Grady

I shouldn't be blogging today. The semester is almost over and I've got more work to do than I can fathom.

But today, while working on my Op-Ed piece for our Health and Medical Journalism class, I began reading a string of articles at the AJC about Grady Hospital in Atlanta.

I first heard about Grady when my friend Elga was working as a Nurse in the Emergency Room. The stories she told were not for the faint of heart.

Located in Atlanta, with the best of only four trauma units in the state, 50% of Grady patients are covered by Medicaid. Apparently it is quite a zoo there, both patient-wise and administration-wise. My friend Elga lived in dread of full moon shifts in the E.R.

I've been reading about Grady's gradual slide into debt and disrepair for many years now. The more I read, the more confused I get about what the problems are and what the solution is.

The one thing I do know is that the people of Georgia want and need Grady hospital to survive. Grady is a medical home for many Atlantans in the same way that Charity hospital in New Orleans was for those Citizens.

More importantly, I discovered from the AJC articles, Grady is the States largest teaching hospital.

"Without it, the Morehouse School of Medicine, tasked with the mission of training doctors to work in underserved areas of the state, would not exist."--According to Mike King of the AJC

Our states largest teaching hospital is teetering on the verge of collapse. Why?

Aren't we all the same country?

If I live in the United States, why should my health care options here in Georgia be poorer than those of someone living in Massachusetts?
Why should I have less access to resources that would improve my health?