Some Much Needed Grady Hospital Legislation

Three new bills all authored by State Senator David Shafer (R-Duluth) recently passed the Georgia Senate. Shafer was instrumental in getting the details of the settlement agreement between Emory/Grady and Dr. Jim Murtaugh and he has been a leader in trying to get substantive reforms at Grady.

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.

The Consequences of Shutting Down Grady Hospital and its Political Ramifications

As I mentioned earlier, Grady Hospital has joined a dubious category when the JCAHO threatened to revoke its accreditation. Only King Drew in California was ever threatened with such an extreme measure. An investigation by the L.A. Times that was ultimately highlighted by this story forced JCAHO's hand.

Despite a long history of problems at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, two things set the Rodriguez case apart: the existence of a security videotape showing the woman writhing for 45 minutes on the floor of the emergency room lobby and the public release this week of two 911 calls in which witnesses unsuccessfully pleaded with sheriff's dispatchers for help.

In the case of Grady Hospital, it was community activists, not the media, that alerted JCAHO to problems. Since Grady won't release the findings we don't know what specific problems there are yet. Of course, one only needs to read these pages to know the sorts of horrors that have happened at Grady Hospital. (this story involves a medical student left alone in charge of an entire step down unit)

One night that is what happened. One time he was left in charge of the entire step down unit from 4 PM to 2AM. The first emergency came from one patient who was recovering from lung surgery. The patient's lung collapsed and Kevin was called in to save his life. The patient was suffocating and time was of the essence. Kevin was
panicked and needed to move quick. He needed to find a chest tube, but because of his own inexperience, he didn't know where they kept the chest tubes. In a rush, he did the only thing he could think of at the time. He grabbed the dirty chest tube that had already been used on the patient and injected into their lungs.

Next, Kevin was asked to read an x ray of the patient's lungs to determine if they were stable. This is again not something a medical student is supposed to do on their own and without supervision but since their was no supervision there wasn't much choice. Kevin gave it his best estimation and determined the patient was fine however as it turns out that was just a lucky guess. This patient survived but it had nothing to do with the type of care that was provided them at Grady.

I set this context so everyone understands what a total nightmare Grady Hospital is right now. Keep in mind that Grady's current financial crisis is in many ways divorced from the findings of the JCAHO report. In other words, whatever patient nightmares were going on at King Drew, they didn't also experience a financial crisis concurrently. King Drew was ultimately forced to shut down. That is a distinct possibility for Grady as well.

I believe shutting down Grady would create an even bigger nightmare with all sorts of unintended consequences and frankly a situation no one can predict or control. Let's lay out some numbers. Grady Hospital serves roughly one million patients per year. It has five thousand employees and contributes roughly 1.5 billion dollars to the economy in the area. Despite only serving two of Georgia's roughly 100 counties, Grady provides some or all of the training to one quarter of Georgia's doctors. Ninety percent of the staff at Grady is from Emory University with about 400 residents from there on staff at any given time. The entire medical school of Morehouse is trained at Grady Hospital as well. Grady Hospital has about nine hundred beds available. For comparison, South Fulton, the other hospital primarily for poor folks in the area, has 36 beds.

Its important to understand that Grady serves the poor, the indigent, almost exclusively. More importantly, in Fulton, Dekalb, and to some extent the surrounding counties, the poor and indigent are almost exclusively served by Grady. In the case of King Drew there were several other area hospitals that were also already serving the poor. Not so in the case of Grady. Without Grady Hospital the poor would be unleashed on the entire remaining health care system that remains. As a friend in Atlanta once told me

there's no way they will close Grady because the other hospitals don't want their patients

Keep in mind that most of the folks that go to Grady either have no insurance or Medicare at best. In other words, treating them is in no way a for profit operation. Soouth Fulton is the only other public hospital in the area, and there is no way it could handle the entire indigent population of Fulton and Dekalb Counties. Furthermore, Grady is the only level 1 trauma center for hundreds of miles. Severe gun shot wounds, bad car accidents, dismemberments, and other such traumas are all treated there and there only for hundreds of miles. Many times other neighboring states have their level one traumas treated there. In case of a terrorist attack, it would be Grady that would be the only hospital equipped to handle mass casualties in the area.

Furthermore, since Grady is also the main teaching hospital in Georgia, the entire health care teaching system would be traumatized. With 25% of the doctors receiving some or all of their training at Grady, the impact on the medical training is beyond words. Emory's medical school would be the equivalent Northeast Texas State Community College and Morehouse would cease to exist altogether.

I recently pointed out the absurdity of AJC reporter Mike King's column in which he called Grady board members arrogant for making demands not requests in their time of crisis. I doubt very much that you will find anyone in the Atlanta area media that will ever break down Grady's impact the way I just have, however I am certain the powers that be at Grady know full well the numbers that I have laid out. In other words, crisis or not the powers that be know what a vital part of Georgia Grady is and thus they can afford to be arrogant.

This context has political impact and it is also something that I do not believe the Atlanta media will ever explain properly either. Late last month, the Grady board approved a plan that would infuse Grady with much needed cash and make the board quasi private. The timing of this move is very important because it came right before JCAHO's announcement. While this plan purports to deal with Grady's fiscal issues, it in no way addresses the obvious medical care problems currently going on at Grady. Frankly, given the make up of the task force that recommended this plan, as well as other factors, I have already concluded that this quasi privatization plan is nothing more than a stunt that allows the powers that be to continue running Grady the exact same way only with even less oversight.

Now, I believe that the legislators and the Grady board are playing a high stakes game of chicken. It is frankly difficult to surmise which is worse: allowing a corrupt Grady to continue to operate or shutting it down and unleashing its patients on the rest of the medical system and disrupting the states medical education. It is even more dificult to figure out which is the better move politically. So far the politicians appear to be balking at Grady's proposal.

State Senate President Pro-Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) took issue with the demands that state officials support $30 million more a year in funding to Grady and provide state funding for hospital trauma units around the state.

"What? They didn't require us to fund an ice cream cone for every patient?" Johnson said. "I don't think the Legislature responds well to blackmail. ... Grady cannot be treated any different than any other hospital."

I would have to beg to differ with Johnson on one point. Grady can and always has been treated differently than other hospitals. The reasons for this are numerous however most of them have been laid out in this piece. There are very few hospitals in America and the world that are more vital to the community they serve than Grady Hospital. The powers that be at Grady know this all too well and they are now using that fact to try and force the hands of the politicians in Georgia. The politicians can talk tough however if Grady is shut down, that is a situation no one can predict and control. What's going on now at Grady is despicable, corrupt and frankly evil, however it is done almost exclusively to poor folks who really don't vote. By shutting Grady down, on the other hand, the politicians will unleash a nightmare upon everyone else in Georgia, and most of those people do vote.Thus, we have this complicated and high stakes game of chicken.

EPILOGUE:If you would like to know how Grady got to this point, please read this summary. Also, please take a look at the recommendations that my colleagues and I have drawn up to fix Grady Hospital.

Kent Alexander: Power Broker (Updated)

There is a name that lurks behind the scenes in much of the scandal and corruption associated with Emory University and Grady Hospital and that person's name is Kent Alexander. It should be noted that there is little or no evidence ties Alexander to any wrongdoing on his own part. What is peculiar is how often he finds himself in the middle of scandal at Grady, Emory and beyond.




Kent Alexander first burst on the scene as the son of legendary Atlanta area attorney Miles Alexander. His first brush with fame came in the mysterious case of money laundering by BNL Savings, an Italian government run bank, to the government of Iraq on the eve of the first gulf war. The case is detailed in depth in the book, The Shell Game, by Peter Mantius. At the time, Alexander was assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. He was the lead attorney for the U.S. on the case. At the time, King and Spaulding, arguably the most powerful and prestigious law firm in Atlanta, represented BNL. According to The Shell Game, Alexander met with an MI6 agent who told him of obscene amounts of corruption. The agent implicated the entire structure of the bank, and the agent claimed that for political reasons the intelligence apparatus of Italy, the U.S. and Britain looked the other way. The book claimed that the agent provided documentation of all the assertions.





For whatever reason according to the book, Alexander left the meeting and decided to pin the entire scandal on the bank manager Christopher Drogoul, who was in his twenties at the time. Drogoul was prosecuted and eventually convicted and upon his conviction the entire case was closed. This of course made the clients of King and Spaulding happy since the rest of the apparatus of the bank was spared prosecution.

This case also has some troubling parallels to another case I have referenced, State Senator Charles Walker. More than a decade later, while Alexander was now Emory General Counsel, State Senator Charles Walker was convicted of 127 felonies. He was the only one convicted and that case was also wrapped up after his conviction. Of course, it should be noted again that despite not flipping on anyone Walker received the outrageously light sentence of ten years for 127 felonies.



On the strength of the Drogoul conviction along with other good deeds, Alexander was eventually promoted to U.S. Attorney a couple years later. (for reference this is the equivalent of posts once held by both Rudy Giuliani and Elliot Spitzer in their own districts) In the summer of 1996 Atlanta held the Olympics. The sad and ultimately tragic case of Richard Jewell is well documented and it doesn't need to be repeated. While the media has portrayed his role in the affair in a variety of ways, (he meaning Alexander himself) the facts stand out to me at least. He was the lead prosecutor. Jewell was under suspicion for almost ninety days and everyone agrees that ultimately there was absolutely no solid evidence against him.


About a year later, Alexander resigned from the U.S. Attorney's office. He landed on his feet with a cushy position with King and Spaulding. That would be the same King and Spaulding that was the fortuitous recepient of Alexander's narrow investigation of BNL. King and Spaulding is also the firm on retainer for Emory University.


After a couple years, Alexander moved over to lead general counsel at Emory University in 2000. Emory and Alexander joined forces at a fortuitous time. That's because Grady, the hospital Emory helped run, was then under investigation by the National Institute of Health. That investigation ultimately lead nowhere however at least four people were silenced by Emory in connection to the investigation: Dr. Sam Newcom, Dr. Jim Murtaugh, Dr. Diane Owens, and Dr. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. Dr. Jim Murtaugh's case has recently had some new developments. Here is what State Senator David Shafer was able to recently discover.

Former Grady trustee Bill Loughrey tells me that the settlement with Dr. Murtagh was never approved or even accurately described to Grady’s board of trustees. He says that he was stunned to learn that tax dollars were paid to Dr. Murtagh, conditioned on his silence. He thinks the agreement is invalid and that the judicial process has been misused.

Let me explain for everyone. Dr. Jim Murtaugh settled with Emory University and Grady Hospital right around the time that this investigation was going on. He settled for roughly 1.6 million dollars and each side was under total communication lockdown. In fact, the lockdown was so extreme that even if either side was subpoened the court would need to be notified and there was time available for the subpoena to be quashed. This is of course important because it is very likely that Murtaugh had information relevant to the NIH investigation and this agreement allowed Grady and Emory stop Murtaugh from testifying. Furthermore, as lead counsel Alexander would be in control of the negotiations for his employer. He was in so much control that it is his signature next to Murtaugh's in the ultimate agreement.



Now, what Shafer is saying is that the board of trustees at Grady were never notified of the settlement. This is important because Grady is a public hospital and thus their portion of the settlement would then be tax payer money. As lead counsel, Alexander would be responsible for every bit of the agreement.

By 2004, Grady was again in the middle of another scandal. This one involved State Senator Charles Walker. Despite being convicted of 127 separate felonies, Walker was the only one charged and convicted in the case. Not only is it logical to think that it is impossible to commit this much crime on your own, but one only needed to be in the courtroom hear of more involvement. The lead prosecution witness, Joyce Harris, accused much of the higher ups at Grady of all sorts of wrong doing: witness tampering, intimidation, and kickbacks, etc. Despite all sorts of startling accusations from the witness most responsible for putting Walker away, the prosecution decided to end its investigantion with him.

Now, you might be saying well that's Grady and Alexander was employed by Emory. That is true however the entire Grady staff was Emory faculty and most of the Grady upper level management was also employed by Emory. Thus, while they may seem to be two separate entities to some they are in reality quite interlocked.


Alexander then resurfaces in the case of whistleblower, Kevin Kuritzky. Kuritzky was expelled several months after another investigation of Grady was completed. This one was done by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the Department Health and Human Services. The conclusion of that report was scathing.

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

Emory maintained that Kuritzky was expelled for missing required clerkship training involving patient care, lying to his professors, and engaging in other unprofessional, dishonest and unethical conduct, while Kuritzky maintains that it was retaliation for blowing the whistle on many of the same type of practices mentioned in the report. While Emory outwardly maintains even today that his expulsion had nothing to do with any incendiary charges on his part, I have found an email from Alexander to the then assistant U.S. Attorney that indicates otherwise.

Amy (Amy Kamenshien then Assitant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia) as you know we have had several discussions in the past regarding Dr. Murtaugh and his allegations regarding Emory/Grady. Recently he has had contact with former medical student Kevin Kuritzky. You may in the near future be hearing from Kuritzky or his attorneys and I would advise not pursuing it further. Hope all are keeping well,

Kent.

Clearly, Alexander expected that Kuritzky was going to say something and he moved to pre empt the investigation. Kuritzky ultimately ended up pursuing his case civilly and that is still pending.


Alexander had one more run in with Kuritzy of note. According to Kuritzky just as the legal process for his civil case was starting, (Before any formal paperwork was even filed) Alexander arranged a meeting between Kuritzky, his attorneys and Emory attorneys, headed up by Alexander of course, and finally a mediator. According to Kuritzky, at this meeting Alexander addressed Kuritzky in this manner,

if you pursue this further, we will smear you so badly that even North Korea won't touch you

According to Kuritzky this was said in front of his attorneys and the mediator who went to the third grade step of calling a timeout in its aftermath. The parties were separated into two different rooms so that everyone could cool down, however Alexander wasn't formally reprimanded for this statement.

The last notable moment in Alexander's tenure came last month when he responded to an Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial regarding unsealing the records of the Dr. Jim Murtaugh case. ( those records have been unsealed and of course I even referenced them earlier)

The AJC's Oct. 5 editorial "Come clean on lawsuit" resurrects (and misstates) old charges of conspiring to misuse government funds, charges the government reviewed seven years ago and declined to pursue. This has the devastating effect of casting public suspicion on two entities —- Grady Memorial Hospital and Emory University —- that are working together in an increasingly challenging environment to meet the health needs of the most vulnerable members of our society.

The editorial surprisingly calls on Emory and Grady to open the sealed settlement and court records in a case involving Dr. James Murtagh. For the record, Emory and Grady did not move to seal the record; Murtagh did. Emory had already supported unsealing the proceedings —- the complete, entire record —- as had Grady. We simply awaited the doctor and court's approval. Judge Wendy Shoob has since unsealed the record, which is now of course fully open to the public. The real victim in all of this is Grady, the largest public health hospital in the Southeast. Grady is struggling to survive while misinformation circulates that, unintentionally or intentionally, diverts attention from the real issues.

This statement is absurd on its face (and I should note never countered by the AJC). Murtaugh was paid a huge sum of money (1.6 million dollars) and then told to shut up. That is hush money. It is unlikely that he would be the one that would try and keep those records sealed. It was after all Emory and Grady that paid him not the other way around. They paid him and he was silenced. You do the math. Second, since he was silenced, making this bold face lie is easy since they know he is under order to remain quiet no matter what.

Finally, while he was paid the money both parties agreed to a total media blackout. Again, I may not be an attorney however it appears to me that Alexander just violated the terms of the very agreement he helped broker.

The case of Kent Alexander is much like everything about Emory and Grady. There are more questions than answers. Did Alexander receive his cushy position from King and Spaulding as a result of his favorable prosecution in the BNL case? Did he use his influence to squash the NIH and Walker investigations? Did he knowingly violate the policy of the Grady Trustees when he entered into an agreement with Dr. Jim Murtaugh? Did he try to intimidate Kevin Kuritzky?
Only the powers that be know the answers to these questions, however I do know that Grady Hospital may collapse. I know that there needs to be a huge infusion of cash in order for it to survive, and it appears to me that the same people that put it into this position continue to call the shots. I know that if I were a tax payer that was ultimately flipping the bill I would want all of the questions I raised answered, under oath, by Alexander himself, before even one more dime went into Grady Hospital.


For further information on Kent Alexander and this scandal in its entirety, please follow this link to listen to my buddy Snooper discuss this matter further.

UPDATE:


For the most part, if you find your way to one of the stories regarding the Grady mess, you will likely get lost in its many mazes. I actually don't believe that this is one of them. I believe that this story speaks for itself, and no matter your incoming knowledge you should be able to follow. If not let me know. That said, you should also know how Alexander fits into the overall scheme of things. Thus, I have put together a summary of the entire fiasco that tries to put all of its moving parts together in one piece. Please read it for guidance. Also, please check out the recommendations that I and my colleagues have put together for fixing Grady Hospital.

Corruption!! Academia, Health Care, and Hush Jobs

It appears that Grady Hospital of Atlanta is about to go under. The investigation that has followed has uncovered an all to cozy and most likely corrupt relationship between the hospital and my brother's institution. Erick, at Red State, picks it up.

Down in Georgia, the fine folks in the Atlanta area are waking up to the fact that Grady Hospital, both a trauma center (one of the few in Georgia) and the hospital for treatment of mostly indigent patients, is about to go underthrough reckless mismanagement and bad deals. As legislators and the media havedug deeper, they've discovered a parasitic relationship between Emory Universityand Grady Hospital. Emory, which prides itself on being an elite liberal ivyleague of its own in the south, has been feed off Grady to train Emory'sdoctors. While Emory's doctors have been getting their training, Emory has beenbilling Grady a/k/a the taxpayers, for those same doctors services. In essence, Emory is getting money from the medical students for training and also from the taxpayers to train the same students by letting them practice on indigentpatients at Grady.

In other words, if Erick is right, not only was Grady performing illegal abortions (which he talks about later), they were billed for these abortions by Emory, even though med students were getting their training at the hospital.

That is only the beginning of the story though. This story was picked up by muckraker in training and Emory student, Steve Stein, when he wrote this

It’s not exactly a smoking gun, but the latest revelation in the Grady hospital saga — that Emory may be taking advantage of its influence with the struggling trauma center — raises questions the University must answer soon. State Senator David Shafer (R-Duluth) went on the attack in a recent blogpost (www.davidshafer.org), implying that Emory doctors improperly bill Grady for their services. Similar allegations have already been made, but Shafer outlines the most compelling critique of Emory yet.

Shafer, who based his blog post on a two and a half year old audit of Emory’s record keeping he acquired through an open records request, writes:“[I]n a practice that is denounced by the auditors, its faculty physiciansrecord their time at Grady a mere four weeks each year (one week per quarter)and then make a guess at how much time they spend at Grady for the remaining 48weeks of the year, using the four weeks of recorded time as a guide. Emory thenbills Grady for the full 52 weeks of work. Doing the math, that means there is no documentation for 92 percent of Emory’s bills for supervisory and administrative services.”

That appears pretty damning to me. Everyone must have been shocked when only a few days later Stein wrote this

A

A town hall meeting about Grady Memorial Hospital last week served as aperfect
metaphor for the troubled trauma center’s saga: snide attackssuperseded solutions, chaos trumped compromise and Emory became the focus ofunjustified attacks — again.One thing is certain: The crusade against Emory by people like loca lactivist Ron Marshall and state Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth) has officially turned into a witch hunt.

Last week, I wrote that Shafer had raised important questions in his blogabout the Emory-Grady relationship that the University had to answer. Mostimportantly, I wanted to know whether allegations that Emory doctorsimproperly billed Grady for their services were accurate.

Emory has answered these questions and has done so convincingly —the answer is a
definite “no.” In a recent press release, School of MedicineDean Thomas Lawley and Executive Vice President for Health Affairs MichaelJohns provided evidence to show that the University’s time-recordingpractices compare favorably to those at other hospitals. Lawley and Johnsmade a more than adequate defense of their position. The attacks, however,have not abated.

How could this future muckraker do a 180 so quickly? Erick may know why.

First, we learn about an Emory student newspaper student editor who called into question Emory's conduct in the Grady Hospital affair. He was, to be sure, quite critical of Emory. But then Emory University granted him, very soon after the article appeared, an internship with Emory Healthcare. All of a sudden the considered his prior views to be those of folks having a “witch hunt.”

You'll do great in this world young man. Selling your soul to the highest bidder is a great way to get ahead. We will see though. The right blogosphere will expose you for what you are.There is more. I will let Erick pick it up again.

Now comes the case of James J. Murtagh Jr. v. the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority. Mr Murtagh, a former Emory professor who worked as a doctor at Grady,filed, well, let's let the Georgia political paper Insider Advantage tell us: Murtagh was a former Grady doctor and Emory University faculty member who filed a federal lawsuit accusing Emory and Grady of conspiring to defraud the federal government of millions of dollars.Murtagh also accused Grady and Emory of subjecting him to a bad-faith peerreview as retaliation against his whistleblowing.

The peer review alleged thatMurtagh violated the hospital's do-not-resuscitate policies. The case apparentlywas settled under seal after Grady and Emory lost a motion for summary judgment.A former Grady trustee, William Loughrey, has called sealing of thesettlement “outrageous” and charged that Emory and Grady were using tax dollarsto silence whistleblowers.

David Shafer picks it up.

The silencing of whistleblowers through cash payments and confidential settlements and the conduct of whistleblower litigation under seal underminespublic confidence in Grady, interferes with the ability of the Georgia GeneralAssembly to properly investigate the crisis involving Grady, deters the State ofGeorgia from financially assisting Grady, and potentially jeopardizes th esurvival of Grady.

Last but not least, what of these abortions? As Erick explained, the med students were performing abortions. Is there anything wrong with this? Let's leave the issue of abortions alone for a minute. It is against the law to use public funds for abortions in cases besides incest and rape. According to Erick, this became nothing more than an abortion mill. Money and resources that could have gone to providing health care for poor people instead went to finance abortions. Here is how Congressman Everson put it.

I was disturbed to learn that Emory University has been performing thousands of abortions at Grady Memorial Hospital and using this taxpayer ownedand funded hospital to train abortionists. Federal and state law prohibits theuse of taxpayer funds for abortion other than in cases of rape, incest and lifethreatening conditions. I applaud your decision to shut down this abortion milland training facility. If Emory University desires to perform abortions or trainabortionists, it should do so at its own facilities and not at a public hospitalowned by the taxpayers.I was also quite disturbed to learn that at least one woman ... was killedby a botched abortion at Grady and that the hospital was forced to pay a $3million jury verdict to her young son.As a member of the House SpecialCommittee on Grady, I would like to know:

1. Whether Emory University has paid rent to the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority for the operation of its abortion mill and trainingfacility.

2. Whether the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority paid Emory University forthe faculty members and residents who staffed and taught at this abortion milland training facility.

3. What other hospital resources, if any, were used to support thisabortion mill and training facility.

4. What steps the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority has taken to make sure that Medicaid was not unlawfully billed by Emory University or the Emory MedicalCare Foundation for elective or birth control abortions.

5. To what extent, if any, unlawful billings for abortions were involved inthe $4.5 million refund paid by the Emory Medical Care Foundation to settle the1998 Medicaid fraud investigation by Attorney General Thurbert Baker.

6. Who paid the $3 million jury verdict in the case of the botched abortion...

7. Whether any other claims of malpractice have been brought against theabortion mill or Grady Health System for botched abortions.

8. How much the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority has paid defending orsettling malpractice actions for abortion and whether any of this expense hasbeen borne by Emory University or its abortionists.

9. Whether any of the aborted fetuses from Grady Memorial Hospital havebeen used by Emory University in its highly publicized biomedical research programs.

Paying off journalists with jobs, performing illegal abortions, illegal billing, intimidating whistle blowers, tuition money is going to such great causes. This will not stand and it cannot stand. If you are as outraged as I am, please go here and make your voice be heard.UPDATE:Since I picked up this story, I have come to the conclusion that if anyone picks it up in the middle they may get lost in its twists and turns.

I have put together a summary of the entire fiasco that tries to put all of its moving parts together in one piece. Please read it for guidance.Also, please check out the recommendations that I and my colleagues have put together for fixing Grady Hospital.