Grady to build neighborhood health 'super centers'

By Craig Schneider

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Grady Memorial Hospital officials have backed off from closing two of three neighborhood health centers that were slated for closure while embarking on a multimillion-dollar plan to create four new community health "super centers," officials said Wednesday.

In creating the new health centers, Grady CEO Michael Young said he wants to counter the reputation that neighborhood centers have as being "small, half-baked" clinics that hand out piecemeal care to the poor. He hopes the new centers will offer patients a wider array of services, draw more paying patients, and keep people from seeking everyday care in Grady's emergency room.

The super centers will be located in north Fulton County, south Fulton County, southeast DeKalb County and the east side of Atlanta.

The reversal on closing the two health clinics follows considerable community outrage that included one DeKalb commissioner threatening to cut Grady's county funding.

"I just said it is unacceptable," Commissioner Larry Johnson said, regarding the prospect of closing the South DeKalb Health Center.

Johnson also felt "very, very" disrespected by Grady officials because he learned about the proposal through the media, not hospital officials.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the planned closings in a May 14 article in which Young said the move could save the financially struggling hospital $1.5 million.

The hospital has also canceled plans to shut down the Lindbergh Women and Children's Center, located on Buford Highway in Atlanta. Many of its low-income patients complained they don't have the transportation to go elsewhere. The center was to close this fall.

The Center Hill Health Center in west Atlanta, a small clinic that had only one doctor and saw about eight patients a day, was shut down in July.

Grady has a total of eight neighborhood health centers in Fulton and DeKalb counties, none of which turn a profit due to their high amount of charity care. Young, the hospital CEO, said patients complain that some clinics are incomplete. People often must go to one clinic for a diagnosis, elsewhere to get an X-ray and then to the main hospital to pick up medicine.

The new centers will combine numerous services and even include some specialty areas for services such as cardiovascular, orthopedic and obstetrical care, officials said.

"We're trying to break out of the class-warfare delivery of health care -- where the rich go to glass buildings and the poor go to dilapidated clinics," Young said.

The creation of the clinics will be helped by a $1 million donation from a company, the name of which Grady expects to announce shortly. Money may also come from the $200 million the Woodruff Foundation pledged for capital improvements in 2008. Grady officials expect the combined price tag for the centers to be below $5 million.

Grady officials are scouting for sites for the super centers in southeast DeKalb and south Fulton, which they hope to open around midyear. The new north Fulton site will be a merging of  services provided by Grady and the Fulton County Health Department in a facility that could open early next year.

In addition, the DeKalb Grady health center in the Kirkwood section of Atlanta will be relocated into a new, larger facility nearby, but no fixed date has been set for that center to open.