Grady votes to create private board
Negotiations begin on handover agreement
by Andy Phelan
andy@dekalbchamp.com
The Rev. Tim McDonald of the First Iconium Baptist Church protests outside Grady Memorial Hospital before the board vote.
State Sen. Vincent Fort demands the public be heard before the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority took its vote on whether to allow a private non-profit board take over day-to-day operations of the hospital and its clinics.
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The Grady Hospital Board voted unanimously Nov. 26 to create a private non-profit corporation to run the day-to-day operations of the ailing health-care system but attached more than a dozen conditions for the deal to go through.
Hoping to gain access to $500 million through private donations, state funding and continued DeKalb and Fulton county support through the change, board members said the move is the most viable way to keep the venerable 115-year-old hospital afloat.
“It’s a fundamental shift in how we obtain money for operations and capital,” said board chairwoman Rep. Pam Stephenson, [D-Lithonia], who did not vote. “This provides Grady to be better funded and not so dependent on taxpayers. Eventually we have to have some level of self-sufficiency.”
Included in the stipulations are written commitments from businesses and charitable communities to provide “not less than $200 million to be made available over a four-year period.” The deal calls for an additional $100 million to be raised through private donations over three years and for the state to pony up $30 million a year.
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who said this summer the state has a role in saving Grady, sounded a conciliatory note upon hearing news of the board's vote.
“The board’s action yesterday represents a positive first step, although it also raises several problematic issues that will need to be resolved,” he said.
“Going forward, we will focus on building private sector support for Grady, enhancing our statewide trauma network, providing any technical assistance the new board needs and strengthening the partnership between Grady and the teaching universities that provide much of its staff. As the board identifies potential areas of savings, improves the hospital’s revenue stream and gets a realistic fix on the remaining cost gap, I am also supportive of considering additional state aid to close that gap."
The resolution also asks DeKalb and Fulton counties to float an additional $200 million in bonds that would extend the current debt service “for an additional period of years.” DeKalb taxpayers are currently committed to about $60 million in bonds for Grady.
At least one DeKalb resident took exception to this part of the resolution.
“They’re asking us to be chained to this debt,” said Viola Davis of the Unhappy Taxpayer & Voter. “You are obliging me from here to eternity. And with a changing board, I’m being taxed without representation.”
The new board would consist of 17 members, four of whom would also be members of the authority. While the new board would run operations, the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority would still own the property and its assets.
A cadre of devout protestors with the Grady Coalition, who reject the move to privatize Grady, demonstrated outside and later scuffled with security outside the authority boardroom. They chanted “Uh Sonny, get up off of that money,” in reference to Gov. Sonny Perdue and the state’s $600 million budget surplus.
State Sen. Vincent Fort [D-Atlanta] was briefly handcuffed and later led the charge for the public to have the right to speak before the board cast its vote. More than 20 members of the community, including Lithonia’s John Evans of Operation LEAD and The Rev. Tim McDonald of the First Iconium Baptist Church on Moreland Avenue, voiced their displeasure at the change.
Terence Courtney of Decatur, a member of Atlanta Jobs with Justice, said he and his brethren are concerned privatization will forever alter Grady’s mission to serve the poor.
“We understand that privatization will insert the profit motive into the equation and move health care out of focus,” said Courtney. “The move will hurt workers and patients alike. We will continue our campaign against this.”
More than 200 Grady doctors and nurses also rallied outside before the board vote, eschewing their commitment to the poor but also to support the change.
The debate began in June when a metro Chamber of Commerce task force, headed by Georgia-Pacific’s Pete Correll, said the venerable institution “is on the verge of economic collapse.”
To fix it, he said, the hospital must find new sources of funding and change the way it’s run.
If not, said Correll, co-chairman of the 17-member Greater Grady Task Force, “a patient tsunami will sweep across the metro area that will be unprecedented.” The findings, part of a study commissioned by the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority that governs Grady, showed the system is losing about $7 million a month.
CEO Otis Story told the board Nov. 26 that Grady would be out of money next month.
While many close to the situation said the negotiations over the 16 conditions “is just the beginning” of the process, Associate Dean of the Emory School of Medicine William Sexson said the vote was a good first step.
Emory and Morehouse provide Grady with its doctors.
“It’s like your baby taking its first step,” he said. “It’s great, but will she take another step? We have a long way to go. But the board did tonight what they had to do. The business community and the state now have to step up.” |
