grady ruffles continue….
i have been following the saga of grady hospital with some interest, although i really don’t understand the situation as well as i should. it hit me the other day that if i were to have an emergency at home, odds are the ambulance would take me straight to grady no matter how much insurance i have. this makes me thing, if only for selfish reasons, that i ought to care more about the situation.
i know that the grady board voted yesterday to incorporate the hospital as a 501(c)(3) non-profit with control handed over to a non-profit board from the current board which is made up of elected and appointed representatives. i know, like so many things in atlanta this issue has been clouded by issues of class and race.
but i don’t really understand it all. i’m going to be doing some research over the next few days to really grasp it, but was just wondering if any of you had perspective to share. we have quite a few bright, connected commenters on this board so i’m hoping….
Actually, if something happened to you at home that wasn’t a serious burn, you’d probably end up at Atlanta Medical Center on Boulavard.
I live less than 5 blocks from Grady, and the one time I was put in an ambulance since living here we rode right past Grady to AMC.
It doesn’t matter where you live or what kind of insurance you have. If Grady folds, the people it cares for will be going to other hospitals. The hospitals in Atlanta aren’t set up to cope with the level of indigent care Grady provides, much less able to step in to fill the shoes of the area’s only Level I trauma center. If Grady falls, it drags all the other hospitals around here down.
Grady’s really big. One issue brought up is the switch to the nonprofit board is motivated by the willingness of “certain private donors” to give the hospital $200 million. The private donors have never been named. This willingness was brought to Grady’s attention by Metro Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s task force on Grady, formed after Grady requested help, has always maintained the problems at Grady aren’t the fault of the existing governance, but that this new governance, for some odd reason, would net the hospital $200 million. Critics – including a memmber of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, William Edwards, I believe, have issues with this. He asked, if they haven’t done anything wrong, why require a change in governance?
When you have a situation like that, people read all kinds of conspiracy into it whether it’s there or not. But I think now the big issue is how the state government has reacted to all this. They’re not happy with Grady’s recent proposal, because they think it involves Grady trying to strongarm them into annual contributions.
Good luck digging. The actual resolutions they passed Monday isn’t anywhere I can find on Grady or the authority’s website, but it’s already posted at the AJC’s website. It’s not too long, and it’s worth a good hard read.