel of mercy" and eventually the entire state of South Carolina did all they could to ruin his life. Jim Singer reported on serious malfeasance within Pennsylvania's Department of Child Welfare and he lost his license to practice psychology for more than two decades. Gerard Beloin reported on corruption in roofing contracts at his local high school, Goffstown High School, and he now lives in fear of his life. Dennis Lennox exposed corruption in the hiring of a prestigious Fellow at Central Michigan University and he was nearly expelled from school. Dr. Shirley Pigott attempted to expose corruption at the Texas Medical Board and she's since lost her license to practice medicine. In fact, the main reason I admire Sarah Palin is she was once a whistleblower. Blowing the whistle on corruption in any organization means that you are up against the establishment, a force more powerful than you. There are in fact very few acts more courageous than becoming a whistleblower. For that, these ladies deserve our respect, but their courage shouldn't be what this story is about. The criminality that forced them to become whistleblowers is what this story must be about.

Dr. Andrew Agwunobi Strikes Again II

Nearly two months ago, I featured a story about Dr. Andrew Agwunobi. I have been tracking Dr. Agwunobi for nearly two years and much of it has not been flattering. He's trekked through the medical system and he's recently wound up as the CEO of the Eastern Washington region of the Providence Health Care System. The Providence health care system is a non profit hospital system. That means it enjoys tax exempt status. It also means that there are no shareholders. To earn this tax exempt status the hospital must provide a benefit for the community. Here the law becomes murky because that's something that's difficult to define.



Dr. Agwunobi wasted no time in settling into his new role. Within months, he announced that there would be staff cuts within his portion of the system.

We as a system have experienced significant investment losses; the state budget cuts to hospitals and health care will be drastic; and, in keeping with our Mission, it is inevitable that we will treat many more uninsured and under insured individuals in the months ahead. What you may not be aware of is that Providence Health Care is already experiencing significant financial challenges year-to-date in 2009. At this point, we are $9 million behind budget and this gap is increasing monthly. The economic recession is part of the cause, but we also have some productivity and expense overruns that have contributed to our poor financial performance.

As such, in addition to curtailing as many non-mission critical expenses as possible, we have made the difficult decision to implement some level of staff reductions in the Spokane hospitals during the months of April and May. As a faith-based organization, we consider any action that impacts our employees as an extremely serious step and, therefore, a great deal of work is being done to ensure that we minimize the number of people who will be directly affected. At this point we do not know how many staff will be impacted, but we will keep you informed as our internal analysis and that of the Wellspring consultants continues.

Following my initial report, this was posted the hospital board of Sacred Heart Hospital, (hit download attachment) one of the hospitals Dr. Agwunobi is responsible for. It addressed my previous post as well as my reporting on Dr. Agwunobi in general. The posting in the hospital refers to my reporting as "untrue" and refers to me as a "disgruntled former medical student". I am of course not now nor have I ever been a medical student. (I would agree with the characterization of disgruntled but I would call that a lucky guess) While they characterize my reporting as untrue, the post never refutes any of the specifics in any of my pieces on Dr. Agwunobi. Let's put that to the side for a minute.



Dr. Agwunobi characterizes the region of Providence Health Care that he controls as being in dire financial straits and that's why he will have to make significant staff cuts. According to the financial statements filed by Providence Health Care system itself, the hospital had an operating profit of $288 million year ended December 2008. They carried a net loss but that came mostly from losses on investments (almost exclusively bonds and stocks). Given how poor the equity markets performed in 2008, that was to be expected. Furthermore, the hospital was still sitting on $1.95 BILLION in investments as of December 31, 2008. (page 21 of the financial statement) Does this sound like a hospital in dire financial straits?



This is all not merely semantics. While they were able to carry a loss, exclusively from investments, in 2008, in 2007 they made just over $305 million in net operating profits. Had they been classified as a for profit hospital their tax bill would have been just south of $100 million.



So, the question much be asked. Why is a hospital system that made $288 million in operating profits last year and sitting on just south of $2 billion in investments, in need of cutting staff anywhere. Furthermore, Dr. Agwunobi is playing word games when he proclaims that Providence Health Care is "$9 million behind budget" year to date in his email. While that maybe true, all that means is that they are $9 million behind their projections. It certainly doesn't necessarily mean that they are in dire financial straits. Furthermore, if administration wanted to justify making budget cuts, they could easily set budget projections that couldn't be made in order to use the eventual shortfall as a reason to justify those very cuts.



So, why is a non profit hospital that just made under $300 million on their operations and sitting just under $2 billion just in investments in need of cutting staff? Only those making the cuts can say that. This brings me back to Dr. Agwunobi. This article refers to Dr. Agwunobi as "well travelled". I would say so. Here's a quick rundown of his work history. From 2001 through mid 2003, he was CEO of South Fulton Hospital, a fairly small hospital in Atlanta that treats mostly the poor. He left Fulton to become the CEO of Grady Hospital also in Atlanta. Grady Hospital is one of the largest hospitals in the world and also primarily serves the poor. He stayed there for about a year when he also left. He moved to St. Joseph's in California, a conglomerate of 14 hospitals, and became it's COO. He stayed there for about a year and then left to serve on the board of WellCare. He stayed at WellCare for about six months. He then moved on to head Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). The department within Florida's Department of Health that is primarily responsible for providing health care for the poor. He stayed there for about a year when he moved into his current position at the beginning of 2009. If you're keeping track, that's six high profile jobs on both coasts in about eight years.



There's more. When Dr. Agwunobi first took over at South Fulton, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) issued this report. The report gave South Fulton marginal but passing grades. The first report issued following Dr. Agwunobi's in 2004, however, denied South Fulton its JCAHO accreditation. Following about a year at Grady Hospital , the Department of Health and Human Services also issued a report that concluded that

there is a serious and immediate threat to the health and safety of the patients

at Grady Hospital. Dr. Agwunobi was terminated following this report. He moved to the West Coast to stay as COO of St. Joseph's. He left for reasons not known to me. He moved onto be on the board of WellCare. He stayed on the board for only about six months. He cashed out about a million dollars worth of stock options. Then, he moved onto AHCA where his first move was being one of several state agencies and the FBI to raid his former employer WellCare. Following the raid the price of the stock tanked and made the very same options that Dr. Agwunobi cashed in months earlier then nearly worthless. He stayed on at AHCA for about a year more before arriving at Providence.


Now, he's determined that a NON PROFIT hospital system that routinely makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 million yearly in operating profits, is sitting on nearly $2 billion in investment, is now in such dire financial straits that it needs to cut staff.

Chrysler, GM, the UAW, the President and Myriad of Conflicts of Interest

When I read it this morning, I couldn't believe what I was reading. The whole idea is so corrupt and absurd even a business school class wouldn't study something like this. It's too absurd to imagine being done in real life. The UAW, the United Auto Workers, will now become majority shareholders in Chrysler and significant shareholders in GM. Meanwhile, the U.S. government will become majority shareholders in GM. What Fiat is thinking in merging with Chrysler I can't figure out.

So, the man that only two weeks ago said he had no plans of running an automobile company is now on the brink of becoming the biggest shareholder in GM (that's the president). Meanwhile, the UAW will now represent both the workers and the management. This sort of corrupt conflict of interest is the type of thing I covered in the Grady scandal and Robert Brown, then head of the board of Grady Hospital, rewarded his own architecture firm several sweetheart contracts. Now, we are going to have the same party represent both labor and management. Think about it. We are going to have a government deeply tied to the unions as the majority owner of GM and the unions themselves will be the second biggest owner.

The UAW has been a significant and early supporters of the President. Just think about the dust up created by the ties between Dick Cheney and Halliburton during the Iraq War. Now, we have a president that was supported significantly by a union, and he's in the middle of orchestrating a deal in which the exact same union gains signficant control over two automakers. This is brazen Chicago style corruption and it's right in front of us.

This is the sort of corruption the MSM claimed just about each and everyday the Bush administration was engaged in. Now, it is being done right in front of us and no one is pointing out the obvious. Everyone is looking at this with peculiarity. It isn't peculiar. It's corrupt. This is payback plain and simple. The president rejected an earlier restructuring plan, fired the CEO, and now he's on board with a plan that gives the unions 40% control of the company. The worst part is that this isn't done in some backroom and hidden from the public. He's doing it right in front of everyone. He's brazenly paying off the unions, and he's doing it with a major announcement that the entire press corps can write about. The president is able to do all of this because he knows that the majority of the press corp will pay no attention to the obscene corruption that he is laying out right in front of them.

Dr. Andrew Agwunobi Strikes Again

Providence Health Care is a medical conglomerate that serves states including Washington, Idaho, and Montana. It's system includes about 2500 employees. Last month, the staff received this troubling email.

March 27, 2009

Dear Providence employee,

I am writing to inform you about some difficult decisions that will be made over the next two months to address current financial challenges and to ensure that our Providence ministries in Spokane and Stevens counties can continue to weather this serious economic recession. I know you are aware from previous communications that the financial outlook is challenging.

We as a system have experienced significant investment losses; the state budget cuts to hospitals and health care will be drastic; and, in keeping with our Mission, it is inevitable that we will treat many more uninsured and underinsured individuals in the months ahead. What you may not be aware of is that Providence Health Care is already experiencing significant financial challenges year-to-date in 2009. At this point, we are $9 million behind budget and this gap is increasing monthly. The economic recession is part of the cause, but we also have some productivity and expense overruns that have contributed to our poor financial performance.

As such, in addition to curtailing as many non-mission critical expenses as possible, we have made the difficult decision to implement some level of staff reductions in the Spokane hospitals during the months of April and May. As a faith-based organization, we consider any action that impacts our employees as an extremely serious step and, therefore, a great deal of work is being done to ensure that we minimize the number of people who will be directly affected. At this point we do not know how many staff will be impacted, but we will keep you informed as our internal analysis and that of the Wellspring consultants continues.

We know this news is unsettling for you and your families. Our commitment is to ensure that these changes occur with the deepest concern and compassion for employees. And where possible, we will work diligently to find opportunities within our own or other Providence ministries for those who are affected.

We are also committed to ensuring that throughout this challenging time, we continue to provide the high level of quality and service for which we are known to patients and their families.Through it all, Providence is committed to making the right decisions based on our values of respect, compassion, justice, excellence and stewardship. Our Catholic ministry has been in existence for over 123 years. Throughout our history, we have triumphed over many adversities. We are absolutely confident that we will emerge from these difficult times and will continue to fulfill our Mission for many generations to come.

Respectfully,
Andy Agwunobi

Future correspondence said that staff reductions would number about one tenth of the overall staff. Now, this announcement of dire financial straits would come to surprise to many on the staff for several reasons. First, not but weeks earlier, Elaine Cuture, COO of Providence Sacred Heart Hospital, told a meeting upper staff that the system was making $8 billion yearly and expenses of 9 million dollars weekly (or about half a billion in expenses)

Furthermore, according to their latest financial statement, the Providence system has just over $1.7 billion in investments, including more than $200 million in cash. (page 21) So, it appears that the system shouldn't have any trouble paying their staff. Furthermore, when Agwunobi says that Providence is "$9 million behind budget" all this means is that they are $9 million behind the estimates they set. That certainly doesn't necessarily mean the system is in such dire straits that they need to cut staff.

Now, while lay offs have been announced only a handful of upper managers have actually been laid off. As such, the bulk of nearly 300 people yet to be laid off still haven't been identified. As such, staff morale is low. There is bickering and some back stabbing. Finally, while lay offs have been announced, the system has not yet announced that any services will be cut back. As such, it is entirely possible that the layoffs will create a situation in which the system will simply not have enough staff for all the services. You simply can't have any other situation if you cut staff but not services. Such a situation will put all the patients in danger.

Now, you might be asking why you should care. Unless you work at Providence or are a patient, these events are not that important. What is important is that the person, Dr. Andrew Agwunobi, is allowed to orchestrate these lay offs at all. About a year and a half ago, I wrote a piece about Agwunobi (Dr. Andy as he likes to be called) entitled Why is this Man Working? That was two jobs ago. Since 20001, he has had no less than six jobs on both coasts in four different cities. Make no mistake, Dr. Agwunobi wasn't just upwardly mobile. He has been in a position of CEO or board director in each of these positions.

In 20001, he took over as CEO of South Fulton Hospital in Atlanta. This is a 75 bed hospital that primarily serves the poor. When he took over, JCAHO, the organization that oversees hospitals, gave a marginal but passing grade to South Fulton. Dr. Agwunobi left South Fulton in 2003 and a couple months later JCAHO failed South Fulton and placed it on probation. Of course, it was up to successors to clean up the mess he started. He then moved onto Grady Hospital. About a year later, CMS, a division of Health and Human Services, issued a report on Grady Hospital and its conclusion was

Grady presents an immediate and serious threat to the health and safety of the patients

In the aftermath of this report, he was removed as CEO. He then became the COO of St. Joseph's medical center in California. He lasted there about a year, and then moved to Florida to become a board member of Wellcare. (another health care system and this was located in Florida) He stayed at Wellcare for six months, cashed out about a million dollars worth of stock options, and moved onto head the AHCA (a government agency in Florida's Department of Health). His first move as head of AHCA was to investigate none other than Well Care. His department partnered with about ten government agencies to raid the offices of Well Care. Immediately following the raids, the stock of Well Care plummetted. He stayed head of AHCA for about a year until the heat of the clear conflict of interest of raiding his former employer finally caused him to resign (though local news claimed he was looking to spend more time with his family) Now, he has spent the last six months as CEO of Providence.

Now, try and connect the dots. We have an incompetent and a corrupt individual. Everywhere he has been has ended in disaster. South Fulton took several years to get out from under the probation slapped on it in the aftermath of Agwunobi's reign. Grady was nearly shut down at the end of 2007 by JCAHO. Wellcare no longer exists in nearly any form. What do you think will happen to Providence Health Systems. We have an indivdual claiming that the system is in dire financial straits even though all the evidence says otherwise. There's no way to verify what he is saying. Unless he augments his plan, he will create an understaffed hospital that will simply be a danger to the patients, much like the situation he lead at Grady Hospital.

The real story is NOT the situation materializing at Providence. Anyone who has followed his career could predict this. Furthermore, the over under is another nine months before he moves onto continue his reign of terror elsewhere, likely the East coast since that's the pattern forming now. The real story is how the board of Providence could hire this guy in the face of such overwhelming evidence that he is nothing less than a menace to any entity that gets near him. Isn't it their fiduciary duty to conduct the sort of research I just did? I asked how he could still be working and since two more employers gave him employment. How much more damage will he do to the nation's health care system before people finally say enough is enough.

The Sociopathic Politician

The other evening over at a friend's house, he had that day's Wall Street Journal. On the front page was yet another story about Rod Blagojevich. In our discussion of Blagojevich, I referred to him as a textbook case of a Sociopath...

defined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: "The essential feature for the diagnosis is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood."[1] Deceit and manipulation are considered essential features of the disorder. Therefore, it is essential in making the diagnosis to collect material from sources other than the individual being diagnosed.

In a matter of fact tone, my friend said that he felt all politicians were Sociopaths. While this maybe an overstatement, in many ways politics breeds Sociopaths. First, a politician's job is ultimately to get re elected. The art of getting re elected is ultimately as selfish a process as they get. You aren't ever necessarily doing what's right but rather what you think the most people will find suitable, acceptable, or worthy of getting their vote next time. Politicians make decisions almost always based on the politics of a situation not the policy. The politics of any situation is always based on self interest not the interest of the public at large. Such a mindset breeds the sort of selfishness that is inherent in Sociopaths.

Second, politics is in essence all about the accumulation of power. Power is is a zero sum activity. As such, the process of accumulating power involves taking power away from someone else: opponents, citizens, etc. The process of accumulating power is also inherently selfish in a way that breeds Sociopaths. Furthermore, most Sociopaths are not only charming but extremely manipulative and both of those are traits most successful politicians.

The Sociopathic politician with which I am most familiar with is an individual out of Georgia by the name of Vernon Jones. Jones is suspected in six rapes since the mid 1980's. The last of which was described to my by a source I consider very reliable in graphic detail involving a three some gone wrong. This happened Christmas a few years back.

Jones, for many years, was CEO of DeKalb County in Georgia. He used this position to get inside information on many land deals that became profitable for himself. In his role as CEO of DeKalb County, he was also responsible for choosing the members of the board of Grady Hospital. He made Robert Brown head of the board for several years. Brown then used Grady on multiple occasions as piggy bank directing business from Grady to the architecture firm he owned. Meanwhile, Grady has gone through multiple bouts of financial dire straits while members of the board, like Brown, have seen enormous wealth for themselves.

Jones also oversaw one of the most corrupt police departments in the country, the Dekalb County Police Department. In 2001, while he was CEO of DeKalb County, Sheriff Elect Derwin Brown was murdered by the outgoing Sheriff Syd Dorsey. This was the culmination of decades of corruption at the DeKalb County Police Department including nearly a decade on his watch. Jones proceeded to install Thomas Brown (no relation), one of his cronies, to replace the deceased Derwin Brown. Thomas Brown proceeded to make nothing more than cosmetic changes to the department. The jail nearly built the penthouse of prisons for Dorsey until that was discovered and broken by an investigative journalist. In 2006, his opponent for CEO of DeKalb County, Ron Marshall, was followed, had unwarranted background checks done, and eventually Marshall mysteriously wound up in the Terror Watch List.

Finally, I believe that Jones is involved in the cover up of the apparent suicide of Charles Hicks using another one of his cronies, Donald Frank, to cover up a homicide. Frank wound up serving as Jones' Homeland Security Director for DeKalb County. He did all of this while he was supposed to be running the County of DeKalb.

The behavior of Blagojevich can also be classified as textbook Sociopathic. Nearly everything he has done while in office has been for self benefit at the expense of the public. All the corruption, bribery, and quid pro quos, have been done in order to gain personal wealth, power, and influence, and all at the expense of the public he has served.

For real horror stories of what terror a Sociopathic politician can breed, we need to look at any despot around the world. Sociopaths like Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein all brought terror to their own people and their neighbors for decades. All of these folks were so consumed by power that anyone that stood in their way was eliminated. Entire populations were subverted, eliminated, or put down in order so that the Sociopathic tyrant could maintain power. My grandfather got a first hand lesson in the terror of a Sociopathic politician. Joseph Stalin put my grandfather into a Siberian gulag for the better part of the next two decades on the eve of WWII. My grandfather's crimes were two 1) he was Jewish and 2)he ran a successful corner store in a small Siberian village. These two things made my grandfather a threat and a target, and Stalin felt the need to eliminate him. My grandfather paid for Stalin's Sociopathy with nearly twenty years of his life.

Everyday, citizens everywhere pay the price for the deeds of Sociopathic politicians. We pay for it with higher taxes. We pay for it with a bureaucracy that looks out for the interests of power brokers rather than the public. We pay for it by having a government full of waste, and one that looks out for special interests rather than the interests of the public at large. We pay for it by having corruption swept under the rug and overlooked. Of course, in the most extreme, citizens pay for it with their loss of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The Sociopathic politician is a cancer to any political system and unfortunately the nature of the beast breeds such an individual. As such, we, the voters, must always be aware of it and be able to identify all Sociopathic politicians. Such a combination has explosive possibilities.

Some Context on the NIH, Charles Nemeroff, Corruption and My Favorite Latin Phrase

According to this Pharmalot article from November of this year, the National Institute for Health recently removed one of its top deputies.

Shortly before the Senate Finance Committee began its probe into conflicts of interest among academic researchers who simultaneously receive NIH grants and pharma fees, Norka Ruiz Bravo, the NIH deputy director for extramural research, maintained the agency couldn’t simply monitor such things.

To wit, she told The New York Times last March that “for us to try to manage directly the conflict-of-interest of an NIH investigator would be not only inappropriate but pretty much impossible.” She added that “I think (the system) is working to the extent that people are being honest and I think most people are honest.”

Since then, of course, she has been proven incorrect. The Senate Finance Commitee has uncovered several alleged examples of high-profile academics who failed to properly disclose industry payments, which is required by law. In a couple of prominent instances, Emory University’s Charles Nemeroff stepped down as psychiatry department chair and Stanford University’s Alan Schatzberg was replaced as the primary investigator on a grant.

The removal of Norka Ruiz Bravo was in relation to the probe by the Senate Finance Committee of Emory University Professor, Charles Nemeroff. The Senate Finance Committee found that for eight years Nemeroff took money from drug companies like Cyberonics, Glaxo Smith Kline, and Pfizer. In exchange for payments and speaking fees, Nemeroff published favorable articles about drugs that these companies were bringing to market in Psychiatry journals (Nemeroff is of course a Professor in Psychiatry). In other words, Nemeroff was, for eight years, bought and paid for by the drug companies. (as an aside he also didn't disclose most of what he earned)

Ms. Ruiz was removed because the NIH had given Nemeroff millions in grants to run OBJECTIVE studies on many of these issues. By failing to find the conflicts, the money was essentially wasted. Ruiz, as the article illustrates, felt that investigating such conflicts of interest was not her duty or responsibility. The NIH disagreed and she was removed.

As for Nemeroff, he recently stepped down as Dean of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He does however continue to maintain his professorship and six figure salary at Emory University. In other words, even though a Senate investigation clearly proves that Nemeroff used his position to corrupt, steal tax payer money, and most of create profit for himself at the expense of his craft, this is not enough for Emory to remove him. Furthermore, Nemeroff has an impressive list of awards and organizational memberships. The list is nearly one hundred and here is a snippet.

Current Editorial BoardsEditorial Board, Regulatory Peptides; Editorial Board, Synapse; Editorial Board, LIfe Sciences; Editorial Board, Advances in Neuropsychiatry and Psychopharmacology ; Editorial Board, Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences; Editorial Board, European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences; Editor-in-Chief, Neuropyschopharmacology; Editorial Board, Harvard Review of Psychiatry; Editorial Board, Psychoneuroendocrinology; Editorial Board, Journal of Psychiatric Research; Associate Editor,

...

Society of the Sigma XI, Society for Neuroscience, American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York Academy of Sciences, International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology, American Society for Neurochemistry, International Society for Neurochemistry, The Endocrine Society

None of these societies and awards have been made aware of his corruption.

Moreover, according to this chain of emails, Dr. Claudia Adkison, a Dean at Emory's Medical School (as such one of Nemeroff's boss' since the college of Psychiatry is in the Medical school) freely admits to subverting the truth to reporters and attempting to sweep the story under the rug. Here are some of the most relevant quotes.

in working on handling the reporter I tried to make this story go away because Emory's name is in the middle of it

....

I am embarrassed and uncomfortable that I write to colleagues around the country to try to defend this when I know all the issues.

One of the recipients of these chain of emails is Dr. Tom Lawley, another Dean of the Medical school. Furthermore, according to other documents, Emory's higher ups, Lawley included, suspected that Nemeroff was being paid off as far back as 2000 and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Neither Lawley nor Adkison have been disciplined in any WAY SHAPE OR FORM for their behavior. They continue to collect salaries estimated to be deep in the six figures. (Emory's tuition can run up to 40k per year for undergrads)

Finally, in 2004, then medical student Kevin Kuritzky was expelled from medical school at Emory University 41 days prior to his graduation. He had recently prior to that been approached and testified to investigators as part of Department of Health and Human Services investigation into poor medical care by Emory staff at both Grady Hospital and the V.A. Hospital. The stated reason for the expulsion was several tardies. Kuritzky continues to have a civil suit against Emory to this day.

My favorite Latin phrase is Res Ipsa Loquitor, the facts speak for themselves. When analyzing corruption, often that's the best way to look at the situation. In this case, the corruption is obvious. Emory's hands are all over it. The NIH had an incompetent employee and the employee was removed. Emory had a corrupt professor and he was merely asked to step down from his position as Dean. All those that looked the other way while he continued to commit this corruption faced absolutely no sanctions. Kuritzky attempted to shed the light on the very same type of corruption and he was dealt with swiftly. Who is corrupt here and how bad is the corruption? Like I said...Res Ipsa Loquitor.

Epilogue: I have recently attempted to make contact with both Lawley and Adkison and neither responded. Here are each of the two emails. First, here is my email to Dr. Adkison.


Dr. Adkison,

My name is Michael Volpe and I am a blogger at http://www.theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/. Recently, I was given the heads up about the on going investigation in the Finance committee of one of your professors, Charles Nemeroff. I wrote this piece last night. http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/12/broken-corrupt-record-of-emory.html

In documents found on the web site related to this investigation in the finance committee is a chain of emails in which you are going back and forth between Dr. Nemeroff and your own superiors. In it, you stipulate that you have been attempting to quash the investigation. You admit that it is difficult to speak to colleagues from other schools knowing what you know. You are even once thankful that a reporter wasn't "sophisticated enough to ask the right questions". Do you believe that the sort of behavior you admit in this email is appropriate of a high level dean of your stature?

Furthermore, what are the "right questions"? I am curious given the obscene level of corruption discovered against Dr. Nemeroff why he continues to be employed. Is it really appropriate for your school to continue to give him a six figure salary? Furthermore, according to records on the site, you have had suspicions of this as far back as 2000. Yet, according to the Emory Wheel, your investigation continues to be ongoing. How long will your investigation last?

Also, in 2004, Kevin Kuritzky was expelled from Emory Medical school 41 days prior to graduation. I believe you had first hand knowledge of that situation. He was expelled for a few tardies. Why is Kuritzky expelled for a few tardies, while Nemeroff continues to be employed despite engaging in million Dollar corruption?

Given your admission that you were in fact attempting to subvert the truth from the media, is it really appropriate for you to stay on as Dean? Is a Dean that admits to running interference against the truth in an investigation involving millions of Dollars, corruption,fraud, and conflicts of interest? How can those that report to you have any confidence in your own leadership when it has been so clearly compromised by your role in this corruption.

Finally, I checked the website for the Emory Wheel and I notice that this story has been written about four times, and one of the pieces compliments that administration's response to this scandal. I was personally shocked when I found out the details. This, in my estimation, should be a story that is seriously investigated. Isn't the Emory Wheel the newspaper of record for all things Emory University? Why does this get so little coverage in a newspaper dedicated to keeping the students abreast of things that are happening on campus?

I would like to schedule a time for us to speak so you can clarify the issues I have raised in this email. Please let me know when you are available.

...

Here is the one to Dr. Lawley

Dr. Lawley, my name is Michael Volpe and I am a blogger. I was recently made aware of the corruption perpetrated by one of the professors under your command, Dr. Charles Nemeroff. I was tipped off to the story and wrote this about it. http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/12/broken-corrupt-record-of-emory.html

On the website of the Senate Finance committee, I found a startling chain of emails in which Dr. Adkison is corresponding back and forth with yourself and Dr. Nemeroff. In this chain, she freely admits that she is engaging in subverting the truth of the matter from the media. She freely admits that Nemeroff did a lot more wrong than she is disclosing to the media. You received all of these emails. Why didn't you remove her immediately? Do you believe that it is proper professionalism for a Dean to engage in covering up the truth in a matter in which millions of Dollars have been corrupted?

Furthermore, the investigation makes clear that Nemeroff took money from drug companies, didn't disclose it, and didn't even report the full extent of it. While he has been removed from being the Dean of your psychiatry department, he continues to be a professor and collect a paycheck in excess of six figures. Is this what the massive tuition your institution charges should go to? Given what you know about Dr. Nemeroff's behavior why hasn't you and your entire university not informed the proper authorities so that an investigation can be started so that could eventually lead to his PHD status being removed? Do you think it is appropriate for a PHD to be bought and paid for by drug companies?

Furthermore, I know that in 2004 you were intimately involved in expelling Kevin Kuritzky from yur medical school. Your reasoning for this was that he was tardy to a number of classes. Are you then saying that Nemeroff should continue to be employed despite being involved in corruption worth millions of Dollars while Kuritzky should have been expelled because he was late to class a few times? Dr. Lawley, you are included in emails in which there is admission of a conspiracy to withhold the truth of crimes being committed. Doesn't this fact alone mean you are no longer fit to lead?

How can those underneath you possibly trust your leadership given how badly it has been compromised because of your involvement in this scandal?

Dr. Lawley's email is tlawley@emory.edu

and Dr. Adkison's email is cadkison@emory.edu

Always be respectful, but let them know how you feel about the corruption they are party to.

Grady Hospital and the Auto Bailout

Last year, I did a lot of coverage of the scandal surrounding Grady Hospital. By the end of 2007, Grady Hospital, much like the automakers, which had also hemorrhaged cash for years, was in need of a relatively massive bailout. Grady Hospital was asking anyone, tax payers included, for about a quarter of a billion Dollars. Defenders of bailing out Grady Hospital pointed out that Grady was vital to the Atlanta area community. They pointed out that it became a fixture in the Atlanta area, and that the community would be devastated without it. The defense for bailing out Grady Hosptial was best summed up by this New York Times piece.

Although the hospital is unique in many ways, the code red at Grady is emblematic of the crippling effect America’s health care crisis has had on public hospitals around the nation. Though Grady is among the most distressed of the country’s 1,300 public hospitals, others have faced similar challenges in recent years, including those in Miami, Memphis and Chicago, said Larry S. Gage, president of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. There are 300 fewer public hospitals today than 15 years ago, with hospitals having closed in Los Angeles, Washington, St. Louis and Milwaukee, Mr. Gage said

....

Like other public hospitals, Grady is operating on a business model that is no longer sustainable. A third of the hospital’s patients, including those treated as outpatients, are uninsured, among them a rapidly growing group of immigrants

...

Like tens of thousands of Atlantans over the last 115 years — like Gladys Knight, the soul singer, and Vernon Jordan Jr., the presidential confidante; like more than one in three babies born here in the last decade — Ms. Vaughn entered the world at Grady Memorial Hospital, one of the nation’s largest safety-net hospitals.

...

The hospital, sandwiched between downtown and the neighborhood where MartinLuther King Jr. was born, was the place where victims of the 1996 Olympics bombings and countless other disasters have been treated. It is so intrinsic to the city’s identity that Maynard H. Jackson Jr., the first black mayor, liked to say that Grady babies should be allowed to vote twice.The bearded, middle-aged man was bleeding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the left side of his chest. “Don’t let me go out in pain,” he moaned in a drawl to the doctors and nurses treating his injury. “I was born at this hospital.”The patient in Trauma 3 was a Grady baby, though no one could have guessed it when the ambulance pulled in at 1 a.m. that Saturday.

The defense for bailing out Grady Hospital was that it did good work, it was vital to the neighborhood, and the health care crisis its closing would unleash is intolerable. Every argument defenders of bailing out Grady made were technically accurate. Grady Hospital did do a lot of good work in the community, what hospital doesn't. It is vital to the Atlanta area community. Of course it is. It's one of the three largest hospitals in the country. That is the nature of the beast with a hospital that size. It would unleash a health care crisis if it were closed, and I said as much. Grady Hospital is a roughly one thousand bed hospital that serves almost exclusively the indigent, the poor. Without it, the poor would be unleashed on a health care system that has no desire to treat them.

All of these points were also, frankly, beside the point. By the time this crisis had exploded so that Grady was on the brink of running out of money, I had developed contacts with whistle blowers and activists and so I had a unique perch in understanding why Grady Hospital was in a position to need so much cash. Grady was being run for the benefit of those running it at the expense of its own viability. Grady had for years been corrupted so that it became a nearly endless money pit for the corruptors. Grady was hemorrhaging cash because it was being weighed down by a series of contracts and obligations that benefitted the other side far more than it benefitted Grady. Grady paid $50 million to Emory University yearly in order to staff the hospital. (mostly with residents and medical students who also paid Emory for the privilege of being trained at Grady) A couple years back, they signed a massive contract to build a massive new addition with an architecture company run by Robert Brown, who then also served as the Chairman of the board at Grady. These same corruptors were at the center of demanding yet another life line. (Grady eventually received a dubious private infusion)

Grady's problem came down to simple math. If those corrupting Grady benefitted from each and every Dollar that filtered into the Hospital, there wouldn't be any money left for other things like expenses, equipment, viability. For years, contracts had been written to benefit of those that used Grady as their own piggy bank like Emory University, Robert Brown, and the corrupt political class that surrounds Atlanta. None of those supporting the bailout of Grady had any intention of making the sort of systemic changes necessary so that any new injection wouldn't merely prop up a failing hospital but rather lead eventually to a viable hospital. By the end of the year, Grady was injected with cash. A few months later it was announced that State Senator Pam Stephenson orchestrated a scheme to simultaneously name herself both interim CEO (after orchestrating the removal of then CEO Otis Story) and Chairwoman of the board of Grady and gave herself a benefit package worth seven figures. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the new injection of cash was going to the exact same practices that put Grady in a position to ask for the obscene sum to begin with.

....

What I have seen from those defending the automakers is mirroring from the defenders of Grady's bailout in a very troubling and startling way. Yesterday, I saw the mayor of Lansing, Michigan on Fox News pleading for a bailout of the automakers. He pointed out that the automakers had become a fabric of our society. He said that experts estimate that for every one auto job, the economic effect creates seven more. He said that the automakers had made the difficult transition when the credit crisis hit. He pleaded that the automakers were far too vital to allow to fail. He pleaded that any sort of bank ruptcy proceeding would be far too disruptive to all those that rely on the industry like his own citizens.

He dismissed all talk of restructuring as premature. He pointed out that some contracts had already been renegotiated. The whole thing was far too familiar. The corruption of the automakers by its unions and the cities and states that rely on them is certainly not intentional or as blatant as that of Grady Hospital. It is, however, no less corrosive. Those that want the autos bailed out have no intention of seeing the kind of fundamental changes in the industry necessary to have the industry survive long term. Rather, this bailout will serve their constituencies. The unions will see that their contracts and pensions are fulfilled. Mayors and governors will see that their cities and states won't lose jobs.

None of this, however, benefits the automakers. Much like Grady Hospital, the lack of viability by the automakers is simply a matter of numbers. Because contracts and pensions are so rich, they make operating costs so large that domestic automakers can't compete with their foreign counterparts which have no unions. Because taxes are so high, the automakers can't compete on talent with their foreign counterparts which generally locate in less tax pernicious areas. The unions aren't about to sit down and renegotiate contracts and pensions so that the new deals can create costs that make the big three competitive. The cities with Michigan and the state itself aren't about to talk about lowering taxes so that the big three can locate themselves in business friendly areas. They simply want the big three to continue in the same way that got them to this point.

None of the folks that support the bailout want to change any of these fundamental problems though. They want business to continue as usual at the automakers even though this has no chance of any long term success. Much like those that supported the Grady bailout though, these folks don't have the long term viability of these companies in mind when they demand the bailout. These folks represent interests that benefit from having the autos stay in business, no matter how unprofitable that is (much again like the situation at Grady Hospital), and their only agenda is making sure their constituencies are taken care of. If federal tax payers are ripped off in the process, so be it, and this is also much the same as the agenda of those that demanded a Grady bailout. Much like with Grady Hospital, a bailout, without fundamental changes, will only mean that some point soon we will be in this position again.

Sarah Palin Whistleblower

A lot will be made of Ms. Palin's experience, or in some cases, lack thereof. She has had a fascinating and remarkable record considering her relatively thin time in politics. For istance, here is how Wikipedia described her some of her tenure as mayor of Wasilla. (You know that town that the Obama campaign mocked as only of 9000)

In January 1997, Palin fired the Wasilla police chief and library director. In response, a group of 60 residents calling themselves Concerned Citizens for Wasilla discussed attempting a recall campaign against Palin, but then decided against it.[10] The fired
police chief later sued Palin on the grounds that he was fired because he supported the campaign of Palin's opponent, but his suit was eventually dismissed when the judge ruled that Palin had the right under state law to fire city employees, even for political reasons.[11] Palin followed through on her campaign promises to reduce her own salary, and to reduce property taxes by 40%.[

So, while the politics may have been on a relatively small scale, it certainly didn't lack in excitement and intrigue. Yet, within all of her experience, the thing that most impresses me is when she turned into a whistleblower.



The term whistle blower has taken on a simplistic and rather tangential tone, and it doesn't do any justice to explain just exactly what someone needs to do and what they have to endure in order follow through in exposing corruption.



For instance, we recently learned that Mark Felt was the infamous "deep throat" during the Watergate scandal. Why did Felt make all of his accusations anonymously? It's because had he gone public it would have meant the end of his career. No one within the political system he exposed would have dared to hire him. He was the FBI's number two and even he didn't have the courage to blow the whistle publicly.



I have, in my time exposing corruption in health care,academina, and roofing, have come across many whistleblowers. Many of them have been targeted and had their lives ruined. Kevin Kuritzky attempted to expose the corruption at Grady Hospital, and his medical school, Emory University, expelled him from medical school 41 days prior to graduation. Dennis Lennox attempted to expose Central Michigan University's corrupt hiring of Gary Peters, who simultaneously held a lucrative chairmanship while he ran for U.S. Congress 400 miles away. He was nearly expelled and reprimanded, while the administration pursued Lennox punitively for the better part of a full school year. Dr. Blake Moore exposed a serial killer nurse at his hospital and the administration along with much of the state's, South Carolina, pursued him viciously. He was ultimately accused of child abuse and had his three foster children taken from him. Gerard Beloin attempted to expose a corrupt deal between a roofing company and a school board, and his life was threatened and for the last four years he has battled criminal charges against him. Diana Vice attempted to expose another corrupt deal between a school board and a roofing company and for the last year she has received threatening phone calls, and one has been traced back to the company in question.



This is the sort of fate that awaits any whistleblower. Corruptors rarely go down without a fight. Anyone that attempts to expose the corruption is often met with vicious retribution. The courage that it takes to expose corruption is beyond measure. It puts the individual outside the establishment. The establishment then pushes back and often the whistle blower finds themself on their own.



That's exactly what Sarah Palin did several years ago when she served on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Palin gained much of her prominence as a whistle-blower. After she was appointed by Governor Murkowski to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she started bucking the Republican Party leadership over ethics lapses. She blew the whistle on state GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich when he was a fellow oil and gas commissioner. In 2003, he was forced to resign his regulatory post and pay a record $12,000 fine. She and a Democratic state lawmaker filed an ethics complaint against the state attorney general, Gregg Renkes, who resigned under fire.

"The Randy Ruedrich thing was a huge deal. I think that's when her popularity really started to increase," says Ivan Moore, an Anchorage-based pollster who generally works for Democrats.

Although she campaigned for Murkowski in 2002, she became his consistent critic after he was elected. She was outspoken about the financial deal he negotiated with the three major oil producers for a $20 billion natural-gas pipeline. She and others derided the deal - never ratified by the legislature - as a giveaway to the oil industry.

Palin has paid a price for her outspokenness. Mr. Ruedrich, still party chairman, seldom talks to her, and the state party gave her no money during the general election.

Her whistleblowing was condensed to a few simple paragraphs and unfortunately, I don't believe that most of the stories that talk about give the kind of context it deserves. By taking on Ruedrich and then Attorney General Greg Renkes, she not only took on the political establishment of her state but her party. When she took on this task, she put her entire relatively new political career on the line. The political class has the ability to crush any politican's career. Furthermore, the corruptors often do much more than that. Corruptors often go after whistleblowers personally and attempt to make their entire lives a living hell. That was the risk that Palin took when she dared to take on party power players in a state where corruption is simply the way to do business.



Yet, she did and she exposed the sort of corruption that became simply the way to do business in Alaska. By doing so, she shook up the entire power structure in Alaska and put an end to business as usual. The kind of courage she displayed in doing so can only be understood if ever you are in the position of whistle blower, or if like me, you have the privilege of having a whistle blower tell their story to you.

My Email to Burrell Ellis

Introduction: It's likely that because I have written a lot about issues surrounding Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Ga. that I wound up on the email list of Burrell Ellis, who recently was voted the next CEO of Dekalb County. Dekalb. Dekalb County is right next door to Fulton County where Atlanta is located. Grady Hospital services both Fulton and Dekalb County. Ellis' predecessor, Vernon Jones, has been, in my opinion, in the middle of much of the corruption that surrounds Grady Hospital. In any case, I recently received this email that I felt obliged to respond to.

Thank you and thanks to all our neighbors for the vote of confidence you me at the polls to serve you as your next DeKalb County CEO. I am humbled by and grateful for the mandate you have bestowed. I will wake up every day and ask, "How can I work for our constituents today?"

I thank you for your votes. I also want to thank you for being an essential part of this campaign to build a New Consensus for a Better DeKalb. That's because so many of you, folks from every part of the county and from every walk of life, did more than vote. As part of the New Politics we see emerging across this country, you, voters who care about your neighborhoods and your kids' schools and the quality of life we all share, have been an active participant in this project. The New Consensus for a Better DeKalb is your work. Here's why I say that.

I am a candidate of the New Politics, and that means that the way I ask for your vote is in fact the way I will work for you in office. And so almost two years ago we began a dialogue. I asked you, by mail, over the internet, and in your neighbors' homes, what are your priorities? I said I needed to hear from you about your priorities so that TOGETHER we can make your priorities DeKalb County's priority.

Dear Mr. Ellis, I want to congratulate you on your victory. Furthermore, I hope you understand that your predecessor, Vernon Jones, has left you with plenty of work to do. I have spoken with many people in the know and they tell me that you aren't merely his stooge or lackey and that you may in fact work hard to try and bring the sort of change that the County you are now in charge of desperately needs. I am not nearly as confident as those I have spoken with. Furthermore, even if initially your intentions are good, Dekalb County has a way of corrupting even those with initial good intentions.

That said, if you are serious about your commitment to work for your constituents, there are several things that you can do right away. First, the Dekalb County Police Department is the center of systemic corruption and has been for decades. This corruption climaxed with the death of Derwin Brown, the incoming sheriff, in 2001. Brown was killed by the then outgoing sheriff Syd Dorsey. Following the tragic death Derwin Brown, nothing more than cosmetic changes were done to the police department. As such, the same vicious corruption that exists that lead to the tragic death of Derwin Brown continues to be part of this department today. Cleaning up that corruption should be your first priority if you are serious about your commitment to your constituents.

Second, Grady Hospital, which serves the poor in your county and Fulton County, continues to be the center of obscene amounts of corruption. As Dekalb County CEO, you are responsible for selecting the members of the board of Grady Hospital. It is my opinion that your predecessor elected members to the board that contributed to the corruption. This corruption was epitomized by the selection of Robert Brown to head the board for several years. Among many dubious moves by Brown was awarding his own architecture firm a multi million dollar project in 2002 while Grady was in the middle of financial upheavel. If you are serious about your commitment to your constituents, you will make sure all future members of the board do not hav the sort of conflict of interest that Brown and others have.

Furthermore, you will demand an immediate investigation into the manner in which former Grady Hospital CEO, Otis Story Jr., was fired. Furthermore, you will demand that an investigation begin into the manner in which Pam Stephenson orchestrated a golden parachute for herself while she was concurrently CEO, head of the board, and a State Senator. As you may know, Grady recently received a golden parachute of its own from the Woodruff Foundation. That means the hospital will be able to function without public funds, FOR NOW. Of course, if they continue in the same corrupt way they have for decades, that money will run out quickly. Then, the hospital will look for another hand out and among the hands will be your county.

Finally, I am of the opinion that a serious investigation needs to be made of your predecessor. Time and again, Vernon Jones used the office as his own personal piggy bank and the systemic corruption he created as a result will continue unless it is investigated. Furthermore, by investigating your predecessor, you will show the voters you aren't merely his lackey. You will show everyone that the political machine that has created the systemic corruption he was an integral part of is one you are NOT.

Mr. Ellis I wish you luck in your new role, and I hope that your actions will match your hopeful rhetoric.