The petition
August 25, 2007
To: Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue
Dear Governor Perdue,
As you are certainly aware, Grady Memorial Hospital is in danger of closing by December if it does not receive $125 million in emergency funding. If Dekalb and Fulton counties borrow $100 million to pay current debts, Grady’s financial crisis will simply be temporarily delayed, and the hospital will continue to fall woefully short of the money it needs to treat nearly a million patients annually. We ask that you call an emergency legislative session and use part of the approximately $300 million surplus in Georgia’s state budget to help keep our state’s only true public hospital afloat. We also ask that future funding for Grady be provided from the state and from all Georgia counties that send patients to Grady.
Grady Hospital and the associated Grady clinics save the lives of and promote the health of people from throughout the state of Georgia, not just those from Fulton and Dekalb counties. The Grady Health System provides a wide and unique variety of services, including the only level 1 trauma center within 100 miles of Atlanta and Georgia’s only poison center. It also runs numerous clinics, which provide excellent preventive care and management of chronic health conditions. The clinics save the hospital money in the long run, but some have already been closed because they do not bring in as much immediate revenue as other departments. Grady is the safety net that serves Georgia residents who have no insurance and nowhere else to go: patients like one woman who was in a car accident and was turned away from one hospital after another for a year and a half until she finally came to Grady. If the hospital closes, other area hospitals will be overwhelmed with patients, and many people will suffer and die.
Unfortunately, not even Grady can currently treat Georgia residents from outside Dekalb and Fulton counties unless they are in critical condition. For example, a woman with ovarian cancer could not be treated at Grady until the cancer had spread throughout her body. Grady loses money because it often treats out-of-county patients even though their counties do not contribute to its funding. If the state and other counties contributed tax dollars to Grady, Grady could provide better care for these patients sooner and would not continue to lose money or be forced to cut programs.
Many of us are Emory medical students and are extremely concerned about the effect Grady’s closing would have on our education. About 80% of Emory medical school training currently occurs at Grady, and many of us chose Emory because we wanted the opportunity to receive unique and excellent training and experience at Grady and because we wanted to train at a hospital where we would be able to serve indigent patients who have nowhere else to go. The future of Georgia healthcare depends on Grady staying open both to treat Georgia’s people and to train Georgia’s future health professionals. Grady should receive funding from more counties than Fulton and DeKalb. Furthermore, supporting Grady through use of the budget surplus and provision of future state funding is the single most important investment our state could make. We urge that a special session be called to determine how the state could assist with the immediate crisis and help prevent Grady’s closure. We appeal to your reason as well as your sense of humanity as we ask you to carefully consider our requests.
Sincerely,
Concerned medical students and Georgia residents
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