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Peoria Journal Star Editorial--February 14, 2012

2012-02-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

Peoria Journal Star Editorial--February 14, 2012

From a public health and personal freedom perspective, those who wish to engage in family planning should be able to do so, with the intricacies that go into that decision a fundamentally private matter. From a religious liberty view, churches and their affiliates should not be required by government to do things that violate their consciences.

Between those walls one hoped the president could find room for an accommodation regarding his wishes for free access to insurance coverage for contraception that would, if not make everybody happy, at least compel them to return the swords to their scabbards. Religious leaders, most vocally America's Catholic bishops, had objected to the initial mandate, arguing that it was contrary to their moral convictions and a First Amendment that begins, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."

President Obama thought a workable compromise had been found last week, announcing he would pursue a policy that, like Hawaii's, targets insurance companies rather than employers so that "religious organizations won't have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly." Some of those straddling this divide had wondered aloud why the White House hadn't gone that route in the first place.

Of course, it hit a brick wall with opponents, who found the wording a bit too careful. The bishops have no intention of participating, directly or indirectly, in any practice they consider an evil. Providing access to abortifacients falls into that category for them. "There are two other branches of government that may treat our concerns more seriously," said a spokesman.

In short, this fight is a long way from over. Sigh.

The battle lines are drawn, and this page has heard ... and heard ... and heard from both camps. Some observations:

"It's not about contraception," said GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum. "It's about economic liberty." It's disingenuous to say it's not about contraception. How many times have the bishops said recently that "pregnancy is not a disease"? One doubts this uproar would have accompanied a government command to provide flu vaccines.

The White House has been quick to note that 28 states already have similar measures, and eight don't even exempt churches. So why hasn't this fuss been raised before? Church leaders will forgive those who ask, as the director of the admittedly progressive Catholics United group did, whether the opposition "serve(s) the interests of a political agenda, not the needs of the American people."Even for those who believe in a strict, constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state - though all too conveniently most tend not to explore both sides of that coin - no religious organization has carte blanche. Unfortunately, in recent memory great damage was done to the church, diminishing its moral authority, when some in its hierarchy failed to recognize their obligations to notify and cooperate with civil authorities as crimes against children were committed within their ranks. No right is absolute.

On the flip side, Obama seemed flabbergasted and frustrated by the original firestorm. One is surprised he was surprised in this hyper-charged, hyper-partisan environment. He and others want to argue that hospitals, schools and social service agencies don't necessarily further a religious mission. That's debatable, especially in parochial schools that educate children not only in the three Rs but in the faith. The president also seems to subscribe to the myth that he can declare something "free" and magically, it becomes so. If someone is getting contraceptives for nothing, someone else - the employer, other health care consumers - is subsidizing them.
Yes, some religious institutions already provide this coverage to employees. Doctors affiliated with Peoria's Catholic hospital can prescribe oral contraceptives for patients, though it must be made clear they're "acting separately from OSF." If some institutions are in noncompliance with the bishops' current stance, that's also an argument for letting the marketplace work. The fair counter is that but for government intervention historically, many reproductive and other health care procedures for women might never have been covered.
One also is told that polling shows most Americans on the White House's side, that these institutions employ people of many faiths who are not obligated to subscribe to the beliefs of their employer, that 98 percent of U.S. adult women have used contraception. To which one might respond that constitutional rights are not subordinate to public opinion; that no one has a constitutional right to a job; and if that's so, what's the access problem in need of being resolved? Finally, disagreement exists on whether some of these contraceptives are abortifacients. That depends on how you define a pregnancy; there's not enough space left to get into that.
All in all, this page continues to believe the White House overstepped at first. Beyond that, one agrees with the bishops' first-blush reaction to the compromise - later retracted - that this was a "step in the right direction." Regardless, between the "war on religion" and the "war on women" camps, there may be no bridging this divide.
We settle political disputes in America legislatively, to be sure, but ultimately through the courts and elections. Fortunately, both those opportunities present themselves this year. We'll just have to see those processes through.

My comment:

I appreciate the Journal Star devoting so much time to the issue of President Obama vs. the Catholic Church and religious liberties. Legal scholars are necessary who can debate all sides of this important issue. And legislation needs to occur to settle the issue.

Many politicians are considered sincere and many are not. Same with Catholic Bishops.

It has seemed strange to me that the Catholic Diocese of Peoria seems to be talking out of both sides of their mouth. The Journal Star editorial this morning states that Bishops have no intention of participating directly or indirectly in any practice they consider evil.

Does Bishop Jenky view oral contraceptive use as evil?

Two weeks ago Bishop Jenky wrote that Catholic institutions should not have to cover oral contraceptives in their insurance plans. But at the same time, the Diocese and OSF still concur on a policy that they designed over 15 years ago which allows OSF physicians to prescribe oral contraceptives from OSF offices for OSF patients throughout the entire OSF Health Care System. And they did this to keep OSF competitive in the medical marketplace.

The Journal Star editorial this morning states:

Yes, some religious institutions already provide this coverage to employees. Doctors affiliated with Peoria's Catholic hospital can prescribe oral contraceptives for patients, though it must be made clear they're 'acting separately from OSF.'

I really doubt that OSFs patients who go to their OSF doctor at an OSF office and come out with their oral contraceptives understand that OSF is not responsible for this.

It seems to me that there is cooperation in a direct or indirect way here from the Diocese who could stop this coverage if they really wanted to. Bishop Jenky cannot tell the Sisters at OSF what color to paint Saint Francis Medical Center, but he can intervene at OSF on matters of morals and faith.

If it means that OSF-SFMC needs to lose its tax exempt status and not accept federal funds to be a Catholic hospital more than in name only, maybe that is what should happen. It sure would take some of the pressure off of Bishop Jenky and he would not have to cooperate with evil. The Diocese may lose the financial support of OSF, but legally and morally the Diocese would be doing the right thing.

John A. Carroll, MD
West Peoria

Does the Illinois Catholic Health Association Know about OSF and the Catholic Diocese of Peoria?

2012-02-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

Officials at two major Roman Catholic policy groups expressed fears Friday that President Barack Obama's revised health insurance mandate still poses a moral quandary because it could override an exemption in Illinois law that allows Catholic institutions to avoid offering birth control to their employees.

"It forces us back into a position that we find untenable," said Patrick Cacchione, executive director of the Illinois Catholic Health Association. "We're not going to pay or provide or participate in something that we think is immoral."

My question to Mr. Cacchione is: "What do you think about OSF and the Diocese of Peoria and their policy which allows OSF physicians to prescribe oral contraceptives? Do you think that is participating in something immoral?"

Peoria Fire Department Station 20 is Paramedic!! The Fact that this is News is a Big Problem....

2012-02-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

This article appeared on the PJS website a few minutes ago---

PEORIA —

A second Peoria Fire Department engine is now equipped with life-saving drugs and firefighters trained to use them during an emergency thanks to a joint public-private partnership.

Engine 20 has gained Advanced Life Support Service designation and is the second engine in three years to do so, Peoria Fire Department Chief Kent Tomblin said. Engine 12 initiated the program locally three years ago.

"We respond to all emergencies in the city with basic life support," Tomblin said. "But advanced life support . . . means we can now administer life saving drugs."

The engines equipped with the systems are strategically stationed in areas where life saving potential can be maximized, Tomblin said. Additional engines may be upgraded in the future as the need arises, he added.

"We have pinpointed these areas as places where we need to get to people with life-saving drugs as quick as we can," he said.

Those drugs include treatment for coronary issues, as well as diabetes and seizures among other common, life-threatening ailments. Engine 20 in particular is well situated to deal with a higher frequency of coronary emergency calls, Tomblin said.

The upgrade has been coordinated with the city's private ambulance service, Advanced Medical Transport, which provides the drugs and training to firefighters free of charge.

"By working together, all the citizens are benefiting from it," Tomblin said. "It's good for the citizens, it's good for the hospitals, and it's good for medical care."

Matt Buedel can be reached at 686-3154 or mbuedel@pjstar.com.

------------

My comments and questions:

1. How can this be happening? We were told for years by OSF's Dr. George Hevesy and Dr. Rick Miller and AMT's Executive Director Andrew Rand that the Peoria Fire Department needed to stay out of the paramedic business. Were they wrong? Why were they not quoted in the JS article? Hevesy, Miller, and Rand for a decade assured all Peorians that everything was good...Chief Tomblin is implying above that advanced life support is better than basic life support. Gee whiz, what is going on here?

2. I hope AMT does not get charged with Medicare fraud again and get fined 2 million dollars by the Feds again. The three hospitals in Peoria paid $750,000 dollars a piece to pay the fine. And taxpayers like you and me were helping paying AMT's inflated rates at the time.

3. And the PFD still can't transport patients to local emergency departments. That is where the real money is made. AMT does that in Peoria and makes tons of money for the transport. The patient can just wait no matter how sick or how injured they are.

4. See this post and this post

5. And please see this post from a few years ago.

Peoria Firefighters to be Paramedics

2012-02-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

I heard from a good source recently that during the next four years, in order to be hired by the Peoria Fire Department, fire-fighter applicants must become Paramedics.

This is interesting.

We were told for years by our local medical powers that there was no need for the Peoria Fire Department (PFD) to provide Paramedic services. But now Engines 12 and 20 are both Paramedic 24/7. And they cover areas that Advanced Medical Transport (AMT) tells them to cover. In other words, areas where AMT Paramedics may have a slow arrival to a 911 call.

This is nice that the PFD is bailing out AMT when we were told at Peoria city council meetings that there was no need to have the PFD performing advanced life support for the people of Peoria. We were told that everything was ok.

I don't think it was ok.

Most likely AMT and the Peoria medical centers that support AMT have something financial to gain here, or the PFD would have remained at Basic Life Support with no transport rigs. (The PFD still cannot transport patients to local emergency departments...not even trauma patients whose lives depend on rapid transport.)

And now what will all the excess PFD Paramedics do when they arrive on the scene of a medical call? If they are not from Engines 12 and 20 will these PFD Paramedics be allowed to use their skills to save lives, or will they have to wait for AMT to arrive BEFORE advanced life support can be implemented for the patient in extremis?

Violation of Conscience

2012-02-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

I wrote the following Journal Star Forum article and sent it to the Journal Star on January 1, 2012. This was published (after a small revision by me) on January 28, 2012.

Forum: Bishop's stance on contraceptives disingenuous

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There is much in the media lately regarding the Obama administration and Catholic medical centers' religious conscience. Now Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky has urged Catholics to oppose the new health law that requires insurance plans to cover contraceptives.

However, 15 years ago the Catholic Diocese of Peoria and OSF created and implemented a policy which allows OSF physicians to prescribe oral contraceptives for hundreds of thousands of OSF patients. The Diocese and OSF were not worried about exemption based on religious conscience when they constructed these moral loopholes. They were worried about OSF's bottom line as OSF purchased medical practices and hired hundreds of new physicians.

Doesn't it seem disingenuous now for Bishop Jenky to claim that the Diocese is in a religious liberty battle with the Obama administration over Catholic institutions' health plans being mandated to cover oral contraceptives?

It is time for the Diocese and OSF to decide whether OSF should remain Catholic.

John A. Carroll, M.D.

West Peoria

During the week of January 20, Bishop Jenky released a letter to the laity of the Diocese of Peoria stating how we needed to fight for religious conscience and to oppose President Obama's new mandate.

I am glad that Bishop Jenky supports the First Amendment and religious conscience, but I disagree with the Diocesan/OSF policy allowing OSF physicians to prescribe oral contraceptives. It seems like the Diocese preempted the Obama Administration by about 15 years.

Should OSF continue to be Catholic? What would happen if OSF refused to take federal funds and gave up its tax exempt status? Would OSF survive? Would OSF become more like it was when the founding Sisters established it as "St. Francis Hospital" over a century ago? Hopefully it would become a real Catholic medical center rather than a nominally Catholic medical center like it is now. And the Diocese and OSF could do away with their own oral contraceptive policy that they created which always seemed scandalous and laughable.

President Obama will probably back down some on his mandate. And some sort of loophole will be created which will allows Catholic medical centers to create an insurance rider which will provide oral contraceptives for their employees. And the Catholic Bishops will accept this in a "begrudging" fashion. And all will be just like....Peoria.

The following link is the PJS editorial from yesterday (2/9/2012).

http://www.pjstar.com/opinions/ourview/x1085185303/Our-View-Obama-should-back-off-contraception-mandate

Mike Miller's Religion Blog in the Peoria Journal Star

2012-02-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

See this post.

Anniversary

2011-12-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago last week my relationship with OSF-SFMC ended. It was really a shame for so many reasons. I had worked at OSF for twenty years and really believed in the Sister's Mission. I just loved the place.

I wrote this letter to OSF-SFMC CEO Keith Steffen in September, 2001.

As the letter and post explains, I was worried about the safety of the patients in the OSF-SFMC Emergency Department. In my opinion, the patients were waiting too long in the Emergency Department to be admitted to the hospital.

I was put on probation the day after I wrote the letter. Mr. Steffen told me that "when you have a cancer somewhere, you need to cut it out before it spreads". And over the next several months (October and November, 2001) Mr. Steffen would smile, look down, and say to me "when this comes out about you, John, it won't be good." He was obviously up to no good while both the Emergency Department patient satisfaction and employee satisfaction were the worst at OSF.

Five years ago Mr. Steffen stated in the Journal Star that the Emergency Department would be expanded because OSF was seeing 62,000 patients per year in SFMC-Emergency Department that was built to see 32,000 patients. The entire patient waiting problem was not just the Emergency Department over crowding. The hospital was poorly run and rooms were not available to accept sick Emergency Department patients who needed admission in a timely fashion.

The article below, published in Academic Emergency Medicine in 2011, describes how patient mortality and hospital length of stay increases when patients are kept ("boarded") in the Emergency Department for prolonged periods of time.

Now in 2011 "Occupy America" is a big thing. The 99% are saying that the 1% have not done things in a moral way.

And nurses unions around the country are striking for the same reasons. The nurses worry about patient care being poor due to corporate greed. This is not really "news" but is spoken about more openly now than it was a decade ago.

This is what happened at OSF in my opinion. Emergency Department patients just didn't count compared to OSF's bottom line.

Please see article below.

Acad Emerg Med. 2011; 18(12):1324-9 (ISSN: 1553-2712)

Singer AJ ; Thode HC ; Viccellio P ; Pines JM

From the Department of Emergency Medicine, Stony Brook University (AJS, HCT, PV), Stony Brook, NY; the Department of Emergency Medicine, George Washington University School of Medicine, and the Department of Health Policy, George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Sciences (JMP), Washington, DC.

Objectives: Emergency department (ED) boarding has been associated with several negative patient-oriented outcomes, from worse satisfaction to higher inpatient mortality rates. The current study evaluates the association between length of ED boarding and outcomes. The authors expected that prolonged ED boarding of admitted patients would be associated with higher mortality rates and longer hospital lengths of stay (LOS).

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study set at a suburban academic ED with an annual ED census of 90,000 visits. Consecutive patients admitted to the hospital from the ED and discharged between October 2005 and September 2008 were included. An electronic medical record (EMR) system was used to extract patient demographics, ED disposition (discharge, admit to floor), ED and hospital LOS, and in-hospital mortality. Boarding was defined as ED LOS 2 hours or more after decision for admission. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the association between length of ED boarding and hospital LOS, subsequent transfer to an intensive care unit (ICU), and mortality controlling for comorbidities.

Results: There were 41,256 admissions from the ED. Mortality generally increased with increasing boarding time, from 2.5% in patients boarded less than 2 hours to 4.5% in patients boarding 12 hours or more (p < 0.001). Mean hospital LOS also showed an increase with boarding time (p < 0.001), from 5.6 days (SD ± 11.4 days) for those who stayed in the ED for less than 2 hours to 8.7 days (SD ± 16.3 days) for those who boarded for more than 24 hours. The increases were still apparent after adjustment for comorbid conditions and other factors.

Conclusions: Hospital mortality and hospital LOS are associated with length of ED boarding. ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE 2011; 18:1324-1329 © 2011 by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.

New York Nurses May Strike

2011-12-15T19:39:00.001-08:00

The New York Times reports tonight that thousands of registered nurses in three New York City hospitals may go on strike.

[The nurses, who voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, say they are being disrespected by a corporate hospital culture that demands sacrifices from patients and those who provide their care, but pays executives millions of dollars. Management officials defend executive pay as the price of competition for top leadership, and accuse the nurses of refusing what many other American workers have accepted: paying a share of their health insurance premiums, along with higher co-payments, deductibles and prescription costs.]

I would hate to see more patient deaths due to a nursing strike and that is what could happen. If you are really sick, you better have a skilled and caring nurse.

The execs at OSF-Corporate in Peoria are paid immense salaries. And OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center Keith Steffen told me that if nurses want to leave OSF that is fine with him. Something seems very wrong headed here.

There is no nurses union at OSF in Peoria. Steffen has strongly discouraged one from forming. And I thought the Catholic Church would support a nurses union in Peoria...

George is Out

2011-11-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

Dr. George Hevesy was voted out as Chairman of the Emergency Department at OSF in Peoria.

There are about thirty attending physicians who work in the ED now and their vote several months ago was not even close. Dr. Dick Frederick became the new Chairman.

Dr. Hevesy is still the Director of the Emergency Department. This is an appointed position by OSF Administration. So Keith Steffen, CEO at OSF, still supports George even though George's fellow colleagues overwhelmingly do not. This vote of no confidence in George was a long time coming. However, as I have documented many times in this blog and in Peoria's Medical Mafia, fear plays a big role in how things are done at OSF.

There were many reasons why George fell from his position. The Sisters have been protected from knowing too much about their own hospital, which is a shame. I think OSF Administration knows much about the concept of "plausible deniability" and understands how to use it effectively to keep the Sisters in the dark.

Dr. Hevesy is no longer EMS Director at OSF, but due to the fact that he is still Director of the ED, he controls the physician who is EMS Medical Director in his department. Peoria Area EMS, based at OSF, has about 60 agencies which they control. Advanced Medical Transport (AMT) is one of these agencies. And AMT is the only paramedic/transport agency in Peoria. Dr. Hevesy still receives a handsome salary from AMT and from OSF.

It won't be long before Dr. Hevesy is no longer Director of the ED at OSF. His utility at OSF is diminishing.

Keith Steffen, CEO at OSF, doesn't have much time left at OSF either. Keith, my unsolicited advice for you is to ditch George as Emergency Department Director while you still have the chance. No one will think worse of you...

In my opinion if Peorians knew the real details at our Catholic hospital both men would have been gone long ago.

Doing the Ethical Thing

2011-11-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Carroll

From the New York Times--November 19, 2011:

Here’s another way we deceive ourselves. Most of us say we admire people who stand up for what’s right (or what is eventually shown to be right), especially when they are strong enough to stick to their guns in the face of strenuous opposition.

But again, research shows that’s not necessarily true. In “When Groups are Wrong and Deviants are Right,” published last year in The European Journal of Social Psychology, Australian academics argue that group members are often hostile to people who buck conformity, even if the members later agree with the dissenter.

Even when, say, a whistle-blower may prove to be correct, she is not always admired or accepted back into the fold, the academics found. Rather, the group may still feel angry that the whistle-blower damaged its cohesion.

Philip G. Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and author of numerous books including, “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil” (Random House, 2007), has spent a lifetime studying moral degradation. In 1971, Professor Zimbardo set up the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, where the college student “guards” turned sadistic in a very short time, denying food, water and sleep to the student “prisoners,” shooting them with spray from fire extinguishers and stripping them naked.

Professor Zimbardo has classified evil activity in three categories: individual (a few bad apples), situational (a bad barrel of apples) or systemic (bad barrel makers).

“The majority of people can get seduced across the line of good and evil in a very short period of time by a variety of circumstances that they’re usually not aware of — coercion, anonymity, dehumanization,” he said. “We don’t want to accept the notion because it attacks our concept of the dignity of human nature.”

While it may be easy to give up in the face of such discouraging findings, the point, Professor Zimbardo and others say, is to make people conscious of what is known about how and why people are so willing to behave badly — and then use that information to create an environment for good.

Professor Zimbardo, for example, has established the Heroic Imagination Project. Already in some California schools, the project has students watch the Stanford Prison Experiment and similar ones about obedience to authority to teach how individuals can recognize the power of such situations and still act heroically.

He says he hopes to bring his project into the wider world of business and the military.

Although no one thinks it’s an easy task, Professor Zimbardo is not alone in his faith that people can be taught, and even induced, to do the right thing.

“I am a true believer that we can create environments to act ethically,” Professor Gino said. “It just might take a heavier hand.”

Mobility in Society

2011-11-08T06:05:00.001-08:00

Time magazine (November 14, 2011) has a good article on social mobility in society. They site education, technology, health care, and the market as some of the factors playing important roles.

Time concludes:

"A large body of academic research shows that inequality and lack of social mobility hurt not just those at the bottom, they hurt everyone. Unequal societies have lower levels of trust, higher levels of anxiety and more illness. They have arguably less stable economies: International Monetary Fund research shows that countries like the U.S. and the U.K. are more prone to boom-and-bust cycles. And they are ultimately at risk for social instability."

Oligarchy

2011-11-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

A decade ago I started thinking that OSF in Peoria had lost its way.

I thought that money had become more important to the hospital than patients.

I was afraid that they would let my Haitian patients die, and they have. And I thought that the ambulance monopoly in Peoria served the high end CEO's, not the people of central Illinois.

Leslie Moore of Metamora, Illinois wrote this in the Forum of the Peoria Journal Star on November 5, 2011:

"Early criticism of the corporate business structure have been offered by prominent persons this way: Peorian Robert Ingersoll said, "Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne." "

Today's New York Times columnist David Krugman writes on the difference between those who have and those who don't in our society. Krugman feels that this difference is very dangerous to our society.

Please see the following few paragraphs from Krugman:

The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong.

If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent — the richest thousandth of Americans, who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent over the period from 1979 to 2005.

Who’s in that top 0.1 percent? Are they heroic entrepreneurs creating jobs? No, for the most part, they’re corporate executives. Recent research shows that around 60 percent of the top 0.1 percent either are executives in nonfinancial companies or make their money in finance, i.e., Wall Street broadly defined. Add in lawyers and people in real estate, and we’re talking about more than 70 percent of the lucky one-thousandth.

But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?

Some pundits are still trying to dismiss concerns about rising inequality as somehow foolish. But the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.

Crony Capitalism (Updated)

2011-11-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

William Cellini from Springfield was found guilty last week in a courtroom in Chicago. It is the same courtroom that ex-Governor Blagojevich was found guilty in a couple of months ago.

The Peoria Journal Star had this editorial on the Cellini conviction.

I am sure Cellini has well heeled supporters not only in Springfield and Chicago but in Peoria too. See this article in the Peoria Journal Star.

And John Kass, the Tribune columnist has been following friendships from Peoria with Cellini for several years. See this Kass column too which was written last week after Cellini was found guilty.

Michelle Malkin is kind of rough on our leadership and its love of crony capitalism also.

Did ex-Governor Blagojevich's 400 million dollar loan from the Illinois Finance Authority to OSF in Peoria happen because he was so interested in health care in Peoria? In retrospect, it does not seem like Blago did much of anything for "free".

The entire lot of them--Blago, Rezko, Levine, Cellini, and others closer to home do seem pathetic now. But the Illinois taxpayer has been burned.

The article below by Michael Tarm/The Associated Press is about Tony Rezko trying to get out of prison.

jc

-------------
November 3, 2011

CHICAGO —

A convicted political fixer and onetime fundraiser for impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich wants a federal judge to set him free at his sentencing hearing later this month, arguing that he has already served more time awaiting sentencing — and under harsh conditions — than others convicted in related schemes have or expect to.

Tony Rezko — once described by prosecutors as "the man behind the curtain, pulling the strings" in Blagojevich's administration — has spent much of his more than 3 1/2 years in jail in solitary, rarely getting fresh air and subject to a diet that has resulted in him losing 80 pounds, according to a defense filing unsealed Thursday.

"With his dramatic weight loss, Mr. Rezko has shrunk from a robust, somewhat overweight man to a frail and gaunt shell of his former self," the filing says.

In arguing for a sentence of time served, the document insists the 56-year-old Rezko accepts responsibility for his wrongdoing. But it also hastens to suggest Rezko didn't engage in criminality on his own initiative but at the urging of Blagojevich and his other confidants.

"When Mr. Rezko stepped across the proverbial line, he did so at the direction of Rod Blagojevich, he did so with the knowledge and encouragement of Blagojevich's closest advisers," it says, adding Rezko was "shocked" when the newly elected governor asked him to explore ways to profit from his state decisions.

Rezko's name was mentioned frequently during Blagojevich's initial trial and his retrial, which ended with a jury convicting the ousted governor of corruption including trying to sell or trade President Barack Obama's old Senate seat. Blagojevich's sentencing was postponed and a new date hasn't been set.

Rezko also raised campaign funds for Obama, who has never been accused in the case of any wrongdoing. The filing also notes Rezko's past connection to Obama.

The sympathetic portrayal of Rezko in the defense filing as a family man and eager philanthropist contrasts with the picture painted by prosecutors at his trial of a ruthless schemer with no qualms about using his access to the levers of power for personal profit.

A jury convicted Rezko in 2008 on 16 of 24 corruption counts, including fraud for scheming to squeeze campaign contributions or kickbacks from firms seeking state business. Several counts carry maximum terms of 20 years.

Rezko's sentencing before U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve is set for Nov. 22. Prosecutors are expected to offer their own recommended sentence in a court filing within a matter of days.

More than a dozen co-conspirators have been convicted since authorities launched an investigation of the Democratic governor's administration nearly a decade ago. Most never went to trial, choosing to cut plea deals that call for drastically reduced prison terms.

Rezko's lawyers singled out co-conspirator Stuart Levine, who pleaded guilty to money laundering and fraud. He agreed to testify against Rezko in exchange for a recommended prison term of 5 1/2 years. He has been free on bond as he awaits sentencing.

"Mr. Rezko has already served nearly as much time in jail as will one of the most despicable career fraudsters ever to darken the halls of the federal building," the filing said about Levine.

The crimes Levine pleaded guilty to, the filing continues, are a fraction of the crimes the former state board member has actually admitted to — most of which Rezko played no role in. Levine has admitted to abusing illegal drugs over three decades, the document adds.

Even though he wasn't asked to testify at any either of Blagojevich's two trials, Rezko's lawyers say he had been more than willing to. They say in the filing that Rezko provided enough detail to investigators of wrongdoing in Blagojevich's administration to fill 360 pages.

St. Eve delayed an October sentencing date for Rezko to avoid a conflict with the trial of businessman and political powerbroker William Cellini. He was convicted this week of conspiring with Rezko and two others in 2004 to extort a Hollywood producer for a $1.5 million campaign donation to Blagojevich.

A notice on the court's website did not say why St. Eve decided this week to unseal the defense filing, which was submitted in September. But she issued the order just one day after Cellini's trial ended.

Two More Haitian Hearts Patients to the Dominican Republic

2011-11-02T14:59:00.001-07:00

Last year, while working at Hopital Lumiere in Bon Fin, I examined a number of patients with heart problems.

One of the heart patients was three year old Charles. He had a loud systolic murmur over his upper left sternal border and he was anemic.

I sent Charles and his mother to Port-au-Prince with a check from Haitian Hearts to obtain a formal echocardiogram.

Charles echo showed that he has severe pulmonary stenosis with a gradient across the valve of 80 mm Hg. This valve could be opened in the cath lab with a balloon or, if necessary, by an open surgical procedure to expand the valve area.

The second patient was seven year old Naika. She weighed 33 pounds.

Naika had a loud "wash machine" type murmur all over her chest. Her chest x-ray revealed a large heart due to too much blood circulation through a large congenital heart defect called "patent ductus arteriosus".

Haitian Hearts sent Naika to the capital too and her echocardiogram confirmed this diagnosis. Her lesion could possibly be closed in the cath lab as well, or she could have an open procedure without needing bypass. But she definitely needed a procedure because she is in volume overloaded heart failure.

So now what was I supposed to do?

Both of these kids are good surgical candidates and both deserve surgery. But they live deep in rural Haiti, have no money, and OSF administration in Peoria definitely will not accept these kids from Haitian Hearts. Charles and Naika are not covered by OSF's Catholic Mission Philosophy even though it states that OSF will turn no one away regardless of race, religion, or ability to pay. (Haitian Hearts would offer $10,000 for each case.)

So I wrote their names down on my Haitian Hearts "master list", brought their echocardiograms and chest x-rays back to Peoria with me, and kept my eyes and ears open for medical centers that may accept them.

Amazingly, this spring, Chadasha Foundation contacted Haitian Hearts and asked if we had any Haitian kids that needed heart surgery! We always have a "bunch" of babies, toddlers, kids, teenagers, and young adults who need surgery.

Well, Charles and Naika, are on their way this week to the Dominican Republic for heart surgery.

Many thanks to Angela, Chris, Clint, Judy, Gettie, and Miss Beth for helping make this happen.

Exterior Authority

2011-11-02T07:48:00.001-07:00

"From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day."

Leo Tolstoy

Sobering Statistics

2011-10-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

Haiti: A History of Poverty and Poor Health

Haiti has extremely poor health indices. The life expectancy at birth is 61 years (9), and the estimated IMR (Infant Mortality Rate) is 64 per 1,000 live births, the highest in the Western Hemisphere. An estimated 87 of every 1,000 children born die by the age of 5 years (9), and >25% of surviving children experience chronic undernutrition or stunted growth (10). Maternal mortality rate is 630 per 100,000 live births (10).

Haitians are at risk of spreading vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio and measles, because childhood vaccination coverage is low (59%) for polio, measles-rubella, and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccines (9). Prevalence of adult HIV infection (1.9%) and tuberculosis (312 cases per 100,000 population) in the Western Hemisphere is also highest in Haiti (11,12), and Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, is the only Caribbean island where malaria remains endemic (13).

Only half of the Haitian population has access to health care because of poverty and a shortage of health care professionals (1 physician and 1.8 nurses per 10,000 population), and only one fourth of seriously ill persons are taken to a health facility (14). Before the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, only 63% of Haiti’s population had access to an improved drinking water source (e.g., water from a well or pipe), and only 17% had access to a latrine (15).

Emerging Infectious Diseases

Template Medicine

2011-10-20T06:40:00.000-07:00

See this post from KevinMD.com.

The Emergency Room Reflects Your Hospital and Community

2011-10-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

New England Journal of Medicine
June 16, 2011

"The ER is more than a hospital department. It's a “room with a view” of our health care system.5 The quickest way to assess the strength of a community's public health, primary care, and hospital systems is to spend a few hours in the emergency department. If public health is under-resourced, you will see more patients with vaccine-preventable illnesses, smoking-related health problems, preventable injuries, and foodborne diseases than you otherwise would.

If primary care is fragmented or weak, the ER's waiting room will be full of patients with problems that should have been prevented or treated by primary care providers.

If the hospital's administration is not adept at managing the flow of patients, the ER's exam rooms, resuscitation bays, and hallways will be packed with ill and injured patients, many of whom were stabilized and admitted hours earlier but now have nowhere to go."

Hospitals Put Emergency Department Patients at Risk

2011-10-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago at OSF-SFMC in Peoria I thought my Emergency Room (ER) patients were at risk. I thought the system was stacked with elective admissions who were trumping my sick patients waiting in the ER.

See this article from Emergency Medicine News.

I thought that medicine had become more about business than taking care of patients.

This article, written by an academic surgeon in California, states the same. He lost his mother to the "system".

When You are Sick, Do You Want to be Checked by Your Provider or Your Doctor? And do you want to be the Consumer or the Patient?

2011-10-14T16:15:00.001-07:00

See the paragraphs below from this weeks New England Journal of Medicine.

The words we use to explain our roles are powerful. They set expectations and shape behavior. This change in the language of medicine has important and deleterious consequences. The relationships between doctors, nurses, or any other medical professionals and the patients they care for are now cast primarily in terms of a commercial transaction. The consumer or customer is the buyer, and the provider is the vendor or seller. To be sure, there is a financial aspect to clinical care. But that is only a small part of a much larger whole, and to people who are sick, it's the least important part.

The words “consumer” and “provider” are reductionist; they ignore the essential psychological, spiritual, and humanistic dimensions of the relationship — the aspects that traditionally made medicine a “calling,” in which altruism overshadowed personal gain. Furthermore, the term “provider” is deliberately and strikingly generic, designating no specific role or type or level of expertise.

Each medical professional — doctor, nurse, physical therapist, social worker, and more — has specialized training and skills that are not recognized by the all-purpose term “provider,” which carries no resonance of professionalism. There is no hint of the role of doctor as teacher with special knowledge to help the patient understand the reasons for his or her malady and the possible ways of remedying it, no honoring of the work of the nurse as a nurturer with unique expertise whose close care is essential to healing. Rather, the generic term “provider” suggests that doctors and nurses and all other medical professionals are interchangeable. “Provider” also signals that care is fundamentally a prepackaged commodity on a shelf that is “provided” to the “consumer,” rather than something personalized and dynamic, crafted by skilled professionals and tailored to the individual patient.

When we ourselves are ill, we want someone to care about us as people, not as paying customers, and to individualize our treatment according to our values. Despite the lip service paid to “patient-centered care” by the forces promulgating the new language of medicine, their discourse shifts the focus from the good of the individual to the exigencies of the system and its costs. Marketplace and industrial terms may be useful to economists, but this vocabulary should not redefine our profession. “Customer,” “consumer,” and “provider” are words that do not belong in teaching rounds and the clinic. We believe doctors, nurses, and others engaged in care should eschew the use of such terms that demean patient and professional alike and dangerously neglect the essence of medicine.

Empathy

2011-09-30T07:52:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

New York Times
David Brooks
September 30, 2011

"Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments. In a culture that is inarticulate about moral categories and touchy about giving offense, teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem virtuous without risking controversy or hurting anybody’s feelings."

Poverty in Peoria

2011-09-27T07:16:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

From the Peoria Journal Star, September 2011--

About 19,000 Peorians, or 18 percent of the city's population, live below the poverty line, according to statistics released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

That includes about 11,000 blacks, or 38 percent of the city's black population, and nearly 1,500 Latinos, or about 25 percent.

Almost 24 percent of all children in the city live in poverty.

Here are some other statistics for the city:

- 27 percent of families received some type of public assistance last year.

- 21 percent of families with children are in poverty.

- 44 percent of unmarried women who live alone with children fall under the poverty line.

While the statistics are alarming, they also come with a high margin of error because of the sample size and the way the Census Bureau conducted its survey last year. However, the numbers still fall in line with national averages.

"Even with the margin of error, Peoria still has a high number of people who live in poverty. This year's data looks to be that one in five people in Peoria are living in poverty," said Amy Rynell, the director of Heartland Alliance's Social IMPACT Research Center, a private Chicago-based think tank that studies social issues. "Not only is there is a large number of people living in poverty but there is a growing number of people who are living at half poverty rate."

Meg Newell, a spokeswoman for the South Side Mission, sees it every day.

"The human side, for us, that people who never thought that they would be in that position are now in that position. People who five years ago were supporting our food pantry, who were buying extra at the grocery store to donate, are now our customers," Newell said.

She points to the 10 percent increase in food baskets distributed by the mission this year. In 2011 so far, the mission has passed out 4,918 baskets, compared to the 4,433 baskets during the same time period in 2010.

The numbers come from the annual American Community Survey, which is the Census Bureau's effort to keep track of yearly trends by surveying only about 2 percent of the population and then extrapolating estimates from there.

As such, the bureau only provides detailed information for cities and counties with populations of more than 65,000, meaning areas like Woodford County, East Peoria or Pekin would not have any detailed information.

The numbers released Thursday also state the obvious: Those who have less education and poor work history tend to fall below the poverty line.

The Long Defeat

2011-09-21T05:24:00.001-07:00

I posted this and this on the Peoria Journal Star website.

Jenny Still Survives

2011-09-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

(Photo by John Carroll--September 5, 2011)

Jenny had heart surgery at OSF-SFMC in Peoria in 1999. At nineteen years of age she looked like a victim from Auschwitz before her heart surgery.

I have been treating her in Haiti for over a decade since her surgery in Peoria. Haitian Hearts has provided her with medication, echocardiograms, and money in Haiti.

Jenny needs more heart surgery, but OSF-SFMC won't take her back. I gave OSF-Children's Hospital of Illinois a check for $23,000 dollars before her surgery in 1999. (All the physicians did pro-bono work.)

Other medical centers believe she is OSF's medical and ethical responsibility. And she is.

Jenny has survived tropical storms, hurricanes, kidnappings, heart failure, a biblical earthquake (she was living in a car), and poverty.

However, I don't think she will survive the greed and power of our Catholic hospital in Peoria.

Nuns a "Dying Breed" at Catholic Hospitals

2011-08-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

(Photo by John Carroll)

See this article from the New York Times.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the Times article.

I watched as the Sisters at OSF in Peoria lost control of their medical center and I also watched my Haitian Hearts patients die.

It is a shame for the patients who suffer the most as power and greed take over. Money is more important than lives.

Luckner Accepted for Heart Surgery!

2011-07-19T07:04:00.001-07:00

See this post from the Peoria Journal Star website.

Haitian Hearts Patient Operated in the Dominican Republic

2011-07-19T06:54:00.001-07:00

This is Kewine.

I examined Kewine for the first time in June, 2010.

Kewine was living in a tent in Carrefour, just outside of Port-au-Prince.

She was born with a Ventricular Septal Defect. This is a hole between the lower chambers of the heart that allows blood to go in the wrong direction.

Kewine was operated in the Dominican Republic in June, the hole in her heart was patched, and she is now back in Haiti.

Her mother is very happy with the results.

And so are we.

Thank you to EVERYONE involved in Kewine's care.

When Hospital Crowding Leads to Emergency Department Overcrowding

2011-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

During the last few years that I worked at OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, I thought that patients were not treated fairly in the Emergency Department. Patients were waiting for hours in the Emergency Department to be admitted to the hospital. We were "boarding" patients and that was dangerous for them.

I talked with Dr. Rick Miller, the Medical Director of the Emergency Department, many times during the 90's about the dysfunction in the Emergency Department. Miller was afraid of OSF-SFMC President and CEO Keith Steffen and did not adequately support the rights of his patients or his staff in the Emergency Department.

Patient and employee satisfaction in the OSF Emergency Department was the worst in the Medical Center in 2001.

The decision was made to relieve Dr. Miller of his duties as ED Medical Director in 2001 and to replace him with Dr. George Hevesy on August 1, 2001.

Dr. Hevesy was director of EMS in the Peoria area for many years and was on the salary of Advanced Medical Transport and OSF-SFMC.

I wrote a letter to Mr. Steffen in September, 2001 and told him of my concerns regarding long and dangerous boarding times in the ED. I cc'd all of my attending partners in the Emergency Department including Drs. Hevesy and Miller.

I was placed on probation the next day by Dr. Hevesy for writing the letter.

In December, 2001 while working a Prompt Care shift at OSF, Dr. Hevesy showed up and told me, while I was seeing patients, that Mr. Steffen wanted me in his office. We walked to Mr. Steffen's office. The OSF lawyer, Mr. Douglass Marshall was present, and I was fired.

What Mr. Steffen put my family through in his office at OSF during the months before he fired me has been documented on Peoria's Medical Mafia. Clearly Mr. Steffen should not be in charge of the largest Catholic hospital in downstate Illinois.

Here is a great article in the New York Times regarding why hospital crowding occurs. And this leads to dangerous ED overcrowding.

I thought this was happening at OSF-SFMC ten years ago.

Here is one paragraph from this article:

The major challenge for any patient in the emergency room is a reimbursement system that offers little incentive to decrease crowding or minimize boarding. Hospitals prefer patients who come in electively for scheduled procedures, at least from a financial perspective. For one thing, they are far more likely to be well insured than those admitted through the emergency room. By boarding E.R. patients in crowded halls, hospitals can offer the required emergency care for all while minimizing the effect on their bottom lines.

Willie

2011-06-21T13:59:00.001-07:00

This is Willie.

Willie is 23 years old now.

OSF denied Willie a new pacemaker when the pacemaker that was put in at OSF was failing a few years ago. When I examined Willie in Haiti, he had no get up and go due to the weak pacemaker. He would die unless we did something.

Haitian Hearts offered OSF full charges for a new pacemaker, but that didn't help. OSF still refused to care for Willie.

Haitian Hearts paid another well known children's hospital $5,000 and they gave Willie a new pacemaker right after their pediatric cardiologist examined him.

Willie is doing well.

Bishop Jenky and Notre Dame Take One on the Chin

2011-06-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

Bishop Jenky and The Catholic Diocese of Peoria had quite a bit to do with eliminating Haitian Hearts patients from coming to Peoria's OSF.

Young Haitians who were operated at OSF in the 90's have died as I have documented numerous times on my blogs.

It is all very sad.

And now Bishop Jenky and his colleagues on the Board of Trustees at the University of Notre Dame look pretty sad.

Roxanne Martino, a newly appointed wealthy pro choice member of the Notre Dame Board of Trustees, just resigned this afternoon.

See this article in the Chicago Tribune.

I wonder what The Catholic Post in Peoria will report about this. Bishop Jenky is the publisher.

Bishop Jenky and Notre Dame

2011-06-03T19:25:00.001-07:00

See this article published in the National Catholic Register and the comments that follow.

I will explain soon how this is related to Haitian kids being denied medical care.

As always it is about power and money.

Overcrowding in Emergency Departments and Adverse Outcomes

2011-06-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

See this article in the British Medical Journal.

Desiderata

2011-05-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

As the Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann says, “Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.”

Calvin Coolidge in West Peoria Helps Haiti

2011-05-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

See this article on WEEK-WHOI TV today.

Calvin Coolidge Grade School in West Peoria had an event today at Franciscan Park that raised 2,000 dollars for Haitian Hearts.

The funds will be used for the pediatric malnutrition program in Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince.

Haitian Hearts is very grateful for all of the kids efforts and for the very hard work of teacher Hedy Elliot-Gardner, Principal Blumer and the entire faculty and staff at Calvin Coolidge.

Fewer ER's, Longer Waiting

2011-05-23T05:58:00.001-07:00

See this article from the Chicago Sun-Times.

Peoria

2011-05-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

Physicians Owned by Hospitals

2011-05-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

"...most of us feel that any doctor who is an at-will employee of a hospital system fundamentally isn't working for his patients any longer but instead works for his boss (i.e., the guy that can fire him), whoever that may be. A doctor should not willingly put himself in any position where he can be fired by anyone but the patient. To practice medicine as an employee who can be terminated without cause is tantamount to a breach of medical ethics. You are simply giving too much control of your practice to someone who is not the doctor of your patients."

Nick Benton, MD
Emergency Medicine News
May, 2011

Hospital Negligence in the Emergency Department

2011-05-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

See this article on emergency department crowding and the concern emergency department physicians have had about this for ten years.

I was concerned too.

Ten years ago I asked Keith Steffen, administrator of OSF-SFMC in Peoria, if OSF was guilty of "institutional malpractice" because of overcrowding in the Emergency Department at OSF. I thought that patient's lives were on the line in our overcrowded dysfunctional Emergency Department in Peoria.

And I doubt things are going just peachy in the Peoria EMS world. See this article from two years ago by Elaine Hopkins.

More on Peoria's EMS soon.

All Three Girls

2011-04-09T07:05:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

All three girls were really sick with heart problems.

All three girls had heart surgery.

And by the mercy of God, all three girls recovered fine.

Haitian Hearts thanks all of its supporters for helping all three girls.

Haitian Hearts Has Heart

2011-04-02T09:18:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

See this article written by Pam Adams of the Peoria Journal Star.

A Great Day in Haiti!

2011-03-31T08:46:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

Since the earthquake last year, I have been able to work about four months in hospitals and medical clinics in Haiti.

The majority of Haitian Hearts work in Haiti is spent examining common Haitian problems in Haitian medical centers staffed by Haitian doctors and nurses. These problems include malnutrition, parasitic infections, respiratory infections, diarrhea and dehydration, skin infections, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, typhoid, and a wide variety of trauma.

During the course of a week it is not unusual to see a new pediatric heart patient.

During these four months I accumulated eight new heart patients with a wide variety of congenital and acquired cardiac defects who I considered reasonable candidates for evaluation for operative repair.

The kids are from Port-au-Prince and southern Haiti.

Their faces, their mom's faces, their exams, and their echocardiograms always haunt me as the days and weeks go by when Maria and I cannot find a medical center in the United States to accept them for surgery. I think I am on a chronic guilt trip when I know that most of these kids could easily be "cured" in the hands of a skilled and gentle heart surgeon.

Several months ago an organization e mailed Haitian Hearts and told us that they have a grant to operate on 400 Haitian and Dominican children's' hearts during the next five years. The surgeries will be performed by American and Dominican teams in the Dominican Republic.

And this organization wanted to know if I had any kids that needed surgery!

I answered back immediately and sent a clinical vignette of these eight Haitian Hearts patients. I also sent their VHS echocardiograms to this organization's cardiologist in the States.

I will call their cardiologist Dr. C.

Dr. C reviewed the echocardiograms and then flew to Haiti. He was in Haiti right after the return of President Aristide and during the weekend of the presidential elections (March 20, 2011).

To make it easier on the kids mothers, he rented a little plane and flew south from Port-au-Prince to Cayes and examined the kids that we had lined up to see him. ALL the kids were accepted by Dr. C to go to the Dominican Republic for heart surgery in early May!!

Thus, eight of the kids were accepted for heart surgery and when Dr. C arrived back in Port-au-Prince, he travelled to Cite Soleil and examined yet another Haitian Hearts patient, Dusousa.

Dusousa is the 17 month old toddler who is blind from cataracts and is in the malnutrition program in the back part of Soleil. Dr. C and an ophthalmologist examined Dusousa and, believe it or not, Dr. C's daughter who is an ophthalmologist, will operate Dusousa in the States!!

This is what I would call a gran coup d'etat in Haiti.

Thank you, Dr. C., for all of your efforts for these Haitian children.

The Today Show, Widnerlande, and Haitian Hearts

2011-03-06T19:15:00.001-08:00

Jenna Wolfe and Dana Roecker of the Today Show aired a segment on Widnerlande's long saga to come to the United States for heart surgery. Jenna and Dana are professional and did a wonderful job.

The Today Show segment aired on February 22, 2011.

You can see it here on the Haitian Hearts website.

Maria also posted an interesting article which described what happened "behind the scenes" regarding the Today Show.

OSF Gobbles Up Some More

2011-02-05T07:09:00.000-08:00

OSF Healthcare is affiliating with Rockford Health System.

The Peoria Journal Star reported this today.

See this article.

The new affiliation will be called the "OSF Northern Region".

With this new alliance, will Rockford Health Systems continue to offer oral contraceptives and sterilization procedures under the noses of BOTH Catholic bishops in Peoria and Rockford?

And will OSF Healthcare continue their embargo on their own Haitian Hearts patients who are dying in Haiti now because OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center will not allow them to return to OSF-Saint Franics Medical Center for repeat heart surgery? Will "OSF Northern Region" be part of this medical abandonment of poor Haitians?

How Haiti Can Reclaim Sovereignty---This is a Good Article!

2011-02-03T18:13:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Carroll

How Haiti can reclaim sovereignty

After decades of foreign interference, the decision to permit the returns of Duvalier and Aristide is an assertion of independence.

Landon Yarrington
guardian.co.uk Thursday
3 February 2011

Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide may be able to return from his exile in South Africa, after outgoing President René Préval apparently cleared the way for his former mentor to be issued with a diplomatic passport. Photograph: Str/AP
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier returned to Haiti on Sunday 16 January, for the first time since being ousted from power in 1986, and his decision to return home has left many wondering. Rumours continue to circulate about what drew him home, but the question on many people's minds now is, for someone as high-profile as Baby Doc, why hasn't the Haitian government done more to bring him to justice?

In the year since the earthquake, the Haitian government has made a remarkable effort to demonstrate the rule of law. Last March, Laura Silsby and a handful of other Americans were indicted for a kidnapping scandal that drew international attention. More recently, Paul Waggoner, another US citizen, was incarcerated over allegations he kidnapped an injured earthquake victim. So why, people ask, hasn't the Haitian government taken the gloves off and handled Duvalier the same way they prosecuted Silsby and Waggoner?

A different reading on the matter, though, might suggest that justice for Baby Doc's crimes isn't the only issue at stake here.

Haitian sovereignty has been contested, both from within and without, since the country's independence in 1804. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, western meddling in Haitian affairs escalated to a number of flashpoints – chief among which was the US's own invasion of Haiti in 1915. During the 19-year US occupation, nearly every executive decision in Haiti was made "in consultation" with American commissioners, who were usually selected more for their business savvy rather than governmental acumen. The occupation ended in 1934 with a visit from FDR and implementation of his "good neighbour" policy, but Haiti has remained home to a substantial American military, diplomatic and aid presence ever since.

Over the past 20 years, non-government organisations (NGOs) have increased by the thousands. In fact, Haiti has the highest per capita NGO presence in the world – earning it the title "a nation of NGOs", emphasising the virtual substitution of the Haitian state by a non-profit Leviathan. With tens of thousands of non-state actors, the question of national sovereignty indeed looms large. Who runs Haiti? Is it the NGOs, the United Nations, or the government of Haiti?

In an effort to rein in the inflated NGO sector, the Haitian government instituted the ministry of planning and foreign coordination in 1989. NGOs working in Haiti must not only apply for 501(c)3 status in the US, but also register with the Haitian government and the MPCE. The process can be a lengthy one, involving frequent trips to the capital in Port-au-Prince, and is seen as a deterrent by many smaller groups – who ignore the system altogether. This is precisely what gets foreigners like Silsby and Waggoner in trouble.

For the thousands of unregistered groups who enter Haiti each year, theirs is a mission unbound by Haitian laws and "red tape". I met one of these groups in northern Haiti last November. Mission Discovery is a Christian organisation that specialises in short-term mission work in Jamaica, Kenya, Haiti and other countries in the global south. For a nominal fee, participants get to spend a week or two painting churches, providing ESL seminars, or, less frequently, hosting mobile clinics. While well-intentioned, mission work like this hinders real progress in impoverished areas – it's unsustainable, and unsustained – and tends to benefit the missionaries far more than the locals. Worse, it's unaccountable.

After a rainy night, I happened on a dozen American Mission Discovery travellers tossing candy to Haitian schoolchildren in a muddy street. Parents who were looking on were appalled as their children became covered in filth on account of these foreign missionaries. A friend and I went over to tell the missionaries how inappropriate and offensive their behaviour was. We learned it was their first trip to the area.

The clamour drew the attention of the town mayor. I told the missionaries it would be good for them to speak to the mayor, but they couldn't be bothered. Finally, I demanded they stop to introduce themselves. The two Mission Discovery leaders reluctantly agreed and greeted the mayor through an interpreter; the mayor, for his part, regretted not meeting the group sooner and asked why they hadn't tried to see him first.

This may not seem as outrageous to some readers, but consider the analogy a friend made. Imagine a team of Cuban doctors deciding, uninvited, to open a hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or a group of Canadian missionaries building an orphanage in New York after 11 September. How would the American public react to this? Would Americans interpret this as an act of saving grace – or an insulting violation of national sovereignty?

Interestingly, Haitians often say they are oblije, or compelled, to enter relationships with the thousands of registered and unregistered NGOs in their country. On one hand, they desperately need the services many of these groups provide; at the same time, they have no control over the terms or conditions according to which that "help" or "aid" gets doled out. It's a case of "beggars can't be choosers" writ large, and many Haitians feel they lose autonomy and pride in the whole exchange.

This is a scenario millions of Haitians encounter everyday, and the implications of it speak to the predicament the country now faces over Duvalier. The decision whether or not to prosecute Duvalier is an important synbolic way the Haitian government can assert sovereignty. Thus Haitian President René Préval has insisted charges will be brought: "Duvalier had the right to return to the country, but under the constitution he also must face justice." In other words, Duvalier is a Haitian first, an alleged criminal second. He belongs to Haiti as both citizen and offender. Duvalier's return offers the state a historic chance to pursue justice on its own terms and schedule, and in front of an international, if sceptical audience.

The same dynamic applies to ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose return to Haiti from exile in South Africa, many believe, would threaten political stability in the country. Préval is said to fear recrimination from Aristide, and has – until now – remained steadfast in denying him a chance to return, under pressure from France, Canada and the US, all of whom helped orchestrate his removal in the first place. Now, however, Préval is apparently offering his former mentor permission to come home.

One can only speculate why the Haitian government would even entertain the thought of allowing Duvalier or Aristide a homecoming, but it's clear the decision is Haiti's alone. Préval's actions toward the two former leaders make a powerful statement about Haitian sovereignty. More than Duvalier's fate or Aristide's possible reappearance now rides on whether Haiti can assert its independence.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Peoria's Emergency Response and the Heavy Snow Storm

2011-02-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

The snippet below is from the Peoria Journal Star during the snowstorm that hit a couple of days ago.

It is interesting from the standpoint that Mr. Rand, Executive Director of AMT, is positioning his ambulance rigs with the Peoria Fire Department (PFD) during the blizzard.

For years Mr. Rand has been against the PFD advancing their life saving services for the people of Peoria and Mr. Rand did not want the PFD EVER to be a transport service for sick or injured patients. Mr. Rand and AMT have had the support of the Peoria's three hospitals which have hospital administrators on AMT's Board of Directors. AMT, hospital administrators, and the Project Medical Director (physician in charge of all ambulances in the area) have taken this issue to the Peoria City Council multiple times over the years to keep the ambulance transport monopoly in the hands of AMT and out of the hands of the PFD. (And the Project Medical Director actually received a salary from AMT for his services.)

Transportation of sick people is a profitable business, and with the help of the hospitals and the doctors that control ambulances in the area, AMT has been successful in keeping ALL of the transport for AMT.

Now, with the snow storm, AMT is bunking down with the PFD. The PFD still cannot transport patients and only one station can give advanced life support medications.

I believe Peorians are actually WORSE off in the blizzard because AMT is now not in their usual locations and will respond when the PFD does. The "divide and conquer" concept has been weakened. The PFD and AMT will arrive at the same time now (at least from four locations), and AMT will be the only agency in ALL of Peoria (except the North Adams Fire Department) allowed to give advanced life support medications or transport the patient.

What happens in times like this if the PFD is the FIRST to arrive at a home where there is a life threatening problem? In other words, if AMT is tied up somewhere else, what happens?

As usual, the PFD cannot administer advanced life support drugs (except the North Adams Station) and not a single PFD station can transport the patient anywhere. The patient us supposed to wait until AMT arrives...and sometimes patients do not have time to wait. They may be too sick and not have the luxury of even a few minutes.

These are hard concepts to understand. But AMT understands very well and so do the Peoria firefighters who face this situation every day with very sick and injured Peorians. But money is involved and so is conflict of interest in the Peoria business community.

And please see this article I wrote two years ago regarding the conflict of interest and monopoly of ambulance services in Peoria.

Here is the article from the Journal Star yesterday:

Ambulances get closer

In response to the storm, Advanced Medical Transport hired extra paramedics, technicians and dispatchers, and added more ambulances to its fleet to make sure residents get the help they need in case of an emergency.

"Let's just say we're kicking it up a notch everywhere," AMT's community relations director Sharon Kennedy said. "You want to have plenty of extra staff. People don't stop getting sick because of the weather. Babies don't stop being born because of the weather."

A first for the company is working with the Peoria Fire Department to place four of its ambulances strategically at fire stations throughout the city. Several more ambulances will be stationed at AMT's headquarters on Sterling Avenue to respond to calls of service from there.

"When they go on calls, they will be working in tandem with us," Kennedy said of the Fire Department personnel. "That's more hands to carry people if you have to shovel their driveway or walk. It will allow our vehicles to be clean of ice, and keep the engines warm and the cab warm for the crew members, as well as keep the back warm for any potential patients."

Housing the ambulances inside the firehouses also will help maintain medications and other drugs at safe temperatures. The ambulances are stationed in South Peoria, Central Peoria, North Peoria and Northwest Peoria.

"That's the first time we've done that," AMT Executive Director Andrew Rand said. "We think it'll be better for patients and certainly improve our response times. We'll be driving in fire truck tire tracks."

OSF May Close Pharmacy that Dispenses Contraceptives

2011-01-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

See this article in today's Peoria Journal Star.

A quick historical look at OSF’s contraceptive policy:

In the mid 90’s OSF Corporate in Peoria hired Catholic bioethicist Joe Piccione.

Mr. Piccione was hired by OSF to create a contraceptive policy that would allow OSF physicians to write prescriptions for oral contraceptives for patients. OSF was very concerned about losing money if their own OSF physicians could not write prescriptions for oral contraceptives.

So Mr. Piccione along with other OSF leaders met with The Catholic Diocese of Peoria and Bishop John Myers and “created” a new policy.

This policy allows OSF physicians to write oral contraceptives from an OSF office. But during the few moments the OSF physician is writing the prescription, he is not considered an OSF employee. And the second after the prescription is written, the physician is immediately reinstated as an OSF employee.

This sounds laughable and would be if it were not true. This policy still exists today for OSF physicians throughout the entire OSF Health Care System.

Mr. Piccione was quoted in the Peoria Journal Star in the mid-90’s that this anti-Catholic policy would “get our hands dirty”.

Why OSF wants to follow “ethical and religious directives” now in Galesburg is anyone’s guess.

By ERIC TIMMONS
GateHouse News Service
Posted Jan 26, 2011 @ 08:48 AM
Last update Jan 26, 2011 @ 08:08 PM

GALESBURG —

The pharmacy operated by Hy-Vee at OSF Galesburg Clinic will almost certainly close in March because of an argument over the sale of contraceptives.

If the lease is terminated OSF would not be allowed to bring a new pharmacy into the clinic for the next two years because of an existing agreement. A notice of termination has been given to Hy-Vee.

OSF recently took control of the clinic, which includes a pharmacy run by Hy-Vee. Jon McKee, a spokesman for OSF, said Hy-Vee's corporate office had not responded to efforts to negotiate a new agreement. McKee said OSF would like to see the Hy-Vee pharmacy remain in its current location.

However, employees at the pharmacy have been told it will close March 4. Hy-Vee spokeswoman Ruth Comer said Hy-Vee had an "ethical obligation" to fill prescriptions for contraceptives.

OSF is operated under Catholic ethical directives, which would not permit the sale of the oral contraceptives available at the pharmacy.

The health care group, which is owned by the Peoria-based Sisters of The Third Order of St. Francis, took control of the Galesburg Clinic on Oct. 31, renaming the facility OSF Galesburg Clinic.

Customers of the Galesburg Clinic Pharmacy contacted GateHouse News Service to express their discontent about the likely closure of the business.

Comer said all of the staff working at the Hy-Vee pharmacy at the clinic would be offered new posts.

She said Hy-Vee had had discussions with OSF about the pharmacy and that Hy-Vee was not prepared to back down from its position that it should be allowed to supply contraceptives to its customers.

"That's not acceptable to us as a condition," she said.

Comer said the lease for the pharmacy likely will be terminated in March. She said there had been no attempt by OSF to renew the lease agreement.
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Please see this article written by my brother Tom and me in 2008.

Speed Bumps

2011-01-26T08:34:00.001-08:00

Photo by John Carroll

January 24, 2011

Sacramento seems like a really nice city.

The fog in the morning is serene and beautiful and the illuminated white state capitol building at night is stunning.

Many of Sacramento's streets are wide and have "undulations". In the Midwest we call them "speed bumps". In Haiti these bumps are called "police lying down".

When we have been driving here, my seven year old son Luke likes to warn me from the back seat that we are approaching a speed bump. When he spots one, he will holler out “speed bump”, and I will slow down.

I then over-politely say "thank you" and he says "you are welcome" and giggles. This ritual can occur many times over several blocks in Sacramento and Maria seems to handle this “guy humor” quite well.

Yesterday, seven year old Widnerlande who was seated next to Luke in the back seat, would join in on the “speed bump” warnings and gleefully chime "you are welcome" when I thanked them for their warning.

This morning we all got up at 5 AM because Widnerlande’s heart surgery is being performed today.

On the way to Sutter Children's Center Widnerlande happily shouted out "speed bump" as we approached another undulation in Sacramento's dark streets.

To hear her little happy voice from the back seat made me sad. I knew that in several hours Widnerlande would experience another huge bump in her short life. But we needed to force her over it, even against her strong seven year old will.

This little girl has survived intense tropical storms, hurricanes, kidnappings, political unrest, a diabolical earthquake, and the deadly cholera that was infecting 4,000 people each week in her Haitian valley. And she survived malnutrition and poverty that we can barely understand.

And she did all this with a hole in her heart that has kept her in a state of semi-compensated congestive heart failure.

I calmed myself by rationalizing that she will be able to live through our surgical assault.

Widnerlande has passed many speed bumps in her life. And as she is lifted off the operating table this morning by many gentle hands, she will have more hurdles to pass during the next few days.

But we all know this girl will get over them some how.

Thank you, Maria and Valerie, Gertrude and Rachel and Joanna, Frandy and Jim and Jane, Garren, Tiffany and Representative Aaron Schock, Sutter Children’s Center nursing staff and child life specialists, and Drs. Nasirov, Juris, and Crockett, and Crystal, and Helen and Steven and Rose. And a special thanks to Widnerlande's fearless mother Magalene for keeping her close and keeping her alive against almost impossible odds in Haiti.

---------

See this article and this article describing Widnerlande's situation.

Should OSF-SFMC in Peoria Remain Catholic?

2011-01-20T11:12:00.001-08:00

Photo by John Carroll
OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center Chapel, Peoria

OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria has not allowed their own Haitian Hearts patients from returning to Saint Francis Medical Center for heart surgery. Four have died.

This is not consistent with the social justice teachings of the Church. This is not consistent with the mission philosophy of OSF.

OSF has a contraceptive policy that is not consistent with the teachings of the Church. This policy was created by OSF's Catholic bioethicist and The Catholic Diocese of Peoria to allow OSF to remain competitive in the medical market place.

Should Bishop Jenky in Peoria allow OSF to remain a Catholic hospital? Should Bishop Jenky allow these scandals to continue in his Diocese? Catholic hierarchy does not like scandal.

Bishop Olmsted in Phoenix doesn't like scandal either.

See Bishop Olmsted's ruling on Saint Joseph's Medical Center in Phoenix.

Widnerlande to Sacramento

2011-01-17T20:53:00.001-08:00

Read Pam Adams summary of the six year Widnerlande saga.

Widnerlande will have her appointment tomorrow in Sacramento and receive a pediatric echocardiogram to see if her ventricular septal defect warrants surgical repair.

Stay tuned.

Haiti Can't Recover....I Want Comments to this Article Please...Do you Agree or not Agree?

2011-01-14T15:22:00.000-08:00

Read this post.

Widnerlande Arrives in Peoria

2011-01-12T15:33:00.001-08:00

After six years, five hurricanes and tropical storms, one devastating earth quake one year ago this afternoon, a severe cholera epidemic that still continues, and Haiti's usual political violence, seven year old Widnerlande arrived in Peoria this afternoon.

With the Greatest Care and Love

2011-01-11T06:38:00.001-08:00

Photo by John Carroll

The Peoria Journal Star had an article (advertisement) on the front page on Sunday. It was called "With the Greatest Care and Love".

The article provided a history of OSF from its beginning with the poor founding Sisters from Germany to the present day opulent medical center in Peoria.

Sister Judith Ann Duvall tries to assure Peoria that the Sisters are still in control of OSF through their governing boards. She is the chairperson of all the boards at OSF.

"We are deeply involved in the administration and governance of our health care system, and always will be," Duvall said, "because we came to religious life to give our lives to God by serving the sick, poor, injured, aged and dying 'with the greatest care and love.' "

If this is true, how can the Sisters reject Haitian Hearts patients that need surgery again at OSF. If Sister Judith Ann is "deeply involved in the administration and governance" of OSF, why is she letting OSF's Haitian Hearts patients die?

The Journal Star article then quotes president and CEO of OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center Keith Steffen. One has to stop shaking one's head long enough to read all of Mr. Steffen's scripted quotes:

"The Ministry Development program started by the Sisters allows us to reinforce our heritage as a Catholic, faith-based organization throughout OSF HealthCare system, all seven of our hospitals and our other entities," said Keith Steffen.

Mr. Steffen, who is not Catholic but likes his Catholic pay check, continues:

"Ministry development helps us promote and protect our identity in a society that challenges our Catholic ethical religious directives. It encourages a role of advocacy for the underprivileged, disenfranchised, and the poor, much as our founding Sisters did," Steffen said.

Mr. Steffen, of course, stopped Haitian Hearts patients coming to OSF through a missive from OSF's legal counsel, Douglass Marshall. Haitian Hearts has now lost three young Haitians who were operated at OSF but not allowed to come back to OSF for repeat surgery ten years later. (Two other young OSF patients in Haiti are literally clinging to life right now. Both have been homeless during part of 2010 after the earthquake which occurred one year ago tomorrow. Both have been denied repeat heart surgery at OSF.)

But OSF did build their 280 million dollar Milestone Project during the last decade which includes a bright shiny new Children's Hospital of Illinois that is open to anyone-- unless one is an OSF Haitian Hearts patient.

So, I think OSF speaks with forked tongue with the Journal Star being their main messenger to the public.

OSF will change for the better some day. But it won't be tomorrow. OSF is embedded too well in Peoria and who wants to challenge the nuns? They can't be wrong, can they?

OSF's Problems Continue

2011-01-11T05:13:00.001-08:00

Photos by John Carroll
OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center
January 10, 2010

Leona Deemie, pictured above, states that she was abused as a child at St. Francis Hospital when she was hospitalized with polio.

OSF offered her $17,000 dollars and the gag order which would have prevented her from speaking about her abuse or the settlement.

Leona refused the money and terms from OSF.

When I talked with Sister Judith Anne about very important issues in 2001, Sister was unable to find the courage to talk with a nurse that would have told her the truth. I felt then, as I do now, that Sister was advised not to hear the truth because so many people at the top of OSF would be culpable.

So Sister is taking the same approach with Leona Deemie ten years later. Unfortunately, she listens to her counsel and not her conscience. And OSF is suffering greatly.

And so are OSF's Haitian Hearts patients who have been neglected by OSF and have died.

See this news report on what happened today.

Also, see Elaine Hopkins post today.

Deportations to Haiti

2011-01-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Carroll
Cholera Treatment Center
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

See this article from the Palm Beach Post about deporting Haitians back to Haitian prisons and their risk for cholera.

Activists fight plan to resume deportations to Haiti, citing post-earthquake conditions

By JOHN LANTIGUA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 5:46 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011
Posted: 2:18 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011

Florida immigration activists are asking the Obama administration to stop planned deportations to Haiti, citing the festering cholera epidemic there, other lingering dangers from last year's massive earthquake and recent political violence.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced in December that this month, it would resume deportations to Haiti that were halted after the quake last Jan.12.

The first individuals scheduled to be deported are Haitians who had been incarcerated for crimes in the United States, were released and benefitted temporarily from the moratorium on repatriations after the quake.

According to the activists, about 100 such Haitians - many from South Florida - have already been picked up by immigration authorities and transferred to a holding facility in Louisiana before being shipped back.

ICE officials say that, according to law, the federal government can not detain such individuals for any significant time beyond their sentences. ICE then either must remove them from the country or release them back into the U.S. population, despite histories of serious crime.

The activists, however, say no Haitian should be sent back to their native country right now given the post-earthquake devastation and the political upheaval that has followed recent, disputed presidential elections.

"We ask President Obama to hold off on removing Haitian nationals from this country in light of the horrific conditions now facing our neighboring nation," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

"It is within his power to show leadership and prevent a civil liberties and human rights disaster."

The cholera epidemic poses real dangers to criminal deportees, according to the activists.

Cholera struck Haiti last summer and by December 15 more than 2400 deaths had been recorded. At least 48 of those deaths occurred in Haiti's prisons, where cholera was first diagnosed in November.

"It is against Haitian law, but the deportees usually spend about two weeks locked up," says Michelle Karshan, executive director of Alternative Chance, a non-profit organization that works with former convicts. "And if they don't have family members to claim them they are detained indefinitely."

Karshan says cholera works particularly fast in Haitian prisons and jails where there is no clean water or food, inmates share squalid, unsanitary conditions and there is often little or no medical care.

"You get dehydrated quickly and without the proper medical care you can die in two to three hours from cholera," she said.

Steve Forester, Miami-based spokesman for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, decried the pending repatriations.

"What they are doing is sending people to police station holding cells and prisons where cholera has already claimed at least 48 lives, where clean drinking water is not given or available and people can die from cholera in a day," Forester said.

Newly elected Congresswoman Federica Wilson, D-Miami, whose district includes Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, also opposes the policy.

"I am keenly aware of the devastation and the impact the present situation has on the constituents in my district and on their families in Haiti," Wilson said in a prepared statement.

"My Congressional district includes the largest Haitian population in America, so I am faced with the misery and the suffering on a daily basis."

ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez said the flights repatriating Haitians are expected to start in mid-January, adding that resuming the deportations is " consistent with our domestic immigration enforcement priorities."

ICE officials say in 2011 they expect to send back to Haiti about 700 criminal aliens who have been convicted of homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, embezzlement, money laundering and extortion.

As for the health dangers posed to those being sent back, Gonzalez said that ICE was mindful of the issue.

"The Department of State has been working with the government of Haiti to ensure that the resumption of removals is conducted in a safe, humane manner with minimal disruption to ongoing rebuilding efforts," she said.

The activists say despite the serious convictions, the would-be deportees have stayed out of trouble since being released from prison.They said they would continue to pressure the Obama administration to change the policy before the repatriations begin.

Thursday, six human rights groups filed an emergency petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), to halt the deportations. They include the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center of Miami and the University of Miami School of Law.

The Catholic Post and Haiti

2011-01-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Post of Peoria reports on Haiti in this article.

"Why Don't the Haitians have Birth Control?"

2011-01-01T07:51:00.004-08:00

If it were up to OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center, they probably WOULD have birth control. I am sure some ethical loopholes could be created by the OSF and The Catholic Diocese of Peoria to make this possible.

See Maria's post for the other side of the story.

Incredible Widnerlande

2010-12-14T13:19:00.000-08:00

Widnerlande has her appointment with the US Consulate in Port-au-Prince at 7 AM Thursday morning (two days from now)!!

This appointment will determine whether this seven year old little girl is granted a non immigrant visa to fly to the United States on Friday for her heart surgery. Widnerlande's surgery is scheduled for December 23 in California.

Please go to this post by Maria detailing Widnerlande's six year wait for surgery.

Renaldo's Obituary

2010-12-07T18:14:00.000-08:00

Renaldo

Born April 4, 2010--Died December 6, 2010

Renaldo, eight months old, of Bon Repos, Haiti was pronounced dead at 9:05 AM this morning at a Cholera Treatment Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Renaldo was the son of his Papa and Mama who were present at his death.

Renaldo was admitted to the Cholera Treatment Center yesterday with his mother who is also a patient there. She witnessed his death lying on a green cholera cot just a few feet away.

Renaldo is survived by his two older siblings and his loving aunt in Bon Repos, Haiti.

The family loved Renaldo. His expressive eyes and smile wrapped everyone up with happiness.

His family would like to thank all who cared for him during the last 24 hours of his life, especially his aunt, who is also the primary caregiver to Renaldo’s mother.

Minutes after Renaldo’s death, oral rehydration solution was used to baptize him on his sweet forehead. His body was wrapped in the usual fashion after a cholera death in Haiti and taken to an undisclosed location.

There will be no memorial services.

Local Doctor's View on Genocide in Haiti

2010-12-05T03:38:00.000-08:00

From WEEK/WHOI news.

Genocide in Haiti

2010-12-03T04:01:00.000-08:00

In the mid-90’s I had a chance to meet President Aristide. I was an “added” member of a small delegation of Catholic priests who met with him one afternoon. Mildred, President Aristide’s wife, served us cold, sweet citron in their home in Tabarre.

During the meeting human rights, Haiti’s problems, and other subjects were discussed. President Aristide’s comprehension of our questions and comments in English was excellent but I thought his spoken English was difficult to understand. However, he was patient with us, since I am sure he had heard different variations of our concerns many times.

I remember that my comment to President Aristide was I thought genocide was occurring in Haiti. My work is in “downstream” Haiti and I see the worst nightmares wash down the Haitian river.

Quite honestly, I do not remember President Aristide’s answer to my genocide comment.

Since that time I have read about the derivation of the word genocide and about the man who took much of a lifetime to “create” the word. However, I could not give an exact definition of the word right now. And I didn't even look up genocide on Wikpedia before I posted this. So please forgive me for not doing my homework.

I DO know that my thoughts regarding the plight of most Haitians have not become more cheery in the last 15 years.

My definition of genocide is “to kill a people”. That seems exactly what is happening here....at least to poor people. The official definition probably says much more.

It seems that we are witnessing the slow destruction and death of the Haitian poor. That is what I see every day and one “writes from where one stands”.

A couple of days ago in the pediatric clinic in Soleil, the genocide of the Haitian poor seemed alive and well to me.

The mothers stories of their sick children and their anguished lives were told to me over and over. And the scary part was each mother told me their tragedies in a fairly dispassionate way. Kind of like how a friend at home may say that the “Bulls lost to the Pistons last night”.

For example, a mother brought in her two year old boy named Slovensky. The toddler weighs 17 pounds and he had diarrhea and was coughing up long white worms (twelve to be exact). He had recently been discharged from St. Catherine’s Hospital right next door and was “still sick”.

Slovensky has severe underlying malnutrition. His heart rate was normal and he gazed at me with knowing eyes. He just appeared to be an “acute on chronic”. But he was definitely very sick.

Mother then objectively reported to me that Slovensky’s eleven year old sister died from cholera on the same day she became ill. Mother watched her daughter die at Saint Catherine’s Hospital last week. When she told me, her voice didn’t crack but she may have had a slight facial contortion when she related the story. I was waiting for her to break down, but of course she never did.

When her little girl died, mother was at her bedside at St. Catherine’s and the girl’s body was taken immediately and buried in a mass grave outside of Port-au-Prince. Mother said they did this because they didn’t want her little girl’s body to “contaminiate” anyone.

I told mother that Slovensky needed to be readmitted to Saint Catherine's for fluids and she said “I have no one”. She meant that she had no one to take care of Slovensky’s remaining sibling at home if she was tending to him in the hospital. Mothers are expected to bathe and feed and change the sheets and buy IV tubing for their children. This meant that she was going to refuse admission of pathetic Slovensky.

When I asked where the children’s father was, she said that he was killed on January 12 in the earthquake. He was downtown in Port-au-Prince pulling a cart (bouret).

And she told me all of this fairly matter of fact.

So I enlisted the help of one of my Haitian pediatric colleagues to convince the mother that Slovensky should be admitted. Not surprisingly, the pediatrician listened to the facts, eyed the patient, and then sided with the mother and agreed Slovensky should go home.

I was very frustrated and tried to fight back in defense of Slovensky. But mother wanted nothing to do with my arguments and neither did anyone else. And Slovensky just laid in his mother’s arms silently watching the situation. It appeared that HE didn't even care what happened.

So with a slew of medication, I sent pathetic Slovensky back into the upper part of Soleil with his satisfied mom who could now be at home with both of her children. (Home for them is a falling down shack and tent.)

There were more histories somewhat similar to this the other day. In fact every day has similar stories told by stoic and fatalistic poor people.

The infant mortality rate and the maternal mortality rates are very high in Haiti. And people are dying everywhere in the slum from preventable and treatable diseases...cholera being the most recent killer.

I need to do my homework.

During genocide how many people need to die? Do they all need to die at once and from the same cause? And do people witnessing genocide like family and friends have to get use to it and report the loss of loved ones in an objective fashion? And do other people with means, like me, need to go through stages of "acceptance" of death and destruction before it can be called genocide?

I will look it up on Wikpedia.

.

Update from Haiti

2010-11-30T19:40:00.000-08:00

Update from Haiti.

The Hippocratic Oath

2010-11-30T05:33:00.000-08:00

I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:

To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.

But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.

I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.

All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.

If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

Local Doctor Heads Back to Haiti

2010-11-28T18:50:00.000-08:00

See this on WEEK/WHOI news.

Do You Know Where This Picture Was Taken?

2010-10-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken by me yesterday deep in the back part of Cite Soleil.

Can you believe it?

The "worst slum in the western hemisphere" shouldn't look this way, or should it?

The people in Soleil are even more beautiful than this picture.

The parents that I see really care about their children. They run barefoot through Soleil's hot horrible streets with their dying sick kids.

They have nothing to give them until the child is limp with fever...and then it is time to "scoop and run".

And it is usually too late...

Hundreds of thousands of humans living like rats.

No jobs mean no money.

Not enough food or potable water.

No security from gangs that like to shoot, rob, and rape when the sun goes down.

But this is all man made suffering due to corruption from within and without.

It doesn't need to be this way.

No Room in the Inn for Haitian Hearts Patients

2010-10-22T09:41:00.001-07:00

(Photo of Haitian echocardiograms of Haitian Hearts patients who need heart surgery. These videos sit in my living room in Peoria and haunt me each time I look at them because they represent the beating hearts of people I have examined who have treatable disease. I also know their mothers and families who put so much trust in us to help them. Jenny and Henri's echocardiograms are among the stacks of videos.)

OSF HealthCare System in Peoria is refusing Haitian Hearts patients to return to Peoria for repeat heart surgery. They have been refusing my patients for seven years now.

I am having a very difficult time finding any medical center to accept Jenny and Henri for repeat heart surgery. Other medical centers believe it is OSF’s responsibility to take care of their patients.

In the last few years I have had three Haitian Hearts patients die. All were in their early twenties. All needed repeat heart surgery at OSF. All were refused by OSF.

And this week in the Peoria Journal Star an article reported that OSF just added Ottawa Regional Hospital to the OSF System.

OSF HealthCare System is enormous. The Milestone Project was just completed in Peoria and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. (OSF received 450 million dollars from the Illinois Finance Authority (IFA) several years ago with ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich making the annoncement of the second largest loan in IFA’s history going to OSF...)

The Third Order of St. Francis in Peoria owns and operates OSF HealthCare System but have put control of the day to day operations in the hands of its managers. These managers wear suits, not habits.

The OSF HealthCare System consists of seven acute care facilities (now eight with Ottawa), one nursing home which has not been rated highly, and a couple of nursing schools.

There are 550 physicians in the OSF Medical Group. In other words, OSF signs the paychecks of these physicians and essentially owns the hearts and souls of these physicians.

Peoria’s OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of Illinois are two of the largest facilities in Illinois with 616 beds. (That doesn’t mean OSF has the staff to safely take care of all of these patients, but they do have the space and a shining new medical building.)

Yet, OSF has no room for my very sick Haitian Hearts patients who received care from OSF and Peoria physicians in the past. And since the earthquake in Haiti, Jenny and Henri have been homeless much of the last nine months in Port-au-Prince.

How sad for the Peoria medical community and for these Haitians who are really suffering. And how pathetic this is for the silent Catholic Diocese of Peoria and Bishop Jenky whose “headquarters” sit six blocks from OSF.

From a text book on Tuberculosis by Simon Schaaf:

“The wealthy nations have a moral duty to press for the creation of a more just, equitable, and healthy global society. We are reminded of the words of King Solomon--”Along the way of justice there is life.”

DuSable Bridge in Chicago

2010-10-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

Michigan Avenue bridge officially renamed DuSable Bridge

By Alejandra Cancino, Tribune reporter

3:57 PM CDT, October 15, 2010

Alice J. Neal devoted her life to having a street in downtown Chicago named after Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a black man known as the city's first non-native settler. But she died before DuSable had a citywide recognition.

On Friday, her daughter-in-law, Bessie Neal stood before politicians and leaders of various organizations at the ceremony to officially rename the Michigan Avenue Bridge as the DuSable Bridge. It isn't a street, but it is a Chicago landmark.

"Anything that is no trouble to you is no good to you," said Neal, who celebrated her 90th birthday in February. "You are going to have to have some ups and downs, I don't care what it is. And I believe that we had some ups and downs before we got this, but we are proud that we got it."

Historians debate DuSable's early years, but it has become widely accepted that he was a free, black man born in Haiti in the mid-1700s. He was the son of a African slave mother and French mariner.

In the late 1700s, DuSable moved to Chicago, a zone of trade for the Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Lakota tribes, said Joseph Podlasek, president of the American Indian Center. DuSable married a Potawatomi woman named Kittihawa and had two children, Susanne and Jean.

DuSable and his family settled near the Chicago River, where DuSable built a home, and later, a trading post, with a mill, a bake house and a barn, among other small buildings. Kittihawa was instrumental in DuSable's career as a businessman, Podlasek said.

On May 7, 1800, DuSable sold his properties in Chicago. Soon after, he moved to St. Charles, Mo., , where he lived until he died in 1818.

Through the years, many fought to erase DuSable's tale from Chicago's official history, but it was never forgotten.

In the 1930s, Alice J. Neal helped form the National DuSable Memorial Society, which set up an exhibit at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair to educate people about him. As the years passed, the society began to fade. So in 1966, Neal organized the Chicago DuSable League, through which she pushed for a street and a statue named after him. She died in 1981, before achieving those goals.

Through the years, a public high school, museum, harbor, marina and an undeveloped lakefront park have been named after DuSable in the city. Until Friday, a variety of more prominent proposals, from renaming City Hall to Lake Shore Drive after him, either failed or stalled in the City Council.

"Many times we have introduced ordinances in the City Council, some of them have passed and some of them just sat on the table, but we've come a long way," said Ald. Walter Burnett at Friday's ceremony.

In 2000, Haroon Rashid formed Friends of DuSable and pushed for the renaming of the bridge. Bessie Neal, president of the DuSable League, was there to help him. Neal said she has spent many sleepless nights and a lot of money "to try to get this going."

"I can't tell you what this means to me," Neal said. "It means so much."

mcancino@tribune.com

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

OSF Tries to Quell Rumors

2010-10-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

Peoria Journal Star's Catherine Schaidle wrote a good article regarding OSF.

OSF employees are told one thing by OSF management that makes them worry about losing their jobs. And then an article like this comes out with OSF management's confusing statements like "job restructuring" and notes Mr. Steffen's "bewildered" appearance when questioned.

How could OSF's employees be anything but "bewildered" and afraid? Mr. Steffen told me that fear is a good thing amongst employees at OSF.

Many of the comments that follow on the Journal Star website clearly show that many people no longer trust OSF and believe that the Sisters have lost control of their medical center.

OSF's New Building and Shoddy Care

2010-10-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

This forum article appeared yesterday in the Peoria Journal Star.

I will add more soon.

Keith Steffen told me that it was OK with him if OSF nurses left for Methodist. I think quite a few have.

Who will take care of sick patients at OSF?

Catholic Bishops and Mandated Contraception

2010-09-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a link from NPR.

This interview was done yesterday.

The Catholic Diocese of Peoria and OSF created their own ethical loopholes 15 years ago which allows OSF physicians to prescribe oral contraceptives. And OSF's health care plan at the time offered a wide array of contraceptives.

It seems that OSF in Peoria does not have to worry much about contraception being pushed on the them by the federal government. OSF made it easy for patients to obtain contraceptives...no federal mandate was needed.

Peoria's EMS Not the Same as Miami's

2010-09-23T07:56:00.001-07:00

This Emergency vehicle was sitting in front of the Miami International Airport the other day.

The Miami-Dade fire officials have told me that for a firefighter to advance in the Miami-Dade fire department they must advance their skills to Paramedic level.

(Paramedics give advanced life support versus basic life support.)

This of course is not what the Peoria powers have wanted for the Peoria Fire Department (PFD) over the past two decades. Peoria City Council meetings were filled with local hospital administrators and physicians who wanted to keep the PFD at a basic level.

Up until a couple of years ago, the PFD was not allowed to provide ANY paramedic support to people who called them for medical emergerncies. All the PFD could do was provide basic life support and wait until Advanced Medical Transport arrived. And the patient waited too...

In the last 18 months Fire Station 12 in Peoria was designated Paramedic by the powers that be. This change was not announced or covered by the local media. So the average Peorian did not know the change had been made or even that their was a NEED for change.

During a 12 month interval Fire Station 12 gave Paramedic care to 89 victims. And that is just Fire Station 12 during its first year providing Paramedic service.

If one extrapolated to the entire city of Peoria with 12 Fire Stations, how much Paramedic care would the PFD have provided for the citizens of Peoria with all Fire Stations providing Paramedic care? How much good would they have all done for people who called 911 for a medical emergency?

Occasionally the Little Guy Wins....

2010-09-03T10:24:00.001-07:00

Haitian Hearts has 141st Patient Accepted in to the USA

2010-08-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

When I was working in Haiti in July a very sick man came to clinic early one morning. He was in terrible congestive heart failure and arrived on the back of a little motor scooter.

He has been accepted into a medical center in the USA and will be arriving soon.

See Maria's blog for further details.

Long Waits in the Emergency Room

2010-08-24T18:10:00.000-07:00

In today's Journal Star there is an article on long waits in the nation's emergency rooms.

Dr. Nick Jouriles, emergency medicine chief at Akron General Hospital in Ohio was quoted in the article:

"The longer people stay in the emergency department, the more likely they're going to have complications, deaths. If they are elderly, they're more likely to end up in the nursing home."

In 2001 I wrote Keith Steffen, CEO at OSF-SFMC in Peoria this letter.

The next day I was put on probation for six months and Keith referred to me as "a malignancy in the emergency department."

I think OSF-SFMC was keeping the hospital full of elective surgical cases to the detriment of my Emergency Room patients.

A few months later Mr. Streffen fired me, and in July, 2002 he cut all OSF funding of Haitian Hearts patients.

Will Saint Francis Really do this?

2010-08-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

Will OSF allow Jenny to die?

How could OSF do this?

OSF has a shining brand new 300 million dollar medical building. But was this building worth it if the life of one Haitian is ignored?

If Jenny were in Peoria, we wouldn’t keep her invisible. If she asked for medical help, the Peoria community would try and help her. Jenny lives 90 minutes from Miami.

The best medical technology in Peoria should not be used in a discriminatory fashion. Will OSF allow Jenny to die in Haiti with no medical technology at all?

Humility

2010-08-17T09:33:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

Examining patients in Haiti is a very humbling experience for me.

When I look at the patient sitting on the examination table in front of me I realize there is no difference between the two of us. We are the same being. He just happens to be in a worse way that particular day than I am. And deep inside I realize some day I will be in his position one way or another.

When one is strong and seemingly in control one can be mistaken and think that he will always be in control of himself and his environment. But that is just not true.

Someday we will all be Haitian-like. We will be looking into someone's eyes pleading for help for ourselves. Will the other person be kind and at least try and help some? When our day comes hopefully we will have some of the dignity that Hatiians display during their dark hours.

John A. Carroll, MD
------------

See the abstract below about humility in medicine.

"The new professionalism movement in medical education takes seriously the old medical virtues. Perhaps the most difficult virtue to understand and practice is humility, which seems out of place in a medical culture characterized by arrogance, assertiveness, and a sense of entitlement. Counter cultural though it is, humility need not suggest weakness or lack of self confidence. On the contrary, humility requires toughness and emotional resilience. Humility in medicine manifests itself as unflinching self-awareness; empathic openness to others; and a keen appreciation of, and gratitude for, the privilege of caring for sick persons. Justified pride in medicine’s accomplishments should neither rule out nor diminish our humility as healers."

Jack Coulehan, MD, MPH
Annals of Internal Medicine Vol. 153 Number 3
August 3, 2010

Keith Steffen and the (Revised) OSF Mission Statement

2010-08-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

A recent Journal Star article referred to OSF's new Milestone Project as "monolithic".

The article quoted OSF Keith Steffen extensively. Several of Keith's quotes made me laugh...this one in particular:

"I've never seen the sisters back away from risk, back away from being first or back away from this value proposition of market differentiation. We're different...."

If anyone understands where Saint Francis of Assisi factors in to the "value proposition of market differentiation", let me know.

Catholic Health Care Demise...Article and Comments from One Year Ago

2010-08-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

CATHOLIC HEALTH CARE’S DEMISE—IS IT IMMINENT?
POSTED: WEDNESDAY JULY 22, 2009 AT 12:28 PM EST BY JUDIE BROWN

There was a time when institutions bearing a Catholic identity, such as hospitals and clinics, would never have agreed to even the slightest hint of deviating from the Catholic Church’s teachings. That was, I am sad to say, a very long time ago.

Today, there appears to be a slow deterioration in the Catholic identity of Catholic health-care institutions. I started to become aware of this over 10 years ago, when the Peoria Protocol first came to my attention. For those unfamiliar with it, the Peoria Protocol, first developed in 1995, was put in place at Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois. The Protocol defines permissible approaches to medical care following a sexual assault. Following are two of its four possible courses of action:

* The woman is determined to be past the early post-ovulatory phase of her cycle if the LH urine test is negative and her progesterone level is greater than or equal to 6 ng/mL. In this situation, the timing of the sexual assault could not have coincided with the presence of an ovum. Hence, it is morally permissible to administer an emergency contraceptive for the victim's psychological benefit.

* Finally, the woman is determined to be in the late post-ovulatory phase if the LH urine test is negative, her progesterone level is less than 6 ng/mL, and she anticipates menstruation in less than seven days. Here, too, it is morally permissible to administer a contraceptive medication.

These two statements, while approved by many Catholic medical ethicists, represent a fundamental moral problem. If the Catholic Church does not condone the use of contraception as medical treatment in any case other than a situation involving a serious medical condition and in which the female abstains from sexual relations during such treatment, how can it be permissible to administer a powerful chemical compound that is known to abort, when there is no serious medical condition and alternative therapies exist?

Neither of the above scenarios described in the Peoria Protocol provide a 100-percent guarantee that a child has not been conceived. Moreover, these statements are nuanced and do not provide adequate safeguards to protect the child, should his conception have occurred as a result of the rape.

One has to wonder why a Catholic hospital would even consider this treatment option.

Saint Francis Medical Center is also involved in dispensing oral contraceptives. The news media reports that its involvement in the distribution of birth control pills is the direct result of a “middle ground” decision:

[W]hen OSF Saint Francis began hiring primary care physicians in the 1990s as part of OSF Medical Group, many of the physicians wanted to prescribe oral contraceptives. Much anguished discussion ensued, said Joseph Piccione, corporate ethicist for OSF Healthcare System.

Yet a middle ground was found. No contraception of any kind would be distributed within the four walls of the hospital itself, Piccione said.

Regardless of walls, there is no Catholic doctrine that would sanction an arm’s-length agreement that the birth control pill can be dispensed under the aegis of the Church.

Then there’s the California case involving known abortionists serving as staff physicians for Catholic hospitals. When Wynette Sills first brought this to our attention earlier this year, we investigated, only to find—to our dismay—that, in fact, the situation is as she originally described it. As Bud Reeves reports,
We want our readers to know that we are continuing with our investigation as well as with our direct action activities regarding Mercy San Juan Hospital (MSJH) and Catholic Healthcare West’s (CHW) practice of allowing identified abortion doctors to practice at MSJH and even be promoted on their webpage. CHW originally excused their promotion and use of three identified abortion doctors as a matter of an insurance requirement. Following my (Bud) efforts to get clarification from Mr. Gardner, last week he sent me a one sentence email which now claims that federal law requires CHW hospitals to allow the abortion doctors to practice in their hospitals. I wrote back to Mr. Gardner and asking him for a meeting or at least giving us the citations for the laws he refers to. So far nothing but silence from Mr. Gardner. Keep this in prayer.
It is probably no accident that about a year ago, Catholic Healthcare West entered into an alliance with human cloning practitioner Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. While it is reported that Catholic Healthcare West will be conducting clinical trials of adult stem cell treatment for heart disease, this alliance raises serious ethical questions, due to the fact that “ACT has previously promoted research that contradicts Catholic principles regarding respect for the rights of the human embryo.”

The problematic nature of such agreements, arrangements and alliances is not by any means limited to Illinois and California. It is a nationwide epidemic, rooted in the age-old dilemma of choosing between God and money. This becomes very clear when revisiting the complexities of the Boston archdiocese’s Caritas Christi mess. You may recall that American Life League was quick to commend Cardinal Sean O’Malley when the archdiocese made this announcement on June 26:

Caritas Christi Health Care, the financially challenged Catholic hospital system founded by the Archdiocese of Boston, is abruptly ending its joint venture with a Missouri-based health insurer at the insistence of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who has decided that the relationship represented too much of an entanglement between Catholic hospitals and abortion providers.

But, within days, we received a telephone call informing us that the agreement had actually not been cancelled. Carol McKinley reported this on her blog, which has thus far not been refuted: “Nobody (including other bishops and cardinals) is able to get details out of the cardinal about what it is he has approved. I think our Catholic pro-life force deserves to know what the actual arrangement is.”

But we do have an inkling when we consider the statement Cardinal O’Malley made, as quoted in the Boston Globe: “By withdrawing from the joint venture and serving the poor as a provider... upholding Catholic moral teaching at all times, they are able to carry forward the critical mission of Catholic health care.’’ The newspaper’s analysis: “Because Caritas will no longer be a joint owner of the insurance venture, the archdiocese is hoping that there will no longer be any question that Caritas will not financially profit from abortions, sterilizations, or other services provided by non-Catholic hospitals.”

A Caritas spokeswoman told the Globe, “This is the right way to move the distraction of the debate of ownership and allow us to be a provider.’’ Here is noted Catholic commentator Phil Lawler’s response: “A debate over involvement in killing unborn babies is a ‘distraction’ from the business of saving lives. A debate over mutilating people to make them infertile is a ‘distraction’ from the distinctive mission of Catholic health care.”

So we are left to wonder if all this means is that Caritas Christi is no longer an official business partner of abortion providers, but still connected with them in some way. Does it mean that Catholic hospitals will continue to refer for abortion, use the morning-after pill to treat rape victims and so forth? Nobody knows!

As I write this, similar problems are developing in New Hampshire, where the pressure is on Catholic hospitals to bend to the will of the state. New Hampshire Right to Life has prepared a set of three videos dealing with the challenges they face at this time. As was the case in Massachusetts, the cause of concern is a merger.

Wisconsin’s Catholic hospitals are also under the gun. Just last year, they were forced to dispense emergency contraception and did not sue, or in any other way, act to protect their Catholic identity. So what will happen now?

Well, the answer, which is frightening to say the least, may be contained in a short commentary written by Catholic Health Association’s president and CEO, Sister Carol Keehan, DC, who attended the March 5 Obama White House Health Reform Summit. She tells us, President Obama also was clear that we will have to spend more money in the immediate future to build the infrastructure to lower health care costs in order to achieve the kind of savings and affordability in the future. He pointed out that this is politically one of the hardest kinds of decisions to make.

It occurs to me that the various pressure tactics already being used by state governments to pressure Catholic hospitals into doing the unthinkable are but one way to tighten the noose as “Obama-care” becomes a reality, if, in fact, it does.

What also occurs to me is that our bishops must speak with a unified voice, without any dissent and without any bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. They must set forth authentically Catholic medical ethics as the only medical ethics that will be followed in a Catholic setting—with or without mergers, alliances or “common-ground” shenanigans. Until that happens, Catholic health care, as we once knew it, will continue to deteriorate and, at some point, will crumble.

Responses

I honesty cannot belive that a woman would consider rape to be a gift from God. Maybe you, julie, need to get out in the real world for a while. You will be not be winning anyone's heart and mind by acting like a fanatic

joell
July 22, 2009

It must be that bishops are unable, or unwilling, to teach Catholic beliefs, and so instead appease the culture.

For example, the Peoria Protocol "administer an emergency contraceptive for the victim's psychological benefit" when no physical purpose exists.

And OSF allowing employee physicians to prescribe oral contraceptives because they the doctors wanted to. Teaching employee physician the truth as set forth in Humanae Vitae would have fulfilled the Bishop's and OSF's responsibility, instead!

If Catholic teachers and institutions are not going to stand up and answer the challenges in the hard cases, then what do they understand Catholicism to mean? When do people get the teaching? When does the light shine? When does the Light shine?

If bishops want to restrict themselves to espousing pious practices - which the secular culture may ridicule but nonetheless tolerate, and avoid teaching us how to address the difficult decisions in our lives, then they lead us towards sentimental religiosity and away from truth and heroic living.

David Volk
July 22, 2009

Catholic health care has been sliding down the moral slippery slope ever since it permitted replacement of the demoniacal possession theory of disease with heretical scientific theories of disease.

Arium
July 22, 2009

The Massachusetts law requiring that emergency contraception be provided at hospitals to rape victims went into effect in late 2005. There is no exception for Catholic hospitals and none are known to have refused to comply with the law. One of the ways the medication works is by preventing the implantation of a newly conceived human being in its mother's uterus. This is an abortion. Governor Romney vetoed the legislation, and the Catholic hierarchy made no effort to round up the votes (one-third from either house of the legislature) needed to sustain the veto. Never mind that about 70 percent of the members were Catholic! Apparently diocesan leaders decided it would not be worthwhile to risk antagonizing the heavily Democratic legislature by working to sustain a Republican governor's veto.

Charles O. Coudert
July 22, 2009

John Carroll to Webmaster
Submitted Comment

One has to know Peoria’s local politics to really understand what is happening at OSF- Saint Francis Medical Center regarding Catholics and contraception. What has happened is quite complex and not transparent.

OSF hired Catholic ethicist Joe Piccione in the early 90s and made him OSF Corporate Ethicist. According to the Peoria Journal Star articles from that time, one of Mr. Piccione’s main goals was to work with the Catholic Diocese of Peoria and make an ethical loophole which would allow OSF to be in the contraceptive business. The rationale was that this would help OSF stay competitive in the Peoria medical marketplace.

OSF’s Mr. Piccione and Bishop John Myers of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria were able to establish a policy which allowed OSF physicians to write for contraceptives ('limited private practice'). At the same time, OSF HealthPlans insurance provided a wide array of oral contraceptives and sterilization methods.

These policies were implemented, as explained to me by Mr. Piccione, using ethical firewalls to separate the evil act (contraception) from OSF. The “limited private practice” policy and third party payers supposedly provided the firewalls.

However, when interviewed by the Peoria Journal Star 15 years ago, Mr. Piccione, stated that their hands would be dirty with this policy.

And just recently, OSF purchased Carle Clinic in Bloomington, Illinois. Carle serves over 37,000 patients. Carle Clinic representatives have told me that their physicians will soon become OSF employees and will write prescriptions for oral contraceptives in this newly purchased OSF facility.

Unfortunately, these Peoria policies and practices are in opposition to the fundamental teachings of Humanae Vitae. However, as pointed out in Judie’s commentary, the Catholic Diocese of Peoria is not alone in succumbing to the forces of the medical marketplace.

John A. Carroll, MD
Peoria, Illinois

Haitian Adoptions

2010-08-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Carroll/July 28, 2010
Beautiful Haitian orphan...one of thirty seven babies, toddlers, and children in an orphanage in the capital going nowhere quickly. How sad and how bad.

My wife Maria and I adopted a Haitian toddler several years ago. It took 20 months of agonizing paperwork (done by Maria). The bureaucracy on both sides of the water was terrible. (We had to be fingerprinted three times by the US government. And our adoption documents sat in various Haitian ministries for months at a time...just needing one director's signature.)

It has not been uncommon during the past twenty years to walk down the street in Port-au-Prince and be offered a baby/child to adopt by a desperate adult caregiver. In fact that happened frequently. And still does post earthquake. (We were offered a baby who was born in July by the parents...but the offer was made to us in May.)

Haitian parents love their kids, they just can't feed and educate them. So there are hundreds of thousands of orphans in Haiti.

Haiti just went through the biggest natural disaster ever recorded. In history. Ever.

Were mistakes made with hustling over 1,100 kids out of Haiti to be adopted AFTER the earthquake? Probably.

But are mistakes being made now by slowing Haitian adoptions? Yes, definitely, with many Haitian kids suffering in every fashion you can imagine.

See article below.

August 3, 2010

After Haiti Quake, Adoption Chaos
By GINGER THOMPSON

BAXTER, Minn. — Beechestore and Rosecarline, two Haitian teenagers in the throes of puberty, were not supposed to be adopted.

At the end of last year, American authorities denied the petition of a couple here, Marc and Teresa Stroot, to adopt the brother and sister after their biological father opposed relinquishing custody.

Reluctantly, Mr. and Mrs. Stroot, a special-needs teaching assistant and a sales executive with four children of their own, decided to move on.

Then on Jan. 12, a devastating earthquake toppled Haiti’s capital and set off an international adoption bonanza in which some safeguards meant to protect children were ignored.

Leading the way was the Obama administration, which responded to the crisis, and to the pleas of prospective adoptive parents and the lawmakers assisting them, by lifting visa requirements for children in the process of being adopted by Americans.

Although initially planned as a short-term, small-scale evacuation, the rescue effort quickly evolved into a baby lift unlike anything since the Vietnam War. It went on for months; fell briefly under the cloud of scandal involving 10 Baptist missionaries who improperly took custody of 33 children; ignited tensions between the United States and child protection organizations; and swept up about 1,150 Haitian children, more than were adopted by American families in the previous three years, according to interviews with government officials, adoption agencies and child advocacy groups.

Among the first to get out of Haiti were Beechestore and Rosecarline. “It’s definitely a miracle,” Mrs. Stroot said of their arrival here, “because this wasn’t going to happen.”

Under a sparingly used immigration program, called humanitarian parole, adoptions were expedited regardless of whether children were in peril, and without the screening required to make sure they had not been improperly separated from their relatives or placed in homes that could not adequately care for them.

Some Haitian orphanages were nearly emptied, even though they had not been affected by the quake or licensed to handle adoptions. Children were released without legal documents showing they were orphans and without regard for evidence suggesting fraud. In at least one case, two siblings were evacuated even though American authorities had determined through DNA tests that the man who had given them to an orphanage was not a relative.

“I feel a weird sense of survivor’s guilt,” said Dawn Shelton of Minnesota, who hopes to adopt the siblings. “So many people died in Haiti, and I was able to get the life I’ve wanted.”

In other cases, children were given to families who had not been screened or to families who no longer wanted them.

The results are playing out across the country. At least 12 children, brought here without being formally matched with new families, have spent months in a Pennsylvania juvenile care center while Red Cross officials try to determine their fate. An unknown number of children whose prospective parents have backed out of their adoptions are in foster care. While the authorities said they knew of only a handful of such cases, adoption agents said they had heard about as many as 20, including that of an 8-year-old girl who was bounced from an orphanage in Haiti to a home in Ithaca, N.Y., to a juvenile care center in Queens after the psychologist who had petitioned to adopt her decided she could not raise a young child.

Dozens of children, approaching the age of 16 or older, are too old to win legal permanent status as adoptees, prompting lawmakers in Congress to consider raising the age limit to 18.

Meanwhile, other children face years of legal limbo because they have arrived with so little proof of who they are, how they got here and why they have been placed for adoption that state courts are balking at completing their adoptions.

One Kansas lawyer said he satisfied a judge’s questions about whether the Haitian boy his clients had adopted was an orphan by broadcasting announcements on Haitian radio stations over two days, urging any relatives of the child to come forward if they wanted to claim him.

Another couple seeking to adopt, Daniel and Jess McKee of Mansfield, Pa., said Owen, 3, who can dribble a basketball better than children twice his age, arrived from Haiti with an invalid birth certificate — it shows him as 4 — a letter in French signed by a Haitian mayor that declared him an orphan, and stacks of handwritten medical records from his time in a Haitian orphanage.

Their prospective daughter, Emersyn, also 3, came with no documents at all.

“As things stand,” Mrs. McKee said, “I’m basically going to show up in court and tell a judge, ‘These kids are who I say they are,’ and hope that he takes my word for it, because if he asks me to prove it, I can’t.”

Later, she added, “I guess the government said, ‘Let’s just get the kids out of Haiti, and we’ll worry about the details later.’ ”

Decisions Made in Haste

Administration officials defended the humanitarian parole program, saying it had strict limits and several levels of scrutiny, including reviews of adoption petitions by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security in Washington and Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.

But they also acknowledged that the administration’s priority was getting children out of harm’s way, not the safeguards the United States is obligated to enforce under international law.

Matt Chandler, a spokesman at the Department of Homeland Security, said the evacuations were done in the best interests of children who faced “an uncertain and likely dangerous situation that could worsen by the day, if not by the hour.”

Whitney Reitz, who oversaw the parole program at the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged that the decisions were hastily made.

“We did something so fast,” Ms. Reitz said at a conference in New York in March. “We did something that normally takes a couple of years and that we normally do with excruciating care and delay. There’s so much time for deliberation in the way the program normally goes, and we condensed all that into a matter of days.”

There is no evidence to suggest that the evacuations were driven by anything other than the best of intentions. And with untold numbers of unaccompanied children in Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest country, left fending for themselves or languishing in institutions, it is not hard to make the case that those who were evacuated are better off than they would have been in the hemisphere’s poorest country.

Many now live in the kind of quiet, scenic towns depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings. They are enrolled in school for the first time. They have grown inches, gotten eyeglasses and had their cavities filled.

And they are learning what it feels like to have a mother and father wake them up every morning and tuck them into bed every night.

But child protection advocates like Marlène Hofstetter at Terre des Hommes, an international child advocacy organization, contend that those ends do not justify the means. Rushing children out of familiar environments in a crisis can worsen their trauma, she said. Expediting adoptions in countries like Haiti — where it is not uncommon for people to turn children over to orphanages for money — violates children’s rights and leaves them at risk of trafficking, she added.

“I’m certain that one day these children are going to ask questions about what happened to them,” Ms. Hofstetter said. “I’m not sure that telling them their lifestyles were better in the United States is going to be a satisfactory answer.”

Even though the humanitarian parole program has officially ended, it remains a source of tensions between American-run orphanages in Haiti and international child protection organizations.

The advocates, led by Unicef, have refused to place children who have lost their parents or been separated from them in some foreign-run orphanages, fearing they would be improperly put into the adoption pipeline before they had the chance to be reunited with surviving relatives.

And the pro-adoption groups, led by the Joint Council on International Children’s Services, accuse the advocates of using endless, often unsuccessful, attempts to locate the children’s biological relatives to deny tens of thousands of needy Haitian orphans the opportunity to be placed in loving homes.

“Unicef’s idea is to house children in tents, and tell them that maybe in five years their relatives will be found,” said Dixie Bickel, who has run a Haitian orphanage called God’s Littlest Angels for more than two decades. “What kind of plan is that?”

Washington Feels Pressure

Concerns about child trafficking led China, after its 2008 earthquake, and Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami, to suspend all international adoptions, despite intense pressure by pro-adoption groups in the United States, according to Chuck Johnson at the National Council for Adoption.

After January’s quake, Haiti, though, was hardly able to stand on its own feet, much less push back, Haitian officials acknowledged. Orphanage directors with political connections in Washington said they saw an opportunity to turn the tragedy into a miracle. Some issued urgent pleas, saying that the children in their care had had been left without shelter, and that the orphanages’ limited stocks of food and water made them prime targets for looting.

In the United States, adoptive parents contacted anyone they knew who might have money, private planes and political connections to help them get children out of Haiti. Evangelical Christian churches, which have increasingly taken up orphan care as a tenet of their faith, were also mobilized. Before long, legislators and administration officials were getting calls from constituents.

Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat and adoptive mother, has been a champion of the cause and pushed administration officials to help bring Haitian children here after the quake. “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if there are some errors that were made,” Senator Landrieu said in an interview about the rescue effort, “but you want to err on the side of keeping children safe.”

On Jan. 18, less than a week after the earthquake hit, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, announced that the United States would lift visa requirements for those orphans whose adoptions had already been approved by Haitian authorities and those who had been matched with prospective parents in the United States.

The requirements were written so broadly, adoption experts said, that almost any child in an orphanage could qualify as long as there were e-mails, letters or photographs showing that the child had some connection to a family in the United States. And by the time Ms. Napolitano announced the program, military flights filled with children were already in the air.

“The standard of proof was very low,” said Kathleen Strottman, executive director of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, a nonprofit group that is a leading voice on American adoption policy. “That’s why the administration ended the program as quickly as they did,” she added, “because they worried the longer it was open, the more opportunities they would give people to manufacture evidence.”

Obstacles to Adoption Vanish

Over the next several weeks, orphanages big and small were nearly emptied, whether or not they had been affected by the earthquake.

The staff at Children of the Promise, about 90 miles from Haiti’s capital, barely felt the temblor. But 39 of the 50 children there were approved for humanitarian parole, even though none of them had been affected by the disaster and the orphanage had not yet received the proper license to place children.

Rosemika, 2; Alex, 1; and Roselinda, 1, offer a look at the typical humanitarian parole case. Rosemika’s mother died before the quake. The other two children were given up for adoption because their parents could not provide for them.

Jenny and Jamie Groen, a missionary couple from Minnesota who were volunteering at the orphanage, had fallen in love with the children and decided to adopt them.

Under normal circumstances the couple would have had to get special permission from Haiti’s president to adopt because they are both 28, and the government requires at least one of the prospective parents to be older than 35.

After the quake, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive summarily signed off on their adoption — as he did with all humanitarian parole petitions submitted to him by the United States — without checking the Groens’ qualifications.

Meanwhile, the couple rushed back to the United States for the background checks and home study their own country required for them to take children into their care. And they submitted e-mails, photographs and a Dec. 2 newspaper clipping to prove that their commitment to adopt the children predated the earthquake.

During a recent visit to the orphanage in Haiti, surrounded by peasant hovels and sugar-cane fields, Ms. Groen, now pregnant, said she and her husband were still trying to absorb how quickly they were going from an empty nest to a full one.

It has been a whirlwind for the children’s biological relatives as well. The girls’ relatives still regularly visit the orphanage. “That’s the thing that’s so different about Haiti,” Ms. Groen said. “It’s not full of unwanted children. It’s full of children whose families are too poor to provide for them.”

That appeared to be the predicament shared by Beechestore, 14, and Rosecarline, 13, who are going through all the turmoil of adolescence, exacerbated by a confusing legal tug of war.

In the spring of 2008, their biological father had told the American authorities that he had placed the children for adoption only because he thought they would be educated in the United States and then returned to Haiti. Once he understood the implications of adoption, he refused to give them up.

In November 2009, American authorities formally notified the Stroots that their adoption petition had been denied.

By then, the Stroots were spent — emotionally and financially. The effort to adopt the children had taken four years and $40,000. Rather than appeal, the Minnesota couple decided it would be best for everyone to end their efforts.

Then the earthquake hit. Homeland Security, which earlier had denied visas to the children, reversed course without consulting the children’s biological father or the Stroots. “One day, we’re being told we can’t have the kids,” Mrs. Stroot said. “The next minute, we’re getting a call telling us we need to get them winter coats. It was crazy.”

In late July, a Minnesota judge awarded the Stroots legal custody of the children. Neither the previous denial nor the views of the children’s biological father were mentioned during the proceeding, the Stroots said.

Since then, the newly expanded family has moved on to more mundane matters, like dentist appointments, vaccinations and back-to-school shopping.

“God got done in 10 days,” Mr. Stroot said, “something human beings couldn’t do in years.”

Erin Siegal contributed reporting from Oakland, Calif. Barclay Walsh contributed research from Washington.

Catholics and Fear of Church Hierarchy in Peoria

2010-08-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

Peoria Journal Star

Forum: Catholics shouldn't be afraid to challenge church hierarchy

Posted Jul 31, 2010 @ 10:45 PM

With the sale of Resurrection Church in LaSalle, plus the demolition of St. Benedict's in Ladd and the loss of attendance in the four suspended churches in our area, it is time to challenge the church's hierarchy.

We have little authority in church governance. We must challenge this clerical pyramid that is secretive and above scrutiny. We must take a stand for accountability in overseeing the complexities of church finances and all church functions.

We want a diocese, monastery or abbey to be like that of a poor workman who is not sure if tomorrow he will find work or bread. We want them to be filled with those who with all their being share their suffering with those they preach to.

We no longer want a diocese, monastery or abbey whose leaders concern themselves with their own survival and security, free from fear, care or anxiety, while the parishioners are uneasy about what the future holds in their Catholic community. It is easy to speak of spiritual poverty, to fill one's mouth with pious words based on scriptural readings, and yet lack for nothing.

It is time, the parishioners take back the churches they paid for, furnished and repaired. It is time for the laity to handle church operations and let the priests be responsible only for what is sacred.

We have too many priests who live comfortably while parishioners struggle for their church's survival. This has to stop. There are few priests who emulate the poor Nazarene and the humble Jesus.

We need a crusade to recover "Christianity" from the clerical elite. This must come about in order to ensure our Catholic faith.

Carlo Olivero

Dalzell

A Lesson for U.S. Health Care

2010-08-02T16:26:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll
Les Cayes, Haiti
July, 2010

In Haiti, a Lesson for U.S. Health Care

By JAMES WILENTZ

In February, a month after Haiti’s earthquake, I went down to Port-au-Prince as part of a team that was helping to reactivate cardiac care in the city’s public hospital. For several months since, I have observed how the earthquake and its aftermath profoundly changed Haiti’s health care system. Over that time, I have come to the unorthodox conclusion that Haiti’s tragic experience may show us a way to improve health care in the United States.

Let me explain. The sudden availability in Haiti of free high-quality care from foreign doctors put enormous competitive pressure on the private local doctors, who had already been working under difficult conditions. Watching this situation unfold, I found myself wondering if the same would happen to private medical services back in the United States were our government to suddenly provide high-quality, low-cost health care.

Haiti, with the worst health care record in the Western Hemisphere — the infant mortality rate is nine times that of the United States and the maternal mortality rate is 50 times as high — was ill prepared to help disaster victims. For the public hospital in Port-au-Prince, earthquake damage only made things worse. Into this vacuum surged hundreds of international doctors and nongovernmental health care organizations.

In the beginning, of course, those with immediate injuries were treated first. But even after the earthquake victims had been taken care of, lines more than a quarter-mile long still formed at the hospital entrance. There were mothers carrying babies with swollen bellies, prematurely old men and women with waterlogged legs and labored breathing, people with painful sores and lots of people coughing. These were Haitians who’d had no access to medical care in a long time and who suddenly saw hope in a hospital full of foreign doctors eager to help at no charge.

This humanitarian aid came with a downside though: it caused many of Haiti’s local private clinics to lose business. One such clinic is Michel Théard’s cardiac practice, near the public hospital where I worked. Before the earthquake and during the immediate aftermath, Dr. Théard did echocardiograms (ultrasound images of the beating heart) for cardiac patients, because the public hospital lacks the equipment to do them. His ultrasound pictures, and those done by other private Haitian cardiologists, often at charity rates, enabled us to diagnose many conditions for patients in the public hospital.

But because Dr. Théard, and the private hospital with which he is affiliated, cannot compete with free foreign doctors, there is a danger that he will no longer be able to stay in business and provide echocardiograms for the poor.

There are many other services that only private doctors provide in Haiti, because the public hospitals are so poorly financed. The rudimentary intensive care unit at the public hospital has no heart monitors, oxygen sensors or any other kind of modern medical equipment. The only thing “intensive” about the I.C.U. is that a health care worker (doctor, nurse or nurse-anesthetist) is present at all times. A CT scanner donated to the hospital in the early ’90s lies rusting outside one of the buildings, sad evidence of the public medical system’s failure to provide adequate care.

Patients who can afford it get specialized procedures like CT scans and echocardiograms at private clinics and then return to the public hospitals for free care. This is also the case for many medicines: family members buy them at a pharmacy and bring them back to be kept under the patient’s hospital pillow for dispensing at the prescribed times.

Perversely, by shoring up the capacity of the normally dysfunctional public health system during this crisis, the foreign doctors may be further damaging Haiti’s fragile medical sector. Once they leave, who will be left with the will and the capital to adequately care for Haitians?

What may be needed, some have suggested, is for key nongovernmental organizations now offering health care in Haiti to work alongside the government’s Ministry of Health to rebuild destroyed facilities and to better train Haitian doctors and other providers. If the organizations could also cooperate financially by directing some of their budget into accounts run jointly with Haiti’s Ministry of Health, the government could reimburse providers like Dr. Théard for their work, thus removing competition between the foreign doctors and local private doctors. In time, as the Haitian government took control of health care delivery and education, the nongovernmental organizations would fade from the scene.

HAITI’S crisis — and its possible solution — provides a mirror for understanding our own difficulties delivering good health care in the United States. After all, it was a similar tension between private and public medical care that made it impossible for Congress, in passing reform legislation this year, to create a single-payer public health system. Many private health-care organizations — primarily for-profit insurance companies — strenuously resisted it, fearing that if the government suddenly provided high-quality, low-cost care for a significant part of the population, they would lose profits or go out of business. Worries about competition between public and private medicine, in other words, are universal.

It is clear that the American health care system functions at a much higher level than its Haitian counterpart does, but that’s mostly a matter of national wealth. Our healthier economy has allowed us to have a relatively viable private-sector health care system, though there remains tremendous disparity from one economic class to another in infant and maternal mortality and access to basic care. And now, because the growing cost of our health care system is unsustainable, we are faced with the need to consider an alternative.

The Haitian situation also suggests a solution — a way to provide health care for all in the United States without destroying our private medical sector. (This, by the way, was always President Obama’s goal, no matter how the right tried to defame his proposals.)

A public-private partnership like the one contemplated for Haiti could be created here. The government, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, could team up with health care systems that provide high-quality care to people of all income levels — Kaiser-Permanente, in California, comes to mind, as does the Mayo Clinic network; the Geisinger Health System, in Pennsylvania; Partners HealthCare, in Boston; and Intermountain Healthcare, in Utah — to provide a public option. Private doctors could be paid for the work they did for the new public entity. People who did not want to join such a health plan could remain with their current private insurers.

Health care systems wishing to be part of the new partnership would have to demonstrate competence as well as fiscal responsibility. Those that did not provide good care at a reasonable price might fail, but in the long run the system could serve the broadest cross section of America, and it could do so without undermining private doctors — or at least not those who are motivated by care itself rather than by mere profit.

Although it is unrealistic to expect Congress to rewrite the health care law to allow for this proposal, there is room within the law for a state or regional pilot project to experiment with public-private medical partnerships.

Dr. Théard’s clinic in Port-au-Prince has not yet closed, but he tells me it is now fighting for its life, with little or no money for salaries, equipment or rent. “We are still open but without any help from any sector,” he said in an e-mail last week. “Equipment needs repair, buildings need repair and we are doing the best we can.”

Haiti’s need to fix its health care system is, if anything, more urgent than ours. But its best solution, a public-private partnership, is one that could easily work for America, too.

James Wilentz is a cardiologist at the Lenox Hill Heart and Vascular Institute.

Les Cayes, Haiti

2010-07-19T05:10:00.000-07:00

This man is 86 years old.

He is in the hospital but is up and about walking up and down the hallway. His doting family is here also.

He tells me that he remembers World War II very well and the atrocities of Adolph Hitler. I told him that my dad was at Hitler's home at the end of the war.

This man has a heart rate of 28 per minute. He is in complete heart block.

He needs a pacemaker which can only be done in Port-au-Prince by a private cardiologist. And he doesn't have the money anyway.

What to do?

Yarnie (1985-2010)

2010-07-18T14:30:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Carroll
Southern Haiti
July, 2010

In the late 90's Haitian Hearts brought Yarnie to the United States for heart surgery.

Yarnie was about 13 years old at the time and she had valvular heart disease caused by rheumatic fever.

She survived surgery at OSF in Peoria and became much healthier and stronger. Yarnie returned to her home town in southern Haiti which is called Dame Marie. This little village is the home of the famous Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat.

Yarnie survived the next 12 years in rural Haiti and had she had a two year old baby.

Yarnie was in Port-au-Prince on the afternoon of the earthquake in January and survived. However, shortly after the earthquake she became ill.

Yarnie was evaluated by Cuban doctors in southern Haiti.

An echocardiogram was performed which indicated she needed heart surgery. However, OSF in Peoria refused her repeat heart surgery because she is a Haitian Hearts patient. And another hospital could not be found in time to transport her to the US.

Yarnie died several weeks ago.

Her child is now an orphan in Haiti, one of the very most difficult countries to grow up in the world.

Maria, my wife, wrote a poem about Yarnie in 2002.

It is printed below.

---------

Chosen For

Little did I know
25 years ago when I said,
"Sure, I'll go to Haiti with you,"
that half an island would claim me.

In my work, I am faced
with the limits of what I can do
in the land of limitless heart patients.
Not patients with great hearts, that don't work quite right.

They all know me, Dr. Blan,
who can whisk them
to the magic land, the heaven
up north where hearts
can be synchronized.

The Haitians wouldn't put it that way.
They would say they no longer feel
th ocean rising in their chest
and maybe they won't drown.

Thousands need help.
Who to choose?

A priest tells me of
a sick girl in Dame Marie.
Yarnie, the best student
in her class and maybe the cousin
of Edwidge Danticat, who wrote
Breath, Eys, Memory.

I'm sure she is lovely and deserving,
and her weak breath concerns,
but five kids on the list are coming back.
Perhaps next time.

The next morning I scale an
eight-foot airport fence
and drop to my knees.
The priest arranged
for a Haitian Pilot Man
to fly me to Yarnie.
If I can take five, what's six?

Why is the pilot tasting the gasoline?
Because it's mostly water?
We lift off while the sun peeps
innocently over mountains.

Heading west, preparing to land,
the guilty sun blinds the cockpit,
and the pilot confirms,
"I cannot see anything."
Whack! Whack! Whack!
We hit the treetops and prepare
to die in Dame Marie's red clay.

But instead we land in mud.
Haitian Pilot Man boasts,
"I use only one half of runway and am only pilot,
in Haiti who will land here,"
and then warns me not
track mud in his plane when I reenter.
Priorities.

A group walks toward us.
Yarnie and others.
A runway examination reveals
tachypnea and a heart rate of 140,
the beautiful girl, a stick figure.

The brave fool pilot says he will
fly lower than the mountains for Yarnie's breath.
What choice do I have?
Yarnie's mother cries for
her daughter who she
will lose to find.

Back in Port-au-Prince,
I must get yarnie a visa.
If she falls asleep,
she stops breathing, a deadly cardiac slumber.
I tell another cardiac kid, Nadia, to shake
Yarnie if she doesn't breathe after 15 seconds.

I am gone three hours.
Will there be a girl for this visa?
Rushing in the door,
Yarnie standing and smiling,
"Sure had a good nap. Made a new friend who
kept shaking me for some reason."

Maria King Carroll
Cri de Coeur, 2002

OSF's New Children's Hospital Blessed

2010-07-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

Bishop Jenky and the other "Catholic prelates" in attendance have to be embarrassed with OSF because of OSF's abandonment of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A prominent Catholic Monsignor in Peoria described to me the "corporate malaise" at OSF. And the good Catholic priests in parishes of The Catholic Diocese of Peoria are frequently uninformed about huge moral issues at OSF. One priest explained to me how he didn't want to make Bishop Jenky angry regarding a serious "Catholic problem" at OSF and did not want to even talk to Bishop Jenky about it.

And Bishop Jenky and The Catholic Diocese of Peoria are afraid of OSF's power and money and have given in to OSF on very crucial Catholic issues. And the priests and laity in the Diocese--we just follow along with our heads in the sand.

It's all about money, power, and instilling fear in people so they remain quiet.

Too bad.

Below is the Journal Star article regarding the blessing of the new Children's Hospital at OSF today.

OSF's new Children's Hospital blessed

By CATHARINE SCHAIDLE (cschaidle@pjstar.com)
Journal Star

Posted Jul 16, 2010 @ 03:04 PM

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood quoted from Psalm 118: 24 at the dedication ceremony Friday morning of the new Children’s Hospital of Illinois and OSF Saint Francis Medical Center.

Indeed there were hundreds of reasons for rejoicing. Speaker after speaker related various stories, of the long and arduous path to the shining new hospital that was blessed by Bishop Daniel Jenky and a host of other Catholic prelates before a contingent of Peoria dignitaries and well-wishers.

Scriptural verses and symbolisms abound at the brand new building which is being celebrated on the 133rd anniversary of its founders, the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis.

Despite his pious opening, LaHood couldn’t let a cheeky observation pass. He was among many who believed it was necessary for the children’s section of the hospital to have its own unit. In those early days, LaHood said, “We fought just to get one sign up.”

Today, the $280 million “sign” is a shining light giving witness to the state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the care of children.

With this project, the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis re-affirmed their original mission when they arrived in Peoria on May 22, 1876, and opened a new orphanage and school called “Mount Mary.”

It was while begging on behalf of their wards, that they met the pastor of St. Joseph Church, Rev. Bernard Baak, who asked them to set up a hospital in Peoria.

In October 1876, six nuns led by Sister M. Frances Krasse, set up a make-shift hospital in a rented three-story house on Adams Street. They named it St. Francis Hospital.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Check out the new hospital for yourself this weekend. Two public open houses are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

OSF in Peoria Denying Care to their Haitian Patients

2010-07-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

See this Forum article I wrote and the Peoria Journal Star printed today.

Forum: OSF failing patients from Haiti with urgent needs.

Posted Jul 15, 2010 @ 11:00 PM
Re. July 5 article: "Children's Hospital tours scheduled":

I am sure the brand new, $290 million OSF Children's Hospital and Emergency Department is beautiful and will be loaded with technology. People from central Illinois deserve this structure, along with competent medical personnel inside to deliver high-quality care.

However, every society around the world deserves the same chance at cutting-edge medicine.

During the last seven years Haitian Hearts patients who have returned to Haiti after heart surgery at OSF have been categorically denied follow-up surgery at OSF. Several weeks ago, a young girl operated on 13 years ago at OSF died in Haiti. She needed repeat heart surgery.

It's difficult to find other medical centers in the U.S. to take OSF's Haitian patients. They believe Haitian patients cared for in Peoria are OSF's medical and ethical responsibility.

Two more Haitian patients operated on at OSF need heart surgery again. They survived the devastating January earthquake and both have been homeless in Port-au-Prince. Last month I examined them. Both will die without heart surgery soon.

Haitian Hearts donated over $1.1 million to Children's Hospital of Illinois earlier this decade to help build this new OSF medical complex. We would pay for both of these patients, as well.

Over 130 years ago, OSF's founding Sisters said they would turn no one away. The current OSF Sisters say the same, but unfortunately Haitian Hearts patients have been excluded from their mission.

The new OSF medical complex needs to show how "beautiful and uplifting" it really could be. OSF could really shine if they would accept back their Haitian patients and give them another chance at life.

John A. Carroll, M.D.

Haitian Hearts Medical Director

West Peoria

Copyright 2010 pjstar.com.
------

I am quite sure OSF is mounting a rebuttal to my opinion written above.

OSF's usual modus operandi is to recruit a well known Peoria person to write an article stating why I am all wrong. Who would want this job to defend OSF's neglect of Haitian kids who are dying as a result of OSF's neglect?

Someone will run with the ball for OSF and I will post their article when it appears.

The host families for these Haitian kids in the Peoria area are very afraid of OSF...and for good reason. Much of the Peoria community is afraid of OSF...even big donors to OSF would like to see Mr. Steffen replaced, but their own medical problems make them think twice about going public.

In the meantime, I need to find medical centers to accept Jenny and Henri. They don't have the same time or resources as does OSF.

"Affluence is a Funny Thing"

2010-07-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Carroll
Cite Soleil, Haiti

"Affluence is a funny thing. Once so many millions of people have so many millions of dollars at stake, even life-and-death issues are resolved on the basis of what protects my money, right now--not the general good or the planet's health. Money and fear will choke even the strongest to death...unless they take that step back, take that breath, and see what money and fear are doing to them."

Gary Smith
Sports Illustrated, July 5, 2010

(Smith wrote an article on the gulf oil spill. This paragraph is relevant for all areas of life. Money and fear do bad things to people and fear of losing money hushes them up, even when they know they should speak up and act.)

On the Ground in Haiti

2010-07-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

On the Ground in Haiti
John A. Carroll, M.D.
June, 2010

My wife Maria and I worked in Haiti during part of the months of May and June. We stayed in a guesthouse-orphanage just outside of Port-au-Prince.

A lady named Yolande lived right across the street from us.

Yolande is 78 years old and lives under a blue tarpaulin which encloses a small pup tent inside.

During the earthquake on January 12 her shack, which was located several miles away, was so damaged that she had to move out. Yolande suffered some leg injuries at the time of the quake and still has one lower leg wrapped in a rag. But Yolande smiled and told me that her legs were "much better".

One afternoon shortly after we arrived, I entered an opening in Yolande's blue tarp. The stifling heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and flies were overwhelming.

The tarp was fastened to thin wooden poles and tied above with shoe laces and other fragments of cloth.

Yolande's family brings her rice and vegetables when they can and she cooks in a metal bowl over pieces of charcoal.

I found Yolande to be a practical and pleasant woman. She did not complain about her living arrangements and even said that Americans are the most charitable people in the world. I sure did not feel that way right then as I hurried out from under the tarp so I could get a breath of cooler air in the street.

During this time of the year in Haiti, the rain comes in torrents in the late afternoon or evening, and now this rain seeps through Yolande's tarp and leaks into her tent. So on top of roasting, Yolande and her family are wet much of the time too.

These hardships are not isolated to Yolande.

Haiti has an estimated 9 million people with one third of the population living in the capital, Port-au-Prince. In this city there are over one thousand tent cities, and an estimated 1.5 million people are still homeless five months after the quake. Many people told me that they are simply too afraid to move back inside of their houses. If their houses are still standing, the walls may have been fissure (cracked) and people fear they will collapse on top of them.

Several miles from us downtown Port-au-Prince looks like a nuclear bomb struck it. The once beautiful Haitian National Palace is collapsed and the majority of nearby Haitian government ministry buildings downtown were destroyed in the 47 second earthquake. Haiti's tax building is pancaked just across from the Palace with its director's body and many employees still inside under tons of concrete.

A densely populated tent city now sits in front of the vacant Palace in Port-au-Prince's largest square called Champs de Mars. A young man who identified himself as Carlos told me some of their problems after I walked through his section of the tent city. Carlos seemed fatalistic and did not see any end in sight to their misery.

Rape is common in Port-au-Prince's tent cities and seldom gets reported. Poor women in tent cities have no rights.

Fountains and small decorative pools in Champs de Mar have turned into large toilets filled with stagnant sewage. Kids play nearby with their family's tent abutting these toxic cesspools. Sewage drainage and treatment facilities are more or less nonexistent.

In the chaotic months following the quake, millions of dollars flowed into Haiti from generous people all over the world. (One out of two American households gave to the Haitian relief efforts.)

And five billion more dollars from the international community has been pledged to Haiti over the next two years. Bill Clinton who is UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Recently Mr. Clinton along with Haitian officials have been in charge of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission. One of the objectives of this Commission is to allocate these funds to ensure that the money is used in a transparent fashion for Haiti's post earthquake reconstruction.

Mr. Clinton and Haiti's Prime Minister Bellerive announced the Commission's first approved spending projects:

- $45 million from Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian government, closing a quarter of its estimated $170 million budget shortfall.

- $1 million from the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.

- A $20 million fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized Haitian businesses.

But despite international pledges of some $5 billion over two years at the United Nations donors' conference for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually been delivered - just $40 million from Brazil.

Even though other pledges are supposed to be delivered soon, I spoke to no Haitians during our entire time in Haiti who trusts that the money will be spent properly. People that I spoke with don't really trust Mr. Clinton any more than they do their own fragmented and dysfunctional government. Many are very angry with Haitian President Preval for his perceived lack of leadership and poor communication through Haiti's largest crisis in its history. They also feel he is cuddling up to international powers for business interests that will exclude the majority of poor Haitians.

And why should 9 million poor Haitians trust any one? They and their ancestors have been on the short end of the stick since Haiti was founded as a Republic more than 200 years ago. The corrupt Haitian state is considered to be a fact of life... not unlike corrupt Illinois politics.

So what do "we" do with hundreds of thousands of displaced and homeless Haitian people? Although Haitians are a tough lot, they are not as resilient as our defense mechanisms would like us to believe. And on top of this earthquake which was "biblical" in size, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted a terrible tropical storm season coming Haiti's way in several months.

But so far (as of this writing) the Haitian government has relocated only about 7,000vulnerable people to two safer camps. The relocation is slow because the crippled government doesn't have enough money to complete a job that includes not just setting up new tents, but providing work, schools and services.

First of all, should the tent cities continue to exist? Are they good enough?

No. These places are inhuman and horrible. Lack of food and water, lack of security, and the rain are a few reasons.

And the rain is quickly bringing more problems.

Malaria and typhoid fever were everyday occurrences in the area of the city where I was working. Stagnant dirty puddles of water are everywhere and are good breeding grounds for mosquitoes who will carry disease. I saw a teen-aged boy scooping up water in his hands drinking from a puddle in the road. Medical and public health interventions will not help the majority of Haitians unless their dangerous living environment is changed.

Also, heavy rains tempt unstable hillsides to unleash their mud. And serious flooding and mudslides could endanger not only Haitians but relief workers also.

Port-au-Prince, before the earthquake could have accommodated 300,000 people, not three million people. There has been decades of urban decay. This city is doomed right now unless a paradigm shift in thinking takes place.

We need to be honest and understand that many people are dying now and are still going to die no matter what is done. I saw children starving in front of me. I often wondered what good was my stethoscope in times like this.

So what needs to happen? What interventions will minimize the final death count? How can Haiti's problems be prioritized and triaged appropriately? What can be done to give some dignity to the life of over one million displaced Haitians? How do we stop the violence aimed at Haitian society's unfortunate losers?

Haitians tell me they want jobs. Who would have thought?

Jobs earn them money to repair their lives and their family's lives. Jobs allow one parent to stay at home during the day and take care of their babies and toddlers. Kids suffer alot mentally and physically when they are alone or being watched by a neighbor who is already swamped with problems. Children are literally down in the dirt and sewage and their chances for survival diminish without a parent home.

Mother's can breastfeed if they are home. And when mother's breastfeed, they save money because they do not need to purchase milk. And if they purchase powdered milk, they may accidentally prepare it with dirty water which can sicken their children.

With the billions of dollars that hopefully will come to Haiti, big firms with heavy equipment should be hired. Skillful urban planners from all over the world need to work with the Haitian government.

And most importantly poor Haitians need to be hired.

Hundreds of thousands of young, strong Haitian men and women that live in the capital would jump at the chance for a job. Hire them and pay them fairly so they can feed their families while they make a new and better Haiti. The billions of dollars of international pledges need to go for displaced Haitians while they perform the back breaking reconstruction of Haiti.

Pay Haitians in tent cities to repair or rebuild their own homes--the structures where they were living pre earthquake. Or pay the man that rents the home to these people. And these homes need to be earthquake proof homes using Western building codes. Earthquakes don't kill people, bad buildings do.

The huge mounds of rubble on the Port-au-Prince streets needs to be cleared so the streets can be navigated by cars and big equipment.
The traffic jams in the capital now slow progress for everyone.

Many people have returned to their neighborhoods after inspections found their homes safe, but often return to the tent camps when word of aid distribution spreads. So food and water distribution needs to be local--- brought to people in their neighborhoods as their homes are rebuilt.

Port-au-Prince needs to be decentralized. The earthquake negatively influenced 80% of Haiti's economy because PAP was and is the hub of the country. Now the hub is critically ill. The capital is built over fault lines and this all could happen again. Three million miserable people living on top of each other need to be spread back out to Haiti's provinces.

But for people to move to the Haitian countryside or smaller cities outside of PAP, there has to be jobs, family members with adequate housing that can accept their homeless relatives, and some basic services like schools, roads, water, electricity, and medical care.

Trees need to be planted and gardens started in these communities. Listening to Haitian grass roots organizations and the Haitian farmer is very important. These people know what they need to stay alive.

The local Haitian community in the province needs to be involved in all decision points.

Foreign aid that flowed into Haiti after the quake has hurt the Haitian farmers. Most of the people in Haiti's central plateau (L'Artibonite) earn their living by growing and selling rice, Haiti’s staple food. But the influx of foreign food aid has meant that many Haitians can now get rice for free. As a result, the price of rice grown in Haiti has plummeted and the Haitian farmer finds himself in more trouble.

Several months ago even Mr. Clinton was quoted as saying, "...we made a devil's bargain" when he was President. He publicly apologized for forcing Haiti to drop tariffs on imported, subsidized US rice. His policy hurt Haitian rice farming and, as reported by Kim Ives, "seriously damaged Haiti's ability to be self sufficient".

And let us not forget that Haiti, believe it or not, is in the digital age. The Haitian people in the countryside have cell phones and access to the Internet. Many Haitians are adept at using both. This means that they still communicate with Haitian relatives, the diaspora, overseas.

Haiti's diaspora has sent back billions of dollars over the past few decades to needy Haitian relatives, but this obviously has not been enough. The diaspora need to physically come back to Haiti and revitalize Haiti's industrial sector. But they won't come back and invest in Haiti unless than can do so safely. Most diaspora tell me they fear for their personal safety in Haiti. Security everywhere needs to be improved. And the economic climate for joint business ventures, to stimulate Haiti's diaspora to invest in Haiti, has to be improved by the Haitian government.

In conclusion, Haiti was a severely damaged country before the January earthquake and is even more damaged now.

Haitians are a beautiful and wonderful people, but they are not as "resilient" as we would like to believe.

Yolande, the little old tent lady who lived near us, should not be living like this. If Yolande were your grandmother, you wouldn't refer to her as "resilient" as she suffers the Haitian heat and mosquitoes, would you?

The huge international monetary pledges need to be allocated in a transparent fashion to help these neediest Haitians.

Keith Steffen, OSF in Peoria

2010-07-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

In September, 2001 I wrote this letter to Keith Steffen, CEO of Saint Francis Medical Center (SFMC) in Peoria.

I was concerned about the safety of the patients in the ER at OSF because of ER overcrowding. This medical negligence put the central Illinois community at risk if ambulances went on diversion from OSF and pre hospital patients needed to wait even longer for medical care.

ER overcrowding is caused by many reasons that have been documented in the medical literature during the last decade. Greed and poor hospital administration rank high on the list.

In the July, 2010 issue of InterBusiness Issues, a free publication in Peoria, Mr. Steffen is quoted regarding the new $280 million dollar Milestone Project at OSF which is about ready to open for "business".

Mr. Steffen states that the present ER at OSF was built to see 33,000 patients per year. He states that the OSF ER is currently seeing 74,000 patients each year.

When I wrote the letter above to Mr. Steffen, we were seeing about 60,000 patients each year in the very crowded OSF ER. And with the inefficient hospital management of inpatient beds, ER patients were dangerously waiting too long.

I asked Mr. Steffen at the time if OSF-SFMC was guilty of "institutional malpractice". He asked me what that was. I was surprised at his answer and told him that I thought he could answer that question much better than I could.

Now, nine years later after I spoke with Mr. Steffen regarding the above, the numbers he quotes speak for themselves.

The Milestone Project at OSF will be feted this month as it opens its doors. (Whether the building will have adequate numbers of nurses and employees is a different issue.)

And while Peoria celebrates the new medical center technology, OSF will continue letting their Haitian Hearts patients die unseen and homeless, living in the rubble of post-earthquake Port-au-Prince.

Many people in central Illinois are covering for OSF right now. They don't want the public to know how OSF has banned dying Haitian Hearts patients that were operated at OSF in the past from returning to OSF. And people are very afraid of OSF...so afraid they won't even approach OSF's Mr. Steffen to plead for the young Haitian life. (Mr. Steffen told me that fear is good thing among OSF employees.)

But OSF's patient negligence and lies will be exposed. And we will all be shaking our heads and wonder how this was ever allowed to happen.

OSF Does Commercials While Haitian Hearts Patient Dies

2010-07-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Another Haitian Hearts patient died while this commercial was being made for OSF's Milestone Project.

More later.

This is sad not only for the Haitian family and the victim's two year old orphan, but also for OSF-SFMC. The OSF founding sisters in Heaven have to be shaking their heads "no" in disbelief.

Good Words to Live By

2010-07-01T06:50:00.001-07:00

War, want and concentration camps, exile from home and homeland, these have made me hate strife among men, but they have not made me lose faith in the future of mankind.

Personal experience, including my own unsteady progress through life, has taught me to beware of man’s capacity for plain stupid, irrational, as well as consciously evil, behavior, but it has also taught me that man has an even greater capacity for recovery from lapses. In a short thrust of planned, wisely guided activity, he is able to climb to higher levels of material and intellectual achievement than he ever reached before.

In short, I remain a rationalist and an optimist at a time when the prophets of doom have the floor. My query is: if man has been able to create the arts, the sciences, and the material civilization we know in America, why should he be judged powerless to create justice, fraternity and peace?

Ladis Kristof

What is Structural Violence? Look no Further than Peoria...

2010-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Carroll

This is Jenny.

Jenny is being denied heart surgery by OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

She e mailed the other day and is no longer able to work at her job in the bank in Port-au-Prince. And she wrote in her e mail that she is afraid that I will not be able to find a hospital in the States to accept her.

I am afraid too.

Jenny is slowly dying. She is so viable and so alive now. She deserves so much more.

See paragraph below regarding structural violence.

"Structural violence" is one way of describing social arrangements marked by racism and other social inequalities. In the influential view of sociologist Johan Galtung, structural violence is "the avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs", embedded in longstanding "ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience." Because they seem so ordinary in our ways of understanding the world, such violent structures are almost invisible. Disparate access to resources, political power, education, and health care as well as unequal legal standing are just a few examples. Such arrangements do violence to society's losers; the arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the economic organization of our social world. Those responsible for maintaining such inequalities are not the chief victims of structural violence....

Paul Farmer Reader

Overcrowding for Dummies, by Dr. Peter Viccellio

2010-06-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

This is a great link for ED overcrowding.

All hospital administrators in the world need to read this!

Emergency Department Crowding Still an Issue in 2010

2010-06-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

In September, 2001 I wrote a letter to OSF-SFMC CEO Keith Steffen regarding my concerns regarding the danger of ED overcrowding at OSF. I thought the patients were in danger due to long waits in the ED.

I was put on probabtion the next day and fired three months later.

During the following nine years I have followed the Emergency Medicine literature regarding solutions for ED crowding.

The following few paragraphs were written by Dr. Shari Welch in the June, 2010 issue of Emergency Medicine News.

ED overcrowding is an issue that all medical center administrators need to understand and be proactive to protect their patients and their community.

---------------

Dr. Welch:

Another innovation, the Full Capacity Protocol, shows that patients can be safely boarded in hallways upstairs with excellent results when all hospital beds are full.

A patient with a hip fracture would be boarded on the orthopedics floor, a TIA patient would be boarded on a neurology floor, and so forth.

Peter Viccellio, MD, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook has written several articles demonstrating that there is no increase in the mortality rate and that length of stay is shortened when patients are boarded upstairs instead of the ED. (Many of Dr. Viccellio's articles are available on www.EM-News.com; type “Viccellio” in the search box.)

Patients actually spend very little time in the hallways upstairs; somehow the system finds a bed for them. Boarding on the floor is usually done with the patient occupying an actual hospital bed. It is quieter than the ED, and patient satisfaction improves with the adoption of the policy and procedure. A copy of the full capacity protocol is available on Dr. Viccellio's web site (www.hospitalovercrowding.com).

Another cause of delays is patients occupying beds waiting for a resident workup. Just say “no!” It might be possible to allow this practice in an Express Admission Unit, but admitted patients must not occupy precious ED beds for the convenience of the house staff.

Boarding admitted patients in the ED is bad for patients, bad for departments, bad for the community, considering the direct connection between boarding and diversion. Low-acuity patients at your door have little to do with the solutions to boarding. Boarding relates to flow, and is a system problem with system solutions.

Improving admission operations is the one thing you cannot fix in a vacuum. Start by educating the leadership of your organization about the bad outcomes associated with boarding. Introduce them to data-driven solutions that are system solutions. Show them the compelling data on the subject.

Above all, be vigilant about ED bed minute utilization. ED bed minutes are for diagnosing and treating patients, not boarding them!

"Honest Services" in Illinois...You Have to Read This...Please!

2010-06-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

Does Congress have the guts to fix what court gutted? Honestly, no.

John Kass

June 25, 2010

It's not every day that President Barack Obama and the Congress are handed an easy campaign issue by the Supreme Court on the touchy subject of political corruption.

And who isn't against political corruption?

On Thursday the Supreme Court gutted a key tool used by federal prosecutors to fight white-collar political corruption. It's known as the "honest services" clause. It deals with the tangible right of Americans to expect honest service from their elected officials.

Even in Illinois.

The court decided that the law was too vague. And since it was also used to convict business crooks like Enron CEO Jeffery Skilling and Chicago media baron Conrad Black, their lawyers are overjoyed.

But the ruling will have its biggest impact on political prosecution cases, because the justices limited theft of honest services to direct bribery and extortion.

Such thinking is simplistic. Big-time political corruption isn't about greasy envelopes stuffed with cash, passed in some alley behind a tavern.

Rather, high-level corruption is circular, buffered and layered. Elected Official A helps Donor B to compensate Contractor D, who takes care of Regulator C as A's nephews get rich.

"There is no question that the court has just raised the bar for prosecutors in public corruption and corporate malfeasance cases," said former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins, now in private practice.

Collins should know. He put former Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan behind bars. Collins also prosecuted Robert Sorich, the patronage chief for Mayor Richard Daley.

Sorich ran a massive and illegal hiring scheme that allowed Daley to build vast armies of political workers to control elections in Chicago and Cook County. Those armies sent Rahm Emanuel to Congress from the 5th Congressional District.

And now Sorich's lawyers will no doubt use Thursday's ruling in his favor.

Once again the justices left it up to Congress to write a new law expressly stating what's honest and what's crooked in our politics. Why not consider this a wonderful teaching moment?

What an amazing opportunity for Obama and the Congress — the Democrats and the Republicans — to begin debating honesty in government. I'm sure they'll call a committee and put it all on C-SPAN.

But if all we hear from our president is silence, I guess we've got to wonder:

When Obama and all his chattering media suckups insisted that the guy from Chicago was truly a different kind of politician who would "transcend the broken politics of the past," did they really mean it?

And what about the Republicans? When they constantly harp about Chicago-style corruption, do they mean that the investigators should stay off their home turf and concentrate only on Chicago?

After the Supreme Court's opinion was released Thursday, you could almost hear the champagne corks popping behind locked doors in the offices of every crooked politician along The Chicago Way.

And along its minor roads, such as the Boston Way, the New Jersey Way, the Sacramento Way, you name it, it's all the same, but practiced best by the guys from Chicago, who combine public service with family fortunes. And since they write the laws, it's all legal.

Happy days are here again. Right, boys?

As if to celebrate, Sorich's old boss, Mayor Daley, announced this week that City Hall would sign private agreements with management companies and let them do the hiring in city government. Reporters who should know better said it was reform.

Yet private management contracts aren't subject to the same Freedom of Information scrutiny as is government. Private companies can hire who they want, without much explanation. The only explaining they have to do is explain to the mayor.

Perhaps they'll hire Sorich to review city job applications, as he did in the old days.

"Of course I'm disappointed; it's extremely disappointing" said David Hoffman, a former federal prosecutor and the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate who did not loan money to mobsters.

Hoffman now teaches on corruption and politics at the University of Chicago.

"Now, in cases where there's no clear quid pro quo, you'll find prosecutors hesitating," Hoffman said. "And that's a shame."

He and Collins noted that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the Sorich conviction.

That panel of judges ruled that if a public official violates his or her fiduciary duty to the public and becomes involved in fraud for private gain for themselves or for some other party, the money doesn't have to go into the official's pocket to be ruled a crime.

So the president and Congress could use that 7th Circuit opinion and make a new, tough corruption law within a week. When they say they're the change we've been waiting for, they meant it, right?

"When corruption occurs, absolutely something is stolen from the people," said Hoffman. "Something tangible. The right to honest government is more valuable to us than money."

And when corruption becomes institutionalized, as it has been in Illinois, the people become exhausted. They see how the political bosses reward their servants, they hear whose children get clouted into the public universities. That's when they're tempted to do something shameful:

Fall to their knees before the political lords.

And that's what's truly corrosive.

Political corruption isn't only about the theft of honest government. It's what's stolen after that. Our dignity.

Surely the president and the Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — understand this. And surely they'll do something about it before the mid-term elections in November.

I mean, who isn't against political corruption?

jskass@tribune.com

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

Illinois Finance Authority Mentioned Again in Blago Trial

2010-06-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted regarding Governor Blago and the Illinois Finance Authority and OSF in Peoria.

The article below is from the Tribune this morning (6/23/2010).

What did Blago expect from Peoria?

----------------------

More pressure to fire Tribune editorial board

Another wiretap recording played at the trial this morning dealt again with Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged desire to see Chicago Tribune editorial writers fired in exchange for his support for a state deal to buy Wrigley Field.

In a call on Nov. 6, 2008, Blagojevich can be heard talking to his chief of staff, John Harris, and telling him to deliver a message to Tribune Co. to make changes on the editorial board.

Harris said on the call he was in between meetings with a Tribune executive, Nils Larsen, and that he would tell Larsen to fire the editorial board.

But to that point, Harris testified, he had not told Larsen about the governor's request. "Because it was wrong to do so," Harris testified.

On the call, Blagojevich told Harris the plan was a priority and that he should "stay on it." He asked if Harris thought Tribune had gotten the message about the editorial board.

"He got it loud and clear," Harris said on the tape.

But Harris told the jury that was not the truth. In reality, Harris said, he had only suggested to Larsen that negative editorials about the governor could derail the proposal.

"What does this mean to them? $500 million?" Blagojevich asked about a plan to have the Illinois Finance Authority assist in a Wrigley plan. Harris indicated it was more like $100 million.

--Jeff Coen

Rebuilding Stalled in Haiti

2010-06-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

US Senate report says Haiti rebuilding has stalled

By JONATHAN M. KATZ (AP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti has made little progress in rebuilding in the five months since its earthquake, because of an absence of leadership, disagreements among donors and general disorganization, a U.S. Senate report says.

Obtained Monday by The Associated Press, the eight-page report is meant to give Congress a picture of Haiti today as U.S. legislators consider authorizing $2 billion to support the country's reconstruction.

That picture is grim: Millions displaced from their homes, rubble and collapsed buildings still dominating the landscape. Three weeks into hurricane season, with tropical rains lashing the capital daily, construction is being held up by land disputes and customs delays while plans for moving people out of tent-and-tarp settlements remain in "early draft form," it says.

The report was written by staff of Sen. John Kerry, the Massachuetts Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other Democrats who interviewed U.S., Haitian, United Nations and other officials and visited resettlement camps, hospitals and schools throughout the quake zone.

"While many immediate humanitarian relief priorities appear to have been met, there are troubling signs that the recovery and longer term rebuilding activities are flagging," said the report, which is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

Three times it says the rebuilding process has "stalled" since the Jan. 12 disaster.
The report also criticizes the government of Haitian President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, saying it has "not done an effective job of communicating to Haitians that it is in charge and ready to lead the rebuilding effort." The report calls on Preval to take a "more visible and active role, despite the difficulties."

Bellerive responded to the criticism in a Monday interview with the AP. He said officials are working hard behind the scenes to ensure reconstruction does not simply mean the rebuilding of barely livable slums.

"We understand the impatience and we are the ones more frustrated than anybody," the prime minister said. "It took some time. I believe four months (since a U.N. donors' conference in March) to plan the refoundation from such a disaster is pretty acceptable."

With a chuckle, he also said it is unfair for U.S. officials to take him to task when the Senate still has not approved aid money that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton promised at the donors' conference.

"They ask me to move more projects when the money is still on hold," Bellerive said.
In all, just 2 percent of the $5.3 billion in near-term aid pledges have actually been delivered, up from 1 percent last week.

The report expresses concerns that even once the money is in hand, it will not move quickly enough to help. The funds are managed by a 26-member reconstruction commission led by Bellerive and former U.S. President Bill Clinton that started its operations last week.

While the report calls the commission the "best near-term prospect for driving rebuilding," it also says the panel "has the potential to dramatically slow things down through cumbersome bureaucratic obstacles at a time when Haiti cannot afford to delay."

The report notes disagreements among donors over strategy, approach and priorities, saying the disputes "are undercutting recovery and rebuilding."
The reconstruction panel includes representatives of donors who pledged at least $100 million in cash or $200 million of debt relief, including the United States, Venezuela, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.

Bellerive said the report's criticism that the panel has been too slow in organizing is already moot. "We had a meeting, we have an office, we have administrative support," he said.

One thing on which all parties agree is the importance of November elections. The legislature has almost entirely dissolved after members' terms expired because the quake forced the cancellation of February legislative elections. Preval's five-year term ends next February; an attempt to prolong his term by several months if elections are not held resulted in protesters clashing with police in front of the ruins of the presidential palace.

Failing to hold the November elections on time, even despite the losses of the electoral commission's headquarters and records, could imperil "Haiti's fragile democracy," the report says. But it expresses limited optimism that a plan for holding the vote is "apparently imminent."

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Did Anyone Do Blago Favors from Peoria?

2010-06-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

See this article from Tribune today.

A few years ago, Governor Blago, through the Illinois Finance Authority (IFA), issued Peoria's OSF a 460 million dollar bond to help finance OSF's new Milestone Project. This was the second largest in IFA's history.

It doesn't seem like Governor Blago wanted to do much for free if we believe the FBI wiretaps and prosecution witnesses in the Blago trial.

Wonder what the story was in Peoria that prompted Gov. Blago to be so generous with OSF?

Tony Rezko

2010-06-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

What you didn't know about Obama and Rezko by Rick Moran.

Jenny (continued...)

2010-06-13T08:59:00.001-07:00

Photo of Jenny in June, 2010 by John Carroll.

Dear OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center, Mr. Steffen, Mr. Marshall, and Sister Judith Ann,

This is Jenny.

She is 30 years old now and had heart surgery at OSF in Peoria in 1999 when she was 19 years old.

Haitian Hearts paid $23,000 dollars cash to Children's Hospital of Illinois for Jenny's surgery in 1999.

During the last decade we have examined Jenny in Hati many times, evaluated her Haitian echocardiograms, and supplied her with medication.

Jenny needs repeat heart surgery now because her valve repairs done at OSF need to be revised. Jenny is in congestive heart failure now and managed with medication.

I have looked for several years for a US medical center to reoperate Jenny but cannot find a center that wants to accept Jenny. They all feel that Jenny is OSF's ethical and medical responsibility.

On January 12 of this year Jenny was seated at her desk on the fourth floor of the bank where she works in Port-au-Prince. She heard a loud noise and the bank began to shake back and forth.

Her friends and fellow employees ran down the stairs and out of the building but Jenny sat frozen in fear at her desk. She said that her legs would not work.

Several minutes later, after the shaking had stopped, her friends ran upstairs and grabbed her and led her down the stairs. No one was hurt at the bank and the building suffered no major damage.

Jenny had to walk home not knowing whether her family survived the quake. As she walked down the dark streets, Jenny heard many people screaming trapped in buildings and saw dismembered extremities lying in the streets. Bodies were everywhere.

Jenny did not know it at the time, but 140,000 of Haitian brothers and sisters had just died during the violent 45 second earthquake, and over the next month, the mortality would rise to an estimated 230,000.

She arrived home three hours later and found her family to be fine, but the walls of her house were cracked and her house was not safe to live in.

For the next few months after shocks continued and Jenny and her sister slept in a small abandoned car near her house. After a small tent was donated to them by Rotary Club, they started living/sleeping in the tent.

Jenny kept going to work through all of this upheaval and was able to do this in congestive heart failure.

Jenny's history and exam now is not good and she needs surgery soon.

Sister Judith Ann, Mr. Steffen, and Mr. Marshall, if you will open your arms once again for Jenny, Haitian Hearts will pay you $23,000 dollars again, we will get her Haitian passport renewed, we will obtain her US visa to travel to Peoria, we will purchase her roundtrip airline tickets, Jenny can live with us in Peoria, and we will continue to provide her with medication post operatively.

I plead with you to follow OSF's founding Sisters Mission Philosophy. Jenny has survived the earthquake. Please give her another chance with her heart.

Sincerely,

John Carroll

Pope Benedict

2010-06-04T07:34:00.001-07:00

"From today's crisis, a church will emerge tomorrow that will have lost a great deal. She will be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning. She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of splendor. Because of the smaller number of her followers, she will lose many of her privileges in society. Contrary to what has happened until now, she will present herself much more as a community of volunteers...As a small community, she will demand much more from the initiative of each of her members and she will certainly also acknowledge new forms of ministry and will raise up to the priesthood proven Christians who have other jobs...It will make her poor and a church of the little people...All this will require time. The process will be slow and painful."

Father Joseph Ratzinger, 1969
Catholic theolgian

Heurese's Survival Saga Continues

2010-05-27T16:44:00.001-07:00

If you follow this blog at all, you may know about Heurese.

Heurese is a 31 year old Haitian female that has survived two heart surgeries, abandonment by OSF-SFMC in Peoria, four tropical storms, Haiti's gangs, the UN soldiers and the epic earthquake on January 12, 2010.

Heurese told me today that she was outside her shack in Carrefour talking to a friend the night of the quake. They heard a loud noise and watched shacks as they collapsed. They heard people screaming from everywhere.

Heurese said she knew for sure that it was an earthquake and thought for sure that she lost her two young children as they were headed home from school with her sister Jenny. However, Jenny and the kids showed up two hours later, afraid but not physically hurt.

Her cell phone did not work so Heurese, her kids, Jenny, and another sister Vita huddled in the street and stayed there for four days. Their brother showed up four days later and they all went to their mother's home in Bainet on Haiti's southern peninsula.

Today Heurese is in cosmetology school in P-a-P and sleeps in a pup tent with Jenny.

Heurese has survived again.