Merry Christmas, Mr. Mansfield: My Very Last Letter To A Regulatory Body

A Senate healthcare "reform" bill is on the "one-yard-line". But, despite all of the in-our-faces bribery and political chicanery of the last few months - on the part of people acting like a bunch of bad Santas, somehow tort & peer-review reform and medical whistle-blower protection are not part of the package. The desperate needs of the doctors and nurses providing the care are not being addressed at all.

But we've simply got to have a bill for Christmas. That's what's important.

As a physician, my frustration, exasperation and abject disgust for our so-called leaders knows no bounds. This isn't change. This is more of the same. And it's only going to make things worse.

The following is the text of a letter being sent this week to the N.C. Medical Board, JCAHO, the NC Department of Health and Human Services, the National Health Services Corps, the N.C. State Bar, and the North Carolina Attorney General's office.

Copies will also be sent to the IRS and U.S. Attorney's office - on the off chance that anyone in the Obama administration is concerned about actual citizens of the United States (as opposed to terrorists) being treated fairly by the justice system. Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

21 December, 2009

Thomas Mansfield
Director, Legal Department
North Carolina Medical Board
P.O. Box 20007
Raleigh, N.C. 27619-0007

Mr. Mansfield,

This past June, prompted by an article in the NCMB “Forum”, penned by NCMB President George Saunders which emphasized the duty of physicians in this state to report bad or inadequate care, I came to Raleigh to meet with you and Dr. Saunders.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss my experience in Asheboro, and the allegations of criminal misconduct I’ve since lodged against Randolph Hospital senior executives, Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin . . . an on-going situation the Medical Board has been aware of since August of 1998 (when I first felt “safe” in reporting it) . . . a situation the Board/Medical Society has DONE NOTHING to rectify.

The purpose of this letter is not to reiterate the details of what happened. As the Medical Board well knows, I’ve been blogging about my experience in Asheboro since 2005. Numerous links on the sidebar of my blog, “Dr. J’s Housecalls” (http://www.drjshousecalls.blogspot.com/) tell the story.

It was my hope that our meeting might finally prompt strong action on the part of the Medical Board to (1) encourage the N.C. and/or U.S. Attorney General’s offices to take action that might address/resolve my situation specifically, and (2) encourage the N.C. legislature to amend the N.C. Medical Practice Act in a fashion that lends adequate protection to medical whistle-blowers (in other words, to protect the duties that the Board/state requires).

It would seem to me that with all of the horrible things that have been in the news about the less-than-stellar care provided in some of North Carolina's hospitals (particularly the mental hospitals it administrates), protecting professionals who might report/stop such things would be something very sensible and important to do.

After our meeting, I waited for months and nothing happened. It was only immediately after I became the target of a vicious cyber-attack by Greensboro-area blogger, Jeff Martin (he was arrested and the case is scheduled to be heard in February), that the Medical Board managed to put me in contact with a special prosecutor at the North Carolina Attorney General's office.

During the cyber-attack on the evening of November 13th (in a fit of infantile snit over a disagreement we'd had on a blog), Mr. Martin typed my home address (which is also my corporate address - ergo published on the NCMB‘s website) into the header of a series of 27 e-mails he hurled into my Inbox over an approximate hour’s time. The clear implication was that he knew where I lived, and could do me harm. He also threatened to "call it in" that I was “crazy“.

As this is a modus operandi I've actually seen Medical Boards and hospitals use successfully against whistle-blowing physicians (indeed, I've heard from several such physicians/nurses since the cyber-stalking case became public), the e-mails literally sent chills down my spine. That very night, I sent an e-mail to the NCMB advising them of what was going on.

The Monday morning after the cyber-attack, Judie Clark of your Complaint Department, told me that if Mr. Martin did send in a complaint, I would be given the opportunity to review and respond to it.

In other words, the North Carolina Medical Board would treat the complaint of someone I’ve NEVER seen as a patient - someone behaving criminally - as the REAL deal!?!

And I've got to say, that was just PAR for the course with this Medical Board . . . ever since, as a young and very naive physician-in-public-service, I reported what JCAHO calls a "sentinel event" eleven years ago.

Ms. Clark's response was unacceptable and pretty much the LAST straw. After a hellish weekend, I'd had enough. Ms. Clark was advised, in no uncertain terms, that this licensee was not going to play on those terms.

Within minutes, Jean Fisher-Brinkley was suddenly in my Inbox giving me the phone number of a lawyer at the NCAG's office, Bill Hart, and billing it as “good news”.

It took several more e-mails for you to explain exactly why I was calling Mr. Hart . . . (to use your own words) “a high-level attorney in the appropriate section of the AG’s office, Special Prosecutions. He is a very capable and experienced member of that office and has worked on many well known cases“.

The opportunity to make this call and speak to Mr. Hart was billed as a positive development, and I was given the clear impression that the North Carolina Attorney General’s office had finally been persuaded to intervene. But when Mr. Hart and I finally did connect . . . over the phone, because (once again) I was not worthy of a face-to-face appointment . . . all I got was more of the same sad/sorry/unacceptable dodge I‘ve heard for six years.

As was the case with the Duke rape case, Mr. Hart reiterated the party line: The NCAG cannot intervene without being asked to do so by Randolph County District Attorney, Garland Yates.

And, as you well know, Mr. Yates has stone-walled my requests to refer this case to the SBI for a full and proper investigation since 2003. Right and wrong do not matter. Medical ethics do not matter. The law does not matter. Small town values are a bust. Yates continues to pander to “the right people” in Asheboro . . . many of whom have served on Randolph Hospital’s Board of Directors or Corporate Membership, and ignorantly rubber-stamped everything their senior executives did.

Some of them are apparently now cozying up to Jeff Martin.

It’s been bad enough being swatted all over the justice system for well over a decade . . . not to mention the blogosphere for nearly five years . . . because I will not accept what was done to me as the way things are. But Jeff Martin and his new "friends" obviously feel very empowered by the State of North Carolina refusing to take my back (after being fired for saving a baby’s life) . . . or to prosecute two “non-profit executives who, when dragged to a North Carolina Courtroom to answer for what they did, lied repeatedly under Oath in order to perpetuate a fraud and get out on the cheap.

What many supposedly intelligent/enlightened/"progressive" people in the blogosphere (who would have expected me to do EXACTLY what I did had it been their child or grandchild . . . and who would have expected the justice system to do right by them) do not get is that whole point of going to Court in 1999 was to be able to be vindicated, come home and re-establish my practice in Asheboro. The money I was defrauded at settlement could have been used to re-build what Randolph Hospital executives so methodically and viciously destroyed (in the "best interests" of their own controlled affiliate).

As it was, I didn't have very much left after paying taxes and the lawyers and three years of bills. Meanwhile Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin, having financed all of their nasty legal maneuvers ON THE TAXPAYER'S DIME, got huge raises when they should have been fired for cause.

Now, Garland Yates’ office is handling the cyber-stalking citation. I do not have a lot of reason to be optimistic that justice will be served in this misdemeanor case, given the “habitually intemperate” treatment I’ve gotten from Mr. Yates and his staff when the crimes included MULTIPLE FELONIES on the part of the officers of a “non-profit” institution.

I told Mr. Hart that it is incredible to me that since the resolution of the very high-profile Duke case, his boss, Roy Cooper, has not seen fit to do anything to plug the gaping holes that (1) innocents-wrongly-accused, and (2) victims-inadequately-served can fall through at the mercy of a corrupt or pandering DA.

Moreover, it baffles me that, if it is so concerned about patients and good care, the Medical Board (and JCAHO for that matter) has not insisted that medical whistle-blowers be afforded an easier/quicker path to appropriate special investigators and prosecutors. Knowing that the kinds of things that happened to me happen every day in North Carolina, and that most doctors/nurses do not have the fortitude or the financial/emotional resources to fight back, WHY has the Medical Board sat on its hands for so long?

I also REFUSE to just roll over and accept that the great state of North Carolina has NO mechanism by which it can hold a “non-profit” hospital or its executives accountable for actions that were clearly (1) unethical (i.e. in violation of NCMB mandates), (2) wasted the state and Federal taxpayer‘s money (by literally droving two Pediatricians out of a community to which they were recruited with literally hundreds-of-thousands of DHHS dollars . . . a community where their services were/still are badly needed), and (3) ultimately illegal.

Telling me that that’s the way the Christmas cookie crumbles and “people lie in Court every day” just doesn’t cut it. That’s exactly why this country is in the sad/sorry mess it’s in.

In short, I REFUSE to believe (especially in this era of “accountability“, “transparency” and healthcare “reform”) that the United States and/or North Carolina Governments cannot say to this “non-profit” hospital and its Board of Directors, “What you and your lawyers did to Dr. Mary Johnson is UNACCEPTABLE. If she had cowered to your threats, an innocent child might very well have died. Dr. Johnson did her job/duty. But you people screwed up big-time, and if you don’t fix it right now, we’re going to come after you. You will lose your “non-profit standing. You will lose ALL of your state/Federal funding. And some of you could very well go to jail. Because we are NOT going to tolerate retaliation against physicians for doing their jobs.”

The Attorney General of North Carolina is, in fact, NCDHHS’s lawyer. I asked Mr. Hart to put me in contact with the attorney at the AG’s office who was responsible for the oversight of DHHS programs and/or “non-profit” institutions. He said he would do that.

It’s been several weeks. I’ve heard NOTHING. Apparently I'm back to being ignored.

And the Medical Board's time is up.

I met with you and Dr. Saunders in June because I wanted desperately to avoid filing a lawsuit (having had more-than-enough one-on-one time with lawyers already). The deadline for action that I’ve had in mind all along was Christmas Day 2009.

You see, I decided that if something did not happen to resolve this case this year . . . if my Christmas gift to my 73 year-old Mother (who after thirty years of teaching children in Asheboro certainly deserved a whole lot better than to watch her own daughter’s guts get splattered all over Randolph Hospital’s white walls) could not be to tell her that this long personal/professional nightmare is finally over - and that I’d been fully vindicated . . . then I was going to move forward with litigation against the government agencies and regulatory bodies that FOR ELEVEN YEARS let me swing in the wind (more-or-less all by my lonesome) for doing my job the right way . . . agencies and regulatory bodies that, FOR SIX YEARS, have arrogantly stuck their disinterested noses up in the air after I was swindled by the very Courts I turned to for help/restitution.

One of those bodies is the North Carolina State Bar. They don't care when lawyers poorly serve/lie to their clients . . . or suborn perjury. As I told Mr. Hart, Mike Nifong had to report himself to get busted (most likely after he was suckered into it when the national press attention became too much for Mr. Cooper). But if a judicial candidate wants to blog under the moniker, "Madame Justice", well, that might confuse someone and is a prosecutable offense (another reason Jeff Martin's threats were not something I could just dismiss). Meanwhile, DA's can do whatever they want to and there is NO WAY to hold them accountable in a way that really hurts.

The last few months have made it very, very clear to me that the ONLY way to get anyone in Raleigh or Washington to do what the law says it will do is to hire a lawyer and SUE. Despite all of the noble rhetoric and hyperbole, no one in a position of oversight ever does anything because it’s the right or ethical or moral thing to do.

Moreover, it seems that many of the people I was pleading my case to (particularly in North Carolina) were CROOKS themselves.

The purpose of this letter is to let you (and your future co-defendants - who are being copied this correspondence) know what is coming. I want ALL of you to see it coming.

During the course of any given day as a Pediatrician, I watch many people fracture all of society's rules, do whatever they want with no thought whatsoever to consequences (particularly for their children), then hold out their hands and get boatloads of public assistance - more or less on the dime of people like me.

But after working hard and getting the education, and making all the personal sacrifices, and playing by the rules that are supposed to lead to respect and success, I'm supposed to "shut up" and "get over" what was done to me - because two very-important-mill-town-thugs-hiding-their-unethical-&-illegal-actions-behind-charity are above the law.

The FACT is that I did everything I was supposed to do for Randolph Hospital and for the state/Federal governments I served. I did my duty as it is defined by the North Carolina Medical Board.

In return, I was professionally crucified. Randolph Hospital broke EVERY promise it ever made with regards to Pediatrics . . . breached every contract/agreement it ever signed . . . literally spat on basic concepts of professional ethics and due process and fair play . . . used the legal system as a battering ram (filing a despicable SLAPP suit) . . . and ultimately negotiated a resolution in bad faith - on a pack of lies sworn under Oath.

Doors were slammed, options were crushed. These people didn't care. They were going to "destroy" Mary Johnson.

Meanwhile, every state & Federal agency and regulatory body that I relied upon for protection . . . entities whose sole purpose supposedly is to be there to ensure quality care . . . to protect me and my patients . . . stood by and silently/passively watched.

My case is proof positive that the government could not oversee its way out of a wet paper bag. Medical and legal oversight in this North Carolina - indeed in this country - is a joke. It’s time to do something about that. It's crystal clear that the “reformers” aren't going to.

I am NOT going to “get over it”. And I’m NOT going to “move on” until this hospital is made to answer for what it did to me. And/so, if “the state” will not hold Randolph Hospital accountable for its unethical and illegal actions, then I will do whatever it takes to hold the state accountable for its gross, methodical, determined CRUEL negligence . . . to finally make it CARE about good doctors done horribly wrong.

If that makes me “crazy“ and “disruptive“, then “crazy” and “disruptive” I shall proudly be.

Mr. Mansfield, this the last letter I am going to write to a regulatory body as an ordinary citizen/former public servant seeking justice. I've not EVER wanted to sue anyone. I've only wanted the system and the law to do what it says it will do. But next year, I'm going to hire the lawyer, and we can ALL can rock & roll. As lawyers clearly run the Medical Board anyway, it’s probably just as well.

Some people have complained about the length of my letters in the past. From here on in, you will be dealing with your own kind.

I trust they’ll keep it short.

I wish you and the staff at the Board a Merry Christmas. This will be my eleventh as a pariah in my own hometown - because as a doctor licensed by the great state of North Carolina, I did the right thing by a baby literally dying in front of my eyes.

She will be twelve in January.

Sincerely,


Mary H. Johnson, M.D. FAAP

And there you have it. It's been a very rough couple of months. To my regular readers, I'd like to say thank you very much for doing so, and I wish you a very Merry Christmas. I am taking a break . . . from everything . . . probably through the New Year.

But I am very much looking forward to 2010. You see, my life is not (and was never meant to be) a cartoon . . .

. . . and the very LAST thing I am in this world is "the eternal victim".

You see, I stepped up/spoke up when others would have backed down.

Late Morning Addendum:

A friend of mine had two things to say about this post this morning. "If your life is a cartoon, then you're the *&^%$#@! superhero!"

"(And), in terms of the total failure of the local blogosphere to do ANYTHING that the high & mighty journalists in it said they could/would do, you just put up THE MOTHER of all Festivus posts."

And/so I would be remiss if I did not wish everyone a Happy Festivus, as well. Maybe one of these days, I'll get that miracle;)

The Invasion Of The Mennonites

I went into the hospital this evening to admit a "feed & grow" back-transfer from one of the state's finer neonatal-care facilities.

After finishing up with the paperwork, I ambled out to the nursing station on the post-partum unit. And I was immediately greeted by my favorite "freaky" Mennonite . . . who promptly plopped my Grinchy butt down into a chair (and I have been rather Grinchy today - a subject for tomorrow morning's post).

Suddenly, a heavenly host of not-freaky-at-all Mennonites . . . young and old, tall and small . . . appeared in the hall and began singing.

They started in low. Then it started to grow. The sound wasn't sad, why this sound sounded merry (despite the babies crying in the background)!

Their voice blended together in beautiful, well-practiced harmony.

All the Whos in this Whoville, the tall and the small, brought a smile to my face and it was hard not to ball.

Joy to the World. Silent night. Oh Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.

With this Grinchy heart softened and their mission accomplished, the Mennonites sang us a sincere wish for a Merry Christmas, and followed their leader (actually, the hospital security guard) to the next ward.

Christmas spirit wafted down the hall behind the laughing/giggling group, and lingered around the Christmas tree with the pink and blue balls.

Leaving four nurses and a doctor thinking how nice it might be to be Mennonites . . . albeit really, really freaky ones.

Update: Case 2009056649 CR Continued Until February 23

A number of folks have asked for updates on the cyber-stalking case.

Bubba has decided not to press charges over the threatening e-mails he received. I was disappointed, but his reasoning (that in a physical confrontation between the two of them, no one would see "Fec" as a credible threat) made sense.

I was a bit frustrated last week with the Randolph County Clerk of Court’s office. Prior to “the Stench’s” first appearance in court last week (on Monday, the 14th), I had not heard word one out of the DA. No update was posted online immediately afterwards. Moreover, when I called the clerk’s office on the 16th, I was told they could not find the case in the computer (not exactly reassuring), and to call back in a few days

I’ve avoided “pinging” Vie de Malchance since this mess began, but I did go back last week (and very briefly a few minutes ago) to see if Martin had said anything about what was going on. All I could find was a vague allusion to some kind of “offer that was made to “cease hostilities” . . . the implication being that I was somehow inclined/desperate to cave to his bully tactics.

Not inclined. Not desperate. I’ve made no “offers” or proposed any “deals” . . . and if the DA’s office has made any overtures it’s without even chatting me up.

Meanwhile, I also got an interesting response to an inquiry I placed a while back with the Greensboro Clerk of Court’s office (which speaks to why I had good reason to be afraid of what this guy is capable of), and will be looking further into that next week while I am home.

I called the Randolph County Clerk’s office back this morning. The Court calendar is still not online, but I was told that the case had been continued until February 23rd.

And that’s fine with me. The hearing falls on scheduled time off.

I was also advised that Martin’s attorney is new Asheboro City Council member, Clark Bell. I had to chuckle. That’s almost poetic.

I thought I might save everybody some time here and make it very clear where I’m coming from:

Jeff Martin broke the law. North Carolina General Statute 14-196.3 to be exact.

He's confessed online and on TV. I didn't accept the role of co-star in his "dueling blogging crazies" act, so that's been kind of a bust.

Martin knew that what he was doing (as himself, as opposed his blogging alter-ego, "Fec") would instill fear, and he did it with the clear intent to harass and embarrass/humiliate . . . to intimidate a professional woman (whose voice he could not control/squelch by hurling insults on the blogs) into silence.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, Martin has spent quite some time on Housecalls . . . and he knew full well that a threat to call “the authorities” and report that I am “crazy” carried real weight as a threat to my livelihood . . . as Medical Boards & hospitals have destroyed physicians deemed “disruptive” with far less ammunition.

And right now, as someone who has accused two “non-profit” hospital executives of multiple felonies (crimes which have yet to be referred to the proper authorities for investigation and prosecution by the very DA's office that is prosecuting this case) . . . as someone who is seriously considering suing the North Carolina Medical Board for gross negligence . . . I am currently North Carolina’s poster-child for openly disruptive physicians.

I was frightened enough that night to contact the Medical Board and let them know what was going on (we will address how that has recently affected my thinking about a lot of things in Housecalls' next post).

When he could not scare me into dropping charges, "Fec" then decided to "get mean" on his blog. And, oh boy, that was a whole lot of fun.

It might surprise some of you to know that what I'm doing on this blog is kind of unpopular with a good number of "the right people" in Asheboro. Fec found himself a whole bunch of new "friends" . . . the kind who don't sign their names.

I'm done with a lot of things. So I’ve decided to speak directly to Martin here:

You’re right. You screwed up. And this time, you’ve going to have to man up.

I don’t care about what was on the blogs before you sent those e-mails. I’m a big girl and after years of "the big Cone", I’ve more-than-proven I can hang (some of my thickest skin is scar tissue from your barbs). But EVERY NASTY/LIBELOUS post you’ve put up that so much as refers to me since sending those e-mails on November 13th is an extension and manifestation of your threats.

Threats are NOT protected speech. Libel is NOT protected speech. You don't have the remotest clue what "the real story" is.

Those posts will come down, and an apology will go up.

And that apology will not just be to me. It will be to David Hoggard and Bubba . . . who’ve also been on the receiving end of your disturbing/warped bile in their Inboxes. It will be to Dr. Joe Guarino . . . for the vile/despicable things you’ve said about him online. It will be to Mike Baron . . . a good and decent man who was "green" before "green" was cool, and who is anything but a “petulant child”.

It will be to your wife’s paying customers (you know, the “fat girls” who've put good money in your pocket), and your own.

And it will be to the blogging community as a whole . . . because with this latest stunt, you crossed EVERY line of civility, lowered every standard of dialogue, and brought shame to anyone who ever engaged in this ether.

In fact, it wasn't blogging at all - for all of the smoke you've tried to blow.

And I am NOT going to let you get away with passing it off as blogging . . . or satire.

I saw talent and I saw pain, and I tried really hard to understand you, and to be your friend. But my definition of what a friend is - and yours - are clearly two very different things.

And/so until these things happen, the Randolph County DA’s office need not bother approaching me about any plea or “deal” on your behalf.

I'm not interested. I'll see you in Court.

While you're at it, please give my regards to Mr. Bell. For in defending the cyber-stalker of Asheboro's long-time medical pariah (the one who was driven out of her own hometown for saving a life), one of Asheboro’s newest City Council members will join a long line of Randolph County well-nameds and/or politicos who’ve passively or actively taken their best shot at taking Dr. Mary Johnson down.

You're so not the guy to do it.

And once again, let this all stand as fair warning to any young professional (be it a doctor or nurse - or a parent simply wanting good/conscientious care for their children) who would consider re-locating to Asheboro.

This town eats its young and spits them out.

A Heavy Heart

Ed Hyder is a local character who holds a very special place in my heart.

I was very sorry to hear that his wife, Beckie, passed away yesterday.

Words are inadequate in times such as these - especially when it happens during the holiday season. I send love and condolences across the ether to my good friend and his family during this very difficult time.

Oh What A Wonderful Child

This Christmas the Johnson household has something that it's not had in a very long time . . .

. . . a cognizant child. She's not a baby this year. She's turning into an actual human. Babies do that, you know.

Aunt Mary spent the morning at Walmart (horrors!) sorting through all kinds of brightly-colored, theoretically-unbreakable, supposedly-educational Fisher-Price products. The Grandmas have all the really girly-stuff covered, so Aunt Mary went with less gender-specific toys. Planes (a nod to Daddy) and trains (to honor the Granddaddy she will never know) were part of the huge pile of poly-vinyl things that got wrapped . . . along with a medical kit for baby geniuses.

Which she is.

And if she's really smart, she won't go into medicine.

The Christmas gift that Aunt Mary wants most is to see the child dance. You see, this little girl is endowed with a natural rhythm that her tall/lumbering/clumsy Aunt never, ever possessed. Since she was a wee baby, she has been entranced by music. She wiggles and gyrates when things come on TV or the radio, and it is hysterical to watch.

With that in mind, Aunt Mary dug deeply into her Christmas CD collection and pulled out an oldie-but-goodie that she used to listen to a lot during a Christmas season several years ago, while on the graveyard shift in Memphis . . . when "Miss Martha" (the no-nonsense unit secretary who looked and acted just like "Mammy" from Gone With the Wind . . . and who took very good care of a lonely white girl far from home) would crank up the Christmas spirit just inside the ambulance bay doors.

The song is "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child" by Mariah Carey.

For some odd reason, the end of this arrangement reminds me of Animal House.

I cannot wait to pop it in my brother's sound system and see what his child does.

Still A Huge Fan Of Greg Gabbard . . .

. . . and the guys & gals at Lake Norman Bath. The show (which I had not checked in with lately) is just getting better and better. It was good for several, much-needed laughs out loud.

Snow Down East

I opened my apartment door just now to find the eastern North Carolina countryside covered in a very fine layer of snow . . . it appears to be of the hominy variety.

Very pretty.

Doing My Part For Healthcare Reform

A punishment for e-mailing the White House . . . and admonishing the CLUELESS Obama administration for its abject failure to reform things that really need reforming before the Congress hands even more control of medicine over to the government . . . I now periodically get unwanted e-mails from some cheer-leading chick named Nancy-Ann DeParle, the Director of the White House Office of Health Reform.

The e-mail actually went to SPAM (along with Bev's Perdue's latest self-serve). But in the process of cleaing out my web-mail files today, I pulled it up.

Like the Clintons and Edwardses before them, the Obamas do not consider the opinions of anyone who might tell them that their village is actually on fire.

I'm supposed to be thrilled that healthcare "reform" is being debated and negotiated primarily over the weekends . . . and that Senators/their votes can be so easily bought and sold.

Merry Christmas. But not everyone is thrilled with this particular Christmas present. Here's a comment (also in my Ibox) from a thread I subscribed to a while back at Kevin MD's:

There is no bottom to the irresponsibility of these Democrats. The de-professionalization of physicians has been going on for some time and this legislation will complete that process as it packages health care as a commodity. I am at a loss to understand how anyone can demand the services, skill and training of another as their right and entitlement while someone(s) else pays the bill at below market rates?? Consider what its worth to you and then ask that question again in 8-10 years when the full impact of this legislation, along with probably numerous unintended consequences, is in full bloom.

I am looking for mass retirement of physicians over 50 once this legislation goes into effect including that of my wife.

I am feeling this guy's pain - because I'm almost where his wife is at. Everybody (particularly patients and hospitals) takes a great deal for granted and wants the best for nothing (I've gotten a particularly big dose of that over the last few weeks). And this so-called "reform" is really just a massive expansion of the failed social policies of the last 50 years . . . without addressing any of the reasons why these policies failed . . . or doing anything to fix much of what is wrong from a "provider's" (I HATE that word) standpoint.

Ooo-rah.

Nobody in Washington really cares about the working middle class . . . or about the doctors (particularly the primary-care doctors - a good many of them very-hard-working middle class) providing this care. Healthcare "reform" is all and only about the dance partners known as Power and Entitlement. It's a dangerous dance that's going to sink this country.

And I'm more and more convinced that there's nothing to be done about it.

As I've indicated before, for several months, I've had a timeline on what I was going to put up with - and how much longer I was going to put up with it. The following is the text of a letter that will be sent via certified mail to Robert Morrison, CEO of Randolph Hospital, next week.

The letter would have gone out sooner, but quite frankly (despite the popular belief of some bloggers) I do have a life and a fairly important/stressful job (one that actually does include saving little lives), and I am now resolved that Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin are only going to be on my radar as the un-convicted felons that they are. If very important people in Asheboro and Raleigh and Washington want to continue to look the other way and/or shield these two liars and cheats from the consequences of their actions, that is shortly going to be a big problem for them:

19 December, 2009


Mr. Morrison,

Please provide a list of ALL of the members of Randolph Hospital’s and Randolph Medical Associates’ Boards of Directors, . . as well as Randolph Hospital’s Corporate Membership . . . listed by year from 1995 to the current year (2009).

Randolph Hospital is a “non-profit” institution. This information is PUBLIC RECORD (much like the information you once knowingly lied about/withheld in Court), and should be provided in a timely fashion.

As I am updating files for an upcoming project, I also require complete hard-copies of both Randolph Hospital’s and Randolph Medical Associates’ IRS 990 forms for the last three fiscal years . . as well as copies of the IRS 990 reports for the next fiscal year (for both RH and RMA) as soon as they become available.

All of the above can be mailed to my home address.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Mary H. Johnson, M.D., FAAP

I am resolved to do my part for healthcare reform . . . real reform. More will be posted on the upcoming project as I feel like sharing.

The Gates County Train Man

Yesterday, uber-disgusted by CNN's "economic recovery express" rail-roading through Asheboro and sucking up to the very mill-town engineers who steered our little train off the tracks . . . and more-than-a-little-emotionally-burned-out by a tough week at work . . . I needed very badly to get out-of-town (but not too far out-of-town because I was still on-call).

Chatting up the nurses and regaling them with Christmas stories of my train-nut of a Father, they told me of a pseudo-local attraction that I simply had to see.

It is the "Gates County Train Man". His name is Richard Pearce, and he has a little three-room "house" on his property where, every Christmas, he sets up THE MOTHER of all model-train exhibits. He's been doing it for nearly thirty years. The nurses told me it was absolutely magical.

I got directions to this wonderful place in the middle-of-fricking-nowhere, and set out yesterday afternoon after finishing up at the hospital to find it in the daylight (knowing it would not be open until 6 PM, but being afraid to venture out into that particular part of the northeastern-North-Carolina-countryside-where-even-invading-space-aliens-don't-go in the dark).

A couple of wrongs turns into dead ends and swamps (and three phone calls) later (when I found a spot that wasn't "dead"), I found the place and resolved to go back yesterday evening.

It looked strangely familiar.

Last night, promptly at six PM, along with some locals who were there to see this years' show, I was at Mr. Pearce's doorstep. And when I opened the door, I KNEW I had been there before . . .

. . . with my Daddy. A very long time ago.

Words cannot do the display justice. It brought tears to my eyes (as I struggled to regain my composure, an elderly lady came up and silently/knowingly patted me on the back). Let's just say it was (indeed) a magical trip into my past . . . a time when antique Lionel trains wailed and smoked under our Christmas tree . . .

. . . and Asheboro really was my hometown.

My Message: It's About Simple Right And Wrong

This post should have been up this morning. But it was a fairly stressful week at work, and for the better part of two days, I've been fighting off a moderately-severe (trigeminal) neuralgia attack. Because of the way I make my living, I choose not to take certain medications that would blunt the wit or dull the senses. When an attack hits, lots of high-dose Motrin (with a Prevacid chaser) and cat-napping-in-total-darkness are involved. Fortunately, it's been a light call weekend. Alas, even after the blinding/pounding pain subsides, its echo can remain for days.

Speaking of stress, I can't wait to see what tomorrow does for my fifth cranial nerve.

The neuralgia is (I think) one of the reasons my NCBCBS premiums are so high (as brain-surgery could be on my list of things to do in the distant future). It's why I took note of the announcement that Bob Greczyn, CEO of North Carolina's "non-profit" monster Blue Cross Blue Shield is retiring in February.

As I slave to pay my premiums, I wonder what kind of extra $pecial goodie$ will be tucked into Greczyn's parachute?

It's kind of galling to see "non-profit" fat cats stroll into the sunset, their butter-and-cream-for-life ensured, given what I went through at the hands of two very-well-paid local "non-profit" hospital executives . . . one of whom is showing off his newly-renovated uber-home on Dave's Mountain as part of Asheboro's Holiday Tour of Homes.

For just $15, you can see what your tax dollars help pay for. Bob & Peggy Morrison do not mind being forcibly annexed. Having done very well for themselves in the charity $ector, they can afford the extra taxes . . . and the expensive "natural" Christmas decorations.

This post actually began as this post. I ultimately decided that it was best to dissect my frustration with local journalists (and bloggers) from the message, as one detracts from the other.

Between catnaps, and while composing this post, I've also been following two threads . . . one at Mike Baron's and one at Joe Guarino's. I'm very weary of (and disgusted by) the diversionary tactics of certain GSO bloggers . . . and even when my neuralgia isn't flaring, I'm afraid my exasperation shows.

The determined hypocrisy of citizen-journalists who have not walked their talk is tired, and it's old, and a lot more people are seeing through it than who used to. I'm very grateful for that.

Folks who've called and e-mailed in order to offer encouragement tell me that it's especially important in this era of healthcare "reform" (which really only amounts to more of the same stale/failed policies of the last 50 years), and economic hardship secondary to corporate malfeasance and poor oversight (a reality which I lived far longer than most), to keep hammering home my message.

Lately, I've done a lot of thinking about what that message is . . . because I do think several people in this blogosphere have been "missing something" for a long time. And I think that the fact they've been so deliberate in the missing of it for so long speaks for itself.

My eleven-year battle with Randolph Hospital is ALL about simple right and wrong . . . and how YOU would have expected our systems of government and medical/legal oversight to have worked had it been YOU or one of your friends/loved ones in my shoes - or your baby literally dying on a warmer.

On a related note, I heard that CNN's chief business correspondent, Ali Velshi, was in Asheboro today - doing a feature on how people in small (dare I say dying?) towns are a celebrating the holidays in a tough economy. From the article:

Residents are invited to join Velshi and a local team of financial experts (a real estate agent, mortgage banker, financial planner and others) for help in developing a realistic financial plan to get them on their own road to recovery. Velshi will report on the process and the lessons learned on Monday.

I wonder if those "experts" are the same local experts who helped steer Asheboro into its current predicament in the first place? And I wonder if anyone will steer Mr. Velshi to this blog . . . where he can read all about how very badly a small mill town treated a home-grown Pediatrician who was recruited back home to serve her community with state and Federal tax dollars?

And if Velshi does read this blog, will he/his "experts" have the guts to tell Asheboro's powers-that-be, "You really screwed up guys. And you're screwing up even more now by letting this ugly thing hang out there on the Internet like a cancer on your face."

I've digressed. I'd like to sum up my message now. Again, it's about simple right and wrong.

(1) It's NOT okay for the taxpayers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit physicians to a community, only to have those physicians drummed out of town by people whose only motive is greed and market share.

(2) It's NOT okay for hospitals - especially "non-profit" ones - to threaten doctors with termination for doing their jobs . . . to put them in the position of choosing between their job and a patient's life.

(3) It's NOT okay for hospitals - especially "non-profit" ones - to fire doctors for putting patients first.

(4) It's NOT okay for doctors to be targeted for financial/professional destruction for blowing the whistle on bad care. And it's not okay for their fellow physicians to look the other way while it's happening.

(5) It's NOT okay for hospitals (especially "non-profit" ones), their officers or agents to lie to patients/taxpayers about what happened to their doctors.

(6) It's NOT okay for hospitals - especially "non-profit" ones - to use tax dollars to finance SLAPP suits as an intimidation tactic against doctors (or nurses) for telling the truth to oversight and regulatory bodies.

(7) It's NOT okay for government service programs to leave their doctors totally swinging in the wind when hospitals/practice do not live up to their contractual obligations or retaliate against them for doing their duty . . . to have no hotline to help when one-of-their own needs it.

(8) It's NOT okay for regulatory bodies . . . be they the Medical Board or the State Bar or DHHS or JCAHO . . . to wink and nod and play favorites . . . to pretend that problems do not exist and do nothing about them.

(9) It's NOT okay for "non-profit" hospital executives to lie under Oath in Court proceedings or negotiate deals in bad faith. It's not okay for their lawyers to get away with helping them do it under the guise of "aggressive advocacy".

(10) It's NOT okay for the Boards of Directors of "non-profit" hospitals to rubber-stamp the actions of their executives no matter what . . . to offer no mechanism of due process to physicians . . . to reward lying and cheating on the part of their executives with fat salaries, benefits and parachutes.

(11) It's NOT okay for law enforcement agencies and district attorneys to pander to the powerful . . . to block legitimate investigations of "non-profit" malfeasance . . . to ignore the pleas of ordinary citizens for help . . . to act as if someone wronged does not exist.

(12) It's NOT okay for the North Carolina Attorney General and Legislature to sit on their tails and do nothing when they KNOW that there are gaping black holes in the legal system for good people to fall through . . . be they innocents wrongly accused, or victims of white-collar crime kept from getting their cases where they need to go.

(13) It's NOT okay for journalists to play favorites and pander to their advertisers . . . to worship at the altar of economic development at all costs.

(14) It's not okay for politicians to talk out of both sides of their mouths . . . to pontificate on ethics and accountability and "reform" publicly, while privately carrying on the status quo.

(15) And while I'm at it, it's not okay for one blogger to try to intimidate another blogger (in this case, an opinionated professional woman who has already been to hell and back) into silence with threats and insults hurled into her Inbox . . . not to mention a series of vile, libel-ridden posts poorly disguised as "satire".

The intimidation tactics did not work when Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin did it eleven years ago.

And it's not going to work now.

It's about simple right and wrong, people. I will close with something I said to blogger-king/citizen journalist Edward Cone (of THE Cones) at Mike Baron's "DamScam" blog:

The Piedmont's "gold" is not its "infrastructure" or it's location. The Piedmont's REAL gold is its people - good people - particularly people like Mike Baron and Mary Johnson who were treated like DIRT by the powers-that-be because they did the right thing.

You wanna fix the area's prospects, you fix that FIRST. And if the powers-that-be don't start SOON caring about simple right and wrong, then YES, population and development WILL remain stagnant.

And it will DESERVE to be so.

Afternoon Update: Let's just say I've taken some calls. WFMY-2 has a video story up on CNN doing it story on Asheboro. As I suspected, instead of bringing fresh experts in, all of the "usual suspects" . . . "right people" who've composed Asheboro's leadership "infrastructure" for years and years are featured front & center . . . Keith Crisco . . . assorted town council members . . . I think I even saw Bob Morrison.

And I have news for Mr. Rubin (the producer of the CNN piece). A lot of young people . . . young professionals (particularly young medical professionals) . . . have come to Asheboro over the last 15-20 years believing in its "potential" and "promise" . . . and wanting to build their lives here. But we were NOTHING . . . NOBODIES . . . to the very "important" people Rubin and Velshi are interviewing now . . . people who left right and wrong at the door while they led the town chartered on Christmas Day 1796 to the admirable position of being named number 4 on Forbes' list of dying towns in America this time last year.

But hey, as we fire up the 2009 Christmas economic recovery express, let's keep giving these people ALL of the air play. They've earned it.

Cue Bob Morrison's "estate" on Asheboro's Tour of Homes.

The Story Behind The Tree You Can See From Space

The Raleigh N&R has a nice article up on the story behind the crabpot Christmas tree I bought this past weekend. People are apparently making the best of some hard economic realities.

It reminds me of the story behind the "Christmas Cross" of a few years back.

Of course, as per usual, the N&R's Front Pew crowd had to take a beautiful notion and make something ugly out of that.

The Polar Express . . .

. . . was on TV tonight.

It was released in late 2004 and was the last movie I saw with Pops, the train nut. He loved the scenes featuring the train, but found the faces of the kids disconcerting.

"One thing about trains. It doesn't matter where they're going. It's deciding to get on."

I like to BELIEVE every Christmas, that Pops is out there somewhere, riding that train.

"Sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we cannot see."

The Spirit Of Ethan Feinsilver Lives On: In One Of His Students, And In The Tactics Of Bloggers

There's an oldie-but-goodie on the Housecalls' sidebar, entitled "Burned Citizen Journalism". It was penned in April 2006, a little over a year after I jumped into the Greensboro blogosphere . . . and just as the "Wray-fray" was really catching fire.

If memory serves, I believe the post earned me my first "You're a wack-job," from a local character going by the moniker of "Fecund Stench". It took a while, but I forgave him for that.

Of course, as it turns out, I wasn't such a "wack-job" after all.

And, as of 11/13/2009, when he crossed a very clear line he shouldn't have, Mr. Stench (aka, Jeff Martin) and I are DONE. It wasn't for lack of trying to understand "Fec", appreciate his gift and contributions/potential as a blogger, and be a friend.

A number of people have e-mailed me or called over the last few days . . . especially since I put up this post . . . and have offered encouraging words. They've told me to ignore the naysayers in the Greensboro blogosphere (all of whom clearly have their motives) and stay on point . . . to keep hammering "the message" home.

I'm actually working on a post on what that "message" is for tomorrow.

But that's tomorrow.

The modus operandi of the naysayers is classic - and has been for years. A post or comment goes up dissing me or my story. Several people chime in - in a derogatory, distortive, dismissive, often very cruel fashion. Eventually, I can take no more poking and put up a response . . . usually a long one . . . because I am addressing several "points", coming from several different directions, made by those doing the ganging-up (around here, we call it a "coning"). Then, quite predictably, the ad hominems begin. I'm "crazy" or "hysterical" or "bitter", I "need help", or can't accept "reality" and should "move on". "There's something about Mary", you see, that just isn't right.

High-minded citizen-journalists who have NEVER interviewed me or even looked at the evidence (when you go to work for a newspaper, Roch, we'll talk), then parse/dissect every word I post.

Yet they've NEVER ONCE posed an objective question to the "non-profit" executives I accuse - of some fairly serious offenses . . . executives of a local public charity who've never had the courage to address those charges in ANY kind of forum - private or public.

Instead, these executives hide behind their powerful friends (newspaper editors, law enforcement, politicians) who've buried the case.

Yet somehow, I'm the one who has no credibility (???).

I've been here in the ether almost five years and it never changes. That's because Mary Johnson's message . . . one that doesn't exactly reflect well on the professions (journalism/law), or the political philosophies (Dr. Johnson's troubles having started during the Clinton administration - doing her turn in Hillary's "village"), or the important friends, or the family names of the bloggers doing the dissing . . . must be marginalized and blunted.

And the way you do that, is NOT by examining the message or the evidence . . . or even asking an objective question of the hospital executives I accuse. It's by calling me "crazy" and telling me to "shut up".

Mike Baron has faced similar problems trying to get his word out on the "SCAM" (a fairly accurately term, all things considered) worked on a largely ignorant/unsuspecting public that was/is the Randleman Dam.

Indeed, an mean-spirited blog-pummel of Mike is what started "the spectacle" that ended with Jeff Martin hurling 27 nasty/threatening/disturbing e-mails into my Inbox on a Friday night one month ago.

And I'm sorry folks, that's NOT blogging anymore. That's cyber-stalking.

(I've been in the news. Big whup. It's not for the reason I want to be there. So I'll pass on the interviews if you don't mind.)

At any rate, this morning, there was a comment in the Inbox on the "Burned Citizen Journalism" thread. And it was as if the ghost of Ethan Feinsilver, whose own fecund stench still lingers in Randolph County, had followed Jacob Marley out of the pit.

And here is what it said (it's in blue because it's just so "progressive"):

Dude, Ethan Feinsilver is my Journalism Teacher....and hes a really nice guy. Personally, I dont think he did anything wrong...he was just being a good reporter and trying to make an interesting article. Its not his fault that the guy who happened to teach had psychological problems that ended to his death. I feel bad, of course, but I just dont know if its really fair to say he was some hungry monster.

The comment had all of the characteristics that I despise . . . for reasons that do hit very close to home (and I know there are people out there in this blogosphere right now who've taken great pride in stomping on that nerve as if it merits some kind of sick/warped badge of honor).

And/so I put the comment up and responded:

The inane drivel that people will sometimes post on a blog simply amazes me.

(1) I am not a "dude", I am a dudette. In fact, I'm Dr. Dudette to any so-called journalist who would drop a comment like that.

(2) I might give your opinion more credence if you signed your name. I assume you will do so with any future articles you write.

(3) It amazes me how Mr. Feinsilver never speaks for himself. Others must do his dirty work for him - be it his former editors or his students. And this IS dirty work.

(4) It frightens me that Ethan Feinsilver is teaching journalism. Of course, if he is, it's most likely in North Carolina. (And I'm wondering what juicy tidbits we might pick up if we audited his class?)

(5) Good reporters don't have to "make" anything. Good reporters report the facts without coloring them. It's a lost art.

(6) Good newspapers allow the subjects of their news stories to present their point of view. As for "fair", Jack Perdue could not even get a letter-to-the-Editor published.

(7) It is the mark of a SNIVELING COWARD to pass off the crystal clear results of Mr. Feinsilver's cruel work as some kind of character flaw or psychological problem on Jack Perdue's part.

"Dude", you're talking to a home-girl who knows something of the players and was here when it happened, and who feels very lucky your "teacher" didn't latch on to her story to distort and marginalize (of course, we now have Ed Cone for that).

Jack Perdue was a good, decent, and very strong man who was methodically and determinedly hammered to death by a reporter trying to make a name for himself . . . working for a race-baiting newspaper whose despicable MO is to latch on to a bone - no matter how fetid or rotten - and never let go.

I will assume you're here for extra credit. But don't come to this blog defending the "reporter" who I will believe to-my-dying-day killed a good man with bad words.

Grow up and hatch some principles before you comment here again.

Maybe the response is a little harsh . . . perhaps even a little shrewish. But, as I told someone else last night (who suggested that I might have had a story done by now by a nationally-known columnist, "if he decided that you did not a have neo-con republican mind-set"), I've reached the limits of my tolerance for all of the sorry excuses journalists have/make for not investigating very relevant/very important stories right under their stuck-up noses.

I responded to that one too:

That just pisses me off. My story has great merit, no matter what ***** thinks of my politics.

It more-than-demonstrates that even in the wake of the Duke-Nifong debacle, NOTHING has really changed in terms of DA's and justice in North Carolina.

***** said he cared about it before - when a black hooker/lap dancer/whatever falsely accused three rich, white fat-cat frat boys of rape (and I'd bet you very good money that their families were of the "neo-con Republican" variety).

A small-town-girl-who-made-good came home to serve her hometown/community hospital (despite being mauled there as a child) and was treated like dirt. What that hospital did to her was UNETHICAL and ILLEGAL on so many levels. Yet she can't get to past a crooked/pandering DA to the North Carolina Attorney General . . . in order to take down the over-paid, over-rated scum-bag white-collars who did her dirty.

***** either cares about that or he doesn't. It's not about politics and it shouldn't be. I am what I am. I make NO apologies, and I'm NOT changing for anyone.

I'm done "auditioning" for reporters . . . no matter who they are.

In that sense, I have moved on.

It has, in fact, always been my policy here in the blogopshere (indeed everywhere) to return kindness and consideration with kindness and consideration. There are any number of people in my personal and professional orbits who can tell you that once you get past the crusty, tough girl act that I'm very good at, I have a very soft, warm and generous (often gullible) and chronically-broken heart.

But you don't get to walk all over me - or maliciously poke me with sticks. For I give as good as I get. Sometimes better.

Moreover, I do NOT back down when I have been wronged. Pops taught his girl never to run from a fight. So did my Mama - as much as the steeliest-of-Steel-Magnolias might be loathe to admit it.

I wish blogs had been more of a fixture when Jack Perdue went through his ordeal (of course if that had been so, I might not be here now).

I'd like to think that I would not have just swallowed Ethan Feinsilver's party line . . . that I would have been one of Jack's champions . . .

. . . one of his friends.

And/so, taking the advice of my friends, tomorrow I resume FOCUS on the message.

A Silver Elf Under The Crabby Blue Tree

I don't usually put up Christmas decorations while on assignment. Christmas is for home.

But I'm starting to get attached to this place and this crowd (as this assignment has been on-going for a well over a year-and-a-half).

I am a connoisseur of the unusual, and I am partial to blue Christmases. While browsing in the local Ace Hardware store, I came across something called a "CrabPot" Christmas Tree . . . something uniquely "Down Eastern" North Carolina . . . and I bought the 4-foot white-light version with 300 lights. The size of the tree was a practical decision. When folded, it fits in the backseat of the car.

To this, I added a 200-light string of regular blue mini-lights as well as two strings of blue and white LED snow-flakes. I put it upstairs in the apartment where I'm staying - where I can shut the door (TJ has already tried to climb the thing) and leave the blinds up at night.

And you can see the (very pretty) crabby tree from space. It reminds me of Graceland.

And it will go very nicely with the vintage, never-opened knee-hugging elf in silver lame' I just bought on E-Bay.

Very cool.

Okay, now I'm really back on break.

Update

As I noted in a comment at Dale's, I called the Randolph County District Attorney's office today to find out what exactly would happen on December 14th with regards to the cyber-stalking case. I have no plans to drop the charges. I cannot be in Court on Monday as I am on-call down-East.

I was told (by a very nice young lady - given past experience, it was very refreshing to be spoken to/treated as if I were an actual human being), that a first appearance is simply about assigning counsel and entering a plea. If the plea is not-guilty, the case will be continued . . . with the next appearance possibly not being until February as the Court docket is fairly full now.

A subpoena will be issued to me (most likely served over the phone), and away we will go.

On a related note (hat tip to Dr. Guarino), Mike Baron has posted a stong rebuttal to Ed Cone's recent smoke-blowing on the Randleman Dam (not unrelated to this case) at Word Up. Mr. Cone and some of his friends have been working overtime (see the update at the bottom of the post) to discredit the original targets of Jeff Martin's bile . . . before he started hurling threatening/disturbing e-mails into my Inbox.

Mike's post is a thing of beauty.

Resuming blogging break now.

Dr. Mary Johnson vs. Randolph Hospital (And The Corrupt North Carolina Justice System): Eleven Years In 2110 Words

In the wake of filing charges against Jeff Martin (aka "Fecund Stench") for cyber-stalking, Housecalls has a number of first-time readers.

Friends/other bloggers have suggested that I ignore some of "the usual suspects", cut through some of the smoke and mirrors, and take advantage of the increased traffic. And/so I’m offering up the "back-story" to the "blog-war" . . . the story that brought me to the blogosphere in 2005.

As most long-time readers know, after several years of talking to Garland Yates' hand, I came to the blogosphere on the invitation of a journalist - John Robinson of the GSO News & Record. The paper had teamed up with prominent bloggers in the Greensboro area and together they were promoting a concept called "citizen journalism".

But alas, in Greensboro, citizen journalism only works if you serve the deep-blue, progressive agenda of the "big-gun" citizen journalists.

I don't worship at that particular altar.

I've been here almost five years. While I've been here, I've jumped through all the hoops and played all the games and fought all the fights and even tried to be a friend to a man that I obviously shouldn't have. And, for the sin of trying to get someone to care about the awful things that were done to a Pediatrician in public service to her hometown, I've been called every name in the book. I'm "mentally-ill" because I've fought so hard and refused to give up.

Some here have said that I should "shut up" about what happened to me . . . that the blogosphere doesn't "owe" me anything. But I think that if the blogosphere actually IS what it says it IS (don't ya just love that word?), it kinda does. In this era of healthcare reform, where doctors . . . especially primary care doctors . . . are being pushed into tiny corners and stomped all over, if you want someone to care about the patient and do right by them (as I did - and got fired/sued for doing), you have to start caring about the doctor.

Because if you don't, you're not going to have any doctors left.

I've NEVER asked for anything but HELP in making the law do what it says it will do. Meanwhile, there are some in this blogopshere who will press money into the palm of a man who very clearly broke the law . . . because he has the God-given right to act like a sick/warped jerk.

This story is not mean-spirited satire, and it cannot be told in 140 words. On the other hand, I'm not Jerry Bledsoe, so I'll try to keep as short and sweet as I can. So if your attention span is short . . . if you can only wrap your brain cells around a sound bite . . . if you need a fix of "mean" . . . if you've heard it all before and think you know it all already . . . if Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Barack Obama are the only healthcare "experts" you care to listen to (nevermind that they're lawyers) . . . or you simply don't care . . . don't bother.

There are other places you can go and people you can read.

Start the word count:

In January 1998, while in public service to both the National Health Service Corps and N.C. Office of Rural Health - by virtue of being the founding Pediatrician of Randolph Medical Associates (the “non-profit”controlled-affiliate of Randolph Hospital - in my hometown of Asheboro), I was threatened with termination by then-RMA Director, Mike Bridges . . . essentially told to “shut-up or else” about problems at the hospital & practice.

At the time, I was Chair of the hospital’s Perinatal Committee and, in addition to staffing a full-time office, was providing 24-7 Pediatric critical care back-up for all of the doctors in town who wanted or asked for it.

The hospital had broken a number of the promises it made at recruitment, and practice management left much to be desired.

Bridges' threats were structured around the complaint of a “VIP parent” in Asheboro . . .who had demanded a treatment that was not necessary and I had refused to approve/provide. The practice director made no effort whatsoever to properly medically vet the complaint. It only mattered that the VIP was angry and her complaint suited his purposes - his main objective being to muzzle me.

Nothing in my peer review files - at the practice - or the hospital remotely justified Bridges' actions.

Two nights later, with that threat hanging over my head, and at the request of the nursing staff, I intervened in a neonatal case where a then-Cone-Hospital-owned Family Practitioner was grossly mismanaging a critically-ill infant.

When I arrived, the baby was very close to crashing/coding.

By ALL accounts, I saved the child’s life.

I reported the incident to hospital peer review the next morning. I did not ask for Mr. Bridge's permission to do so. I also consulted a lawyer because the incident more-than-proved his conditions of employment were medically/professionally intolerable. And without a retraction of the threats, I was not going to talk to Bridges without a third-party/representative present.

Two weeks after that, I was fired “without cause” . . . banned from the office after five days despite the facts that (1) my RMA employment contract required a six-month notice, and (2) my NHSC agreement explicitly stated my practice in the area to which I had been recruited could not be interferred with in any way. The terms of my “notice” (deceptively passed off by Board members as a “severance package”) essentially side-lined and muzzled me in a window-less box for six months.

In that time my practice was destroyed /absorbed by RMA.

The parents of my patients were deliberately lied to and misled.

My hospital privileges were not affected by RMA’s actions (there was no cause), but again, the exclusive terms of RMA"s “notice” and the cancellation of my malpractice insurance prohibited my practice at the hospital. Executives were telling anyone who would listen that I was "free" to start my own practice, but it was a lie.

This is a big point: At NO time during this time (or at any other time) - was I afforded any kind of “due process” hearing by either the RMA or Randolph Hospital Board of Directors/Executive Committees. They simply slurped up what hospital executives fed them.

Some of them are really mad that I'm out here in the blogosphere calling them on it now - sullying their good names (it's my understanding that some of them are rallying behind "Mr. Stench" as if he's a hero.) Like I care. They did not give one thought to mine.

When my “notice” was up, I reported the doctor involved in the nursery case (what is categorized as a JCAHO “sentinel event”) to the North Carolina Medical Board. After a six-month investigation, the Medical Board took no public action against the Family Practitioner (he received what amounted to a behind-the-scenes slap-on-the-hand), and did nothing to help me (they have no authority over hospitals).

In short the Medical Board considers it a "duty" for its licensees to report medical badness, but does not protect them when they do.

In 1999, a year after I was fired, all attempts to resolve the situation having rebuffed by hospital executives, I sued Randolph Medical Associates.

The lawsuit was not reported in our local newspapers.

Later that summer, responding to a request for feedback from Washington, I also reported what happened to Bill Clinton's USDHHS Secretary, Donna Shalala. The complaint was copied to the NC Office of Rural Health (NCDHHS), the North Carolina Medical Board, and the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hospital Organizations (JCAHO).

I actually met with JCAHO representatives twice - during two separate Randolph Hospital accreditation surveys. JCAHO did NOTHING to address the sentinel event I reported, and advised me that they had no mechanism in place to protect medical whistle-blowers . . . or deal with dishonest/corrupt administrative practices.

They still don’t. In fact, it’s currently very fashionable to label medical whistle-blowers as “disruptive”.

In 2000, Randolph Hospital counter-sued me for “libel” based on excepts from the Shalala complaint. The legal tactic actually has a name. It is called a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) lawsuit. It is designed to intimidate the defendant into silence.

It did not work.

The hospital's lawsuit was front-page news in the local newspapers. Everyone in my hometown (including my horrified parents) got to read that I was a liar.

In 2001, the day before my case against RMA was scheduled to go to trial, both cases were settled in my favor for a sum of $125,000 (less than one-year‘s salary to cover six years of loss).
During negotiations, hospital lawyers argued that that the practice/hospital was “almost bankrupt”.

My attorney (Steven Schmidly, of recent alcohol referendum fame) advised me that the sum was not taxable.

It was.

I was also told that the judge wanted the case resolved "or else". Pretty much locked in a conference room for most of two days, exhausted, emotionally drained, all but bankrupt myself after three years of litigation, told my opponents couldn't afford their just deserts, and promised “cooperation” by hospital executives in getting another practice off the ground, I accepted the deal.

In stark contrast to they way David Renfro had covered the filing of the hospital's "libel" lawsuit (i.e. "inflict maximun damage on Mary Johnson"), the settlement of the lawsuits in my favor was reported as a second-page “short-take” in the Courier Tribune.

Afterwards, cooperation in terms of getting another viable practice off the ground was not forth-coming. The executives I had beaten in Court resumed their obfuscative ways.

In 2003, after reviewing the case files, I discovered that Randolph Hospital senior executives, Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin, had lied repeated under Oath in discovery responses - stating that their financial records and doctors/administrative salaries were “confidential”.

But the information they knowingly withheld is actually public record (recorded on IRS 990 returns), and must be produced upon the request of any taxpayer. At the time their answers were filed with the Court, this information was also published on the Internet at a site called Guidstar.com.

Their lawyers, "experts" on defending "non-profits' had to have known this.

The information on those returns, very relevant to my damages claim, made it clear that the hospital/practice was far from “bankrupt”.

What Mr. Morrison and Mr. Eblin did constitutes perjury, contempt and fraud under N.C. General Statute.

Perjury has no statute of limitations.

Moreover, a "non-profit" officer/executive repeatedly lying under Oath and negotiating a settlement on the lies also falls under the definition of bad faith and is cause for termination under the North Carolina Nonprofit Corporation Act.

Yet Mr. Morrison and Mr. Eblin remain employed, and have gotten very large raises over the years. Indeed, I believe Mr. Morrison's newly-renovated uber-home is on the Asheboro Christmas home-tour this year. I'd list the address, but I don't treat my enemies the way Jeff Martin treats his "friends".

When Randolph Hospital's lawyer was confronted with this information , he invited me to sue again. I was not inclinded to return to a Court that had been so corrupted the first time.

Instead, as Randolph Hospital is a “non-profit” institution, I reported the crime to the Randolph County District Attorney’s office . . . well before the statute of limitations on civil fraud expired.

The DA, Garland Yates, refused to meet with me to discuss the complaint.

His ADA, King Dozier, told me that the matter would be referred to the SBI, but several weeks later, when I made inquiries, the SBI informed me that the investigation was killed before it could even start by Mr. Yates.

They were not going to investigate if Yates would not prosecute.

I re-drafted and re-flied the complaint in 2005. I also consulted the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department and the Asheboro Police Department, and pleaded for an investigation . . . or a referral to the SBI/Attorney General.

Still, the DA's office would not even speak to me.

I also filed complaints against both the hospital lawyers (for suborning perjury) and my own (gross negligence) with the North Carolina State Bar. The complaints were blown off.

Despite the fact that Randolph Hospital is a “non-profit” institution and a good portion of its funding (grants and certificates-of-need and such) is channeled through NCDHHS . . . and the NC Attorney General is quite literally NCDHHS’s lawyer . . . Roy Cooper’s office had thus far that is has no jurisdiction in the case.

Incredibly, the argument seems to be that NO REGULATORY BODY has any direct jurisdiction over the affairs of non-profit hospitals in North Carolina - and even if they do, they don't care. And even after the Mike Nifong debacle, ordinary citizens have no recourse if a District Attorney wants to be a stone wall and will not do the right thing.

And I am sorry, that just does not fly.

In summary, (1) I was never afforded ANY KIND of due process by the Randolph Hospital or its Board of Directors (2) my civil case was settled under false pretenses and in bad faith, and (3) as a former public servant, my criminal/felony case against two “non-profit” executives has NEVER been properly investigated by the state.

It is as if none of this ever happened and I do not exist. Every door has been slammed in my face.

The Asheboro Pediatrics website debuted in 2004 (it has not been updated or modified in several years).

This blog, Dr. J’s Housecalls, debuted in 2005 . . . with regular posting beginning in 2006.

In this era of healthcare reform, and despite all of the issues this one case touches upon (healthcare fraud and abuse, administrative corruption, poor oversight of non-profits by Boards of Directors and regulatory bodies, bad-faith peer review, tort reform, targeting medical whistle-blowers for destruction by labeling them “disruptive”) at no time have our local newspapers . . . or prominent bloggers . . . deemed the story worthy of the attention of an investigative journalist.

And I just don't understand that (or maybe I do), for if ever there was a case that demonstrated the fundamental failure of government-run medicine to oversee anything or accomplish ANY of its goals, this one is it. Giving the government MORE to do will NOT work.

The bold-faced lies of Randolph Hospital executives, Robert Morrison and Steven Eblin cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, a hometown Pediatric practice that I worked like a dog to build (in short, my dream) and years of my life.

According to some, I'm supposed to get over it and move on.

But I cannot do that. If the case does not see some kind of forward movement by Christmas of this year, I am planning to pursue legal action against the N.C. Medical Board, NC and/or USDHHS, and JCAHO (for gross regulatory negligence) next year.

The premise of that lawsuit will be very simple . . . if the state is going to require duties of doctors . . . if you really want them to do right by patients . . . you must protect them. The state of North Carolina doesn't.

Ironically the same DA’s office that has blown off my case against Randolph Hospital since 2003 - and has thus far refused to refer it where it needs to go for a proper investigation, will be handling the cyber-stalking case against Jeff Martin.

I'm not supposed to be concerned about that.

I trust that this narrative (as short and concise as I can make the story due to its complexity) helps outsiders/new readers understand why I’m just a little torqued-off, and not-at-all inclined to let Randolph Hospital or its executives off the hook.

I also trust I have not sounded like a “lunatic”, “wack-job” or “booger-eating moron”.

There it is. In 2110 words. I'm quite sure some of the blogging "big guns" in Greensboro will snicker and spit. But you know what? I don't care what they think anymore. I've climbed out of their box and it's rather liberating.

And/so the break begins. If there are any updates to the cyber-stalking case they will be posted.

Comments are closed.

Afternoon Update:

Got a nice "comment" on this post from a good friend in the Inbox this afternoon . . . responding to the argument that I should drop all efforts to hold Randolph Hospital accountable.

Yes, a case can be made that it is past history, and that you should move on. But . . . on the other hand, I will say that your situation was a bit more out of the ordinary, and that you were made to suffer far deeper, and grossly unfair consequences as a result of you doing what you felt was the honorable thing to do.

For what my vote is worth, you can keep on writing about it. You've earned it. An injustice was done, and it hasn't been atoned for. It may never be a wrong that is righted, but at least your actions will always cause them some measure of discomfort. People such as those depend on their victims caving in and disappearing.

And, Mary Helen Johnson doesn't do disappearing acts does she?

Wednesday Afternoon (12/9) update: Ed Cone/Word-Up (who has a vested interest in playing the "Fec" business down) has a post up on this post. And I've weighed in. I'm going back on blogging-break and back to work. The boys can talk amongst themselves.

I'm sure someone will "wish me well" (again). The thing about wishing is that it doesn't make it so.