From the Director
Grady Hospital is an essential part of our social mission and how we view ourselves.
Deeply Committed to Grady




Some things should be self-evident but bear repeating nonetheless. Emory University remains deeply committed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where Emory physicians have been providing medical care and training residents and medical students for over three quarters of a century, more recently in conjunction with our colleagues at Morehouse.

We are immensely proud of what Grady Hospital does and our roles there: the incredible volume of patients cared for every year, many of whom would not be able to obtain care elsewhere in Atlanta or the state; the outstanding programs in trauma, burns, neonatal care, poison control, and other services that benefit all Georgians; the safety net Grady provides for the city's and state's growing number of uninsured citizens; and its role in the public health of the community. Without Grady, Atlanta's health care system would be thrown into disarray, and its citizens would face a health care crisis. The entire state would be the poorer - and sicker. As for us, Grady is not just an integral part of Emory's patient care, teaching, and research missions. It is an essential part of our social mission, our commitment to the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia, and how we view ourselves.

Rumors that Emory's commitment to Grady is waning are simply not true. Our commitment remains enormous. In future communications, we will provide some impressive numbers about the Emory manpower and womanpower now at Grady, our financial underwriting of physician staffing at Grady, the large amounts of uncompensated care we provide there, and how our residents and medical students provide the hospital virtually cost-free services. We don't see that changing in any essential way. But for the moment, let me stress - and I know I speak for President Bill Chace, Medical Dean Tom Lawley, and all Emory's top leadership - that Emory is deeply committed to Grady and to working with Morehouse and Grady leadership to find solutions to the challenges now facing the hospital.

I'd like to speak directly to the rumor that the redevelopment of Crawford Long has anything to do with Emory's commitment to Grady or our continuing role at Grady. It does not. Look even casually at the plan for Crawford Long and you can see that it is a bed-for-bed replacement plan for our midtown strategy, not an alternative approach to indigent care, the breadth of medical problems seen at Grady, physician education, or anything related to Grady.

Our recent joint venture agreement with Columbia/HCA addresses yet other parts of our long-range strategy for geographic diversification and a stronger primary care presence, all unrelated to our roles at Grady.

We are doing those and other things because it is important to Emory that we take appropriate steps to assure our own long-term survival in this threatening health care environment - and thus continue to be able to provide high-quality, low-cost physician services at Grady. It is not the only hospital struggling with the double whammy of lowered reimbursement and the rise in the number of patients who are completely without insurance or other resources to pay for the services they receive. Look at the recently announced financial woes of the large hospitals at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, UCSF/Stanford, Oxford Health System in New York, and the Medical College of Georgia, to list only a few. Or look at small rural hospitals in Georgia. Our own hospitals at Emory, like all hospitals serving large, uninsured and underinsured populations, also will struggle as Medicare and Medicaid continue to lower the amount of money they reimburse health care providers and as the federal Balanced Budget Act continues to worsen this situation.

In this Issue


From the Director  /  Letters

Regenesis: Renewing Medical
Education at Emory


What makes Joel Felner so good?

Virtual Doc

A New Voice for Nursing

Moving Forward  /  Noteworthy

Youth, Firearms, and Violence

Finding the Papa of the Mummies

Emory's continuing commitment, support, and collaboration are the messages that Morehouse President Louis Sullivan, Grady CEO Edward Renford, and I carried to a group of concerned business leaders in the city. Dean Lawley and Dr. Sullivan gave the same message to the DeKalb and Fulton county commissioners.

But there is no audience in the city more important than our own faculty and staff, and that is why I wanted to get this message of continuing commitment, support, and collaboration to you. You can help us all by speaking out firmly when you hear anything to the contrary concerning our historical, deeply meaningful role at Grady.

I want to close by saying a special word of thanks - something we don't say often enough - to all of you who work at Grady. Your own commitment to both Emory and Grady has helped make the hospital the great resource for Atlanta and Georgia it is today. Thank you for all you do for Grady and for the patients it serves. You are part of an effort we prize greatly, and we will continue to support all of you and this great hospital.

 


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Web version by Jaime Henriquez.