Fresh Loaf

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DON’T DRINK THE WATER: A toxin found in Mars’ water dims scientists’ hopes of finding life there.

DOCK BLOCK: More than 2,300 private docks were built in coastal Georgia between 1996 and 2006, and each one can reduce biomass production by 30 percent below it due to blocked sunlight. Researchers are thus studying four types of docks that allow sunlight through.

NEW GRADY CEO: Says changing “the aura” will be the difference at Grady; plans to buy upgraded medical equipment, identify the top 10 financial issues and streamline processes in an effort to attract more insured patients to the beleaguered hospital.

WI-FI IN THE SKY: Delta plans to start offering Wi-Fi on all its domestic flights by next summer, but it’ll cost $10 for three hours or less and $13 for longer flights.

FIELD TRIPS: Georgia schools considering canceling them to save fuel.

TAILS WAGGING DAWGS: Mark Richt discusses the slew of arrested and penalized players this offseason; he and top players echo the line that they won’t be a distraction for long.

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Today, the board of troubled and cash-strapped Grady Memorial Hospital named a new head honcho. Michael A. Young, a 20-year hospital CEO out of New York and Pennsylvania, will oversee the Georgia’s largest public hospital, its most significant resource for indigent care, its most sophisticated trauma center, and its premier medical training facility — a facility that some experts say needs $370 million to start functioning correctly.

No pressure.

For nearly four years, Young was CEO of the Erie County Medical Center Corp. in upstate New York. Before that, he was the 16-year CEO of the three-hospital Lancaster General Hospital & Health System in Lancaster, Penn.

In a press release, Grady board chairman Pete Correll lauded Young’s track record of “improving patient care while boosting revenues and admissions.”

Correll said Young brings experience in turning around a financially troubled institution. Under Young’s tenure at Erie County Medical Center, the system went from losing $30 million a year to posting an operating profit of $17 million last year.

Let’s hope he can do the same for Grady.

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FALCONS: Put a period at the end of Michael Vick’s sentence.

AL FRESCO: Rejuvenated Al Horford and the Hawks try to even the series with the Celtics tonight.

CLAYTON: Has another chaotic school board meeting, this time while trying to vote on a contract for its new corrective superintendent.

A LOAN IN THE DARK: Only one Georgia technical school participates in the federal student loan program, leaving the state with the highest percentage in the country of tech schools students without access to the federal loans.

SWAMPWISE: Late Okefenokee stalwart Oscar the alligator, who was at least in his mid-60s when he died last July, will be memorialized in a dinosaurlike skeleton display at the park.

VICIOUS CYCLE: Kanstantin Sivtsov of Belarus wins the Tour de Georgia.

GA. DEMS: Hoping Obamania and GOP infighting will grease their wheels in November, but also having to robo-call in a search for candidates for certain districts.

GRADY EXPECTATIONS: New York doctor demands severance from Grady after he quit his job in NY and moved to Georgia with his wife, only to have his job offer at Grady withdrawn after they got here.

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A surprise tragedy of the recent General Assembly – one of many such tragedies, we should note – was the failure of the trauma care network funding bill in the waning hours of the session on Friday night. Insiders tell us that, despite his public support for the network, most of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Speaker.

The loss of the bill is especially grievous when you consider that Grady Hospital’s future hangs in the balance. The Grady board was prompted to hand over much of its power to a new governing body on the promise that the ailing hospital would receive support from a state-funded trauma network. Grady held up its end of the bargain, but the state welshed on the deal.

In fairness, the state will provide a $58 million cash infusion to the network from the supplemental budget. But that’s a one-time hand-out. Without a permanent revenue source, the network is going to have trouble attracting a decent director and staff.

In previous years, lawmakers had looked at a rental car surcharge, a cell phone tax and, this year, a $10 fee on car registrations as possible funding sources. But, late in the session, somebody hatched the brilliant idea of using revenue from the state’s .25-mill property tax to pay for the trauma network. Gov. Sonny Perdue made waves at the start of the session by calling for the repeal of the state property tax, but by late last week, it was apparent that the Governor’s proposal was a no-go.

Supposedly, the property tax would’ve generated about $95 million a year to help support trauma care in Georgia – more than any of the other proposed funding schemes. The House/Senate conference committee that dealt with the trauma care bill had a few more details to negotiate before settling on a final version of the bill, but members say everyone was on board with the revenue idea.

When the Senate conferees showed the bill to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, we’re told he praised it as one of the more significant achievements of the session. On the House side, however, Speaker Glenn Richardson stomped that sucker flat, telling his folks to end negotiations.

Now, why would the Speaker have done such a thing – especially since he was one of the biggest promoters of a state trauma network? His office didn’t return my calls. But he had threatened repeatedly from the well throughout the last day to stifle other legislation unless he saw movement on his tax bill.

As one lawmaker explained it: “The conventional wisdom at the Capitol was that Richardson held everything up because his tax bill didn’t pass the Senate.”

What’s the cost of failing to establish a trauma network? Well, look at it this way: The fatality rate from traumatic injury is 10 percent higher in Georgia than the national average. That comes down to about 700 deaths a year that could have been prevented with adequate trauma care.

Until the trauma network is fully funded, that’s a high price to pay to satisfy one man’s ego.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP: Memphis crumbles, Mario Chalmers hits the shot of his life and Kansas wins in OT.

GRADY EXPECTATIONS: Robert M. Woodruff Foundation gives $200 million cash donation to the ailing hospital to keep it afloat as power is transferred.

THE LONGEST YARD: Michael Vick initiates mail correspondence with Arthur Blank, telling the Falcons owner he’s playing football in prison and washing pots and pans for 12 cents an hour.

FLIPPING A BIRD? Unnamed active Falcons player is subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in NFL performance-enhancing drug investigation.

SPRING BREAK! Despite having made almost no progress in the quest to meet SACS’s nine accreditation-hinging mandates, Clayton County Schools administration is taking its scheduled five days off for spring break like everyone else in the school system. Meanwhile, the interim superintendent pleads for leniency.

IT TOLLS FOR FEE: I-85 OTP could be getting optional toll lanes to ease traffic congestion, possibly as far north as I-985.

STONY BURKE: Lobbyist with vaguely subdivisionesque name is tapped as Southern Co.’s new “director of federal legislative meddling affairs.”

LAKE LANIER: Will be the site of Canadian Olympic trials next month, presumably for its mud-racing team.

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Sen. Eric Johnson, the General Assembly’s Senate president pro tem, has a nifty way of looking at things. Be it abortion, health care, or even rape, the architect-cum-politico has a way with words that rivals even the most knuckleheaded of legislators.

“Since it went into effect in May of 2005, the [state Department of Human Resources] reports that between 32,500 and 40,500 women have talked to their doctors about an abortion. After that conversation and the information provided to them by this law, approximately 10,000 chose to carry their babies to term. In addition, 2,300 minors considered terminating their pregnancy and only 500 did so. So we saved about 11,800 babies so far. Pretty neat, huh?”

— Johnson displays subjective mathematic skills on an Oct. 13 PeachPundit.com post about the “success” of a new law that requires women seeking an abortion to wait 24 hours and be informed of the procedure’s “medical risks … and status of the life in their womb” prior to receiving one.

“Just thinking out loud, we ought to look at — what if Grady ceased to exist? Maybe something better would come along. I think the burden’s on them to convince those that they want to receive funding from that the problems are being resolved. Otherwise, we might just test the capacity of other health care providers in the region.”

— Johnson’s comments during a Sept. 25 press conference on the prospect of losing Grady Memorial Hospital, one of the largest public health systems in the country and home to the state’s only poison center.

“It’s a rape in my mind.”

Johnson’s Feb. 16 explanation to CNN anchor Rick Sanchez on why he said Genarlow Wilson raped an unconscious girl at a party when, after viewing a video of the incident, the jury and prosecutors said the girl was conscious and the sex consensual.

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It would seem that no longer being responsible for leading the state Senate has been a liberating experience for Sen. Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, who recently has been free in sharing his unsolicited opinions on the issues of the day. Last week, EJ ruffled feathers with his musings that maybe Grady Memorial Hospital should curl up and die.
This morning, he released a statement criticizing a Wednesday ruling by Fulton Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller that the government should dig deeper between the couch cushions to find the money to give accused courthouse shooter Brian Nichols a fair trial:

“Taxpayers should not be required to pay millions of dollars to defend a guy who killed a judge, a court reporter, and two law enforcement officers. Let’s be honest. This isn’t about justice. This is a backdoor attempt to end the death penalty by bankrupting the public defenders budget. Judge Fuller has found the taxpayers guilty without a trial.”

I have to admit some ambivalence on this one. Not about Johnson’s ridiculous claim that the judge is trying to kill Georgia’s death penalty (although Bill Shipp suspects that may the goal of the defense team). But the defense effort for Nichols has always seemed a little like preparations for a show trial whose purpose is not to determine guilt but to showcase the glorious impartiality of American jurisprudence.

Would it really be so terrible if Nichols got justice at a Costco price?

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Grady Memorial Hospital is sick.

The state’s largest public hospital, its biggest resource for indigent care, its most sophisticated trauma center, its only poison center and its most significant physician-training facility faces a major budget shortfall. Some say Grady could be shuttered by year’s end.

On Monday, nearly 200 people showed up at a Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority board meeting about Grady, which, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, was far more crowded — and emotionally charged — than anticipated. The attendees demanded that a full public dialog about the embattled hospital take place. Soon.

According to the Business Chronicle’s account of the meeting:

Several times, Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority Chairwoman Pam Stephenson was forced to defend her board’s actions over the past several months. She pledged a round of public hearings about Grady’s future would begin in coming weeks.

Amid criticism the board had excluded the public, Stephenson said, “we are not that arrogant and not that inconsiderate.

So they’re just a little arrogant and inconsiderate?

Here are the details for the public hearings Stephenson, who is also a state rep, promised. Both Stephenson and Otis Story, president and CEO of Grady and vice chairman of the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority, will be on hand to answer questions.

• Sat., Aug. 18, 11:30 a.m. Tucker Middle School, 2160 Idlewood Road, Tucker.
• Tues., Aug. 21, 7 p.m. Maloof Auditorium, 1300 Commerce Drive, Decatur.
• Thurs., Aug. 23, 7 p.m. St. Philip AME Church Family Life Center, 240 Candler Road.

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