Sen. Shafer proposes state oversight for Grady
State Sen. David Shafer (R - Duluth) introduced two bills today designed to bring reform to the financially-strapped Grady Memorial Hospital.
Senate Bill 353, the Public Hospital Integrity Act, would seek to prevent those individuals that may have financial ties to a public hospital like Grady or any major hospital vendor from serving on a governing board of a public hospital.
Sen. Shafer said, “This legislation will help ensure that the Grady board’s first loyalty is to Grady as an institution, not those who do business with Grady.”
State Sen. Vincent Fort (D - Atlanta), a co-sponsor of Shafer’s proposal, said the bill was a good first step.
“The conflict of interest bill is very, very important,” Fort said. “I am for stopping conflicts of interest.”
Sen. Shafer’s other bill, Senate Resolution 722, would create a Grady Oversight Committee composed of three members of the state Senate and three members of the state House. The Grady Oversight Committee would be charged with providing legislative oversight of the “operations, contracts, safety, financing, organization, and structure of the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority” along with the Grady Health System and Grady Hospital itself.
In describing the bill, Shafer said the language of the resolution was taken from the bill that created the MARTOC oversight committee.
“Those who run Grady have fought legislative oversight whenever it has been proposed,” Shafer said. “But when they inevitably get into financial trouble, they sing the same old lament of legislative neglect.”
Shafer pointed out that, in 1999, a similar bill to create a Grady Oversight Committee passed the Senate but stalled in the House.
[UPDATE] Here is a copy of the press release sent out by the State Senate on behalf of Sen. David Shafer.