As I write this post, the Great Lakes Health system is conducting a private retreat at the Hyatt Regency downtown. The event is closed to the public and press. The retreat follows a half-hour “open meeting” conducted by GLH board chair Robert Gioia, and board members Edward Walsh, Jr., Sharon L. Hanson, and Kevin E. Cichocki, D.C.. At the end of the brief presentation (click here for the outline), the two reporters present were told to leave. Below are screen shots of the various “breakout” meetings taking place in private.

	And let’s not forget lunch…

Wonder what’s on the menu?

When you visit the Great Lakes Health Web site and read that they are “unveiling a bold new healthcare delivery system for Western New York,” what they really mean, obviously, is that they are “unveiling” it to one another, behind closed doors.

The Western New York public will then have the opportunity to live, and die, with their decisions.

On April Fool’s Day we filed a FOIL request with Great Lakes Health System of Western New York, the entity formerly known as Newco, that was created by the Berger Commission to consolidate private not for profit Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center, a public benefit corporation.

Last Wednesday (May 20), we received some of the documents we requested on a disk. This was a gracious gesture, since at 25 cents a page, we would have had to pay over $30 for hard copies of the legal bills paid by Western New York Health System (WNYHS) and Kaleida Health to the law firm Garfunkel, Wild & Travis, P.C., of Great Neck, Long Island from November 1, 2007 through April 1, 2009. Click here to see all 128 pages of legal bills.

It appears the firm took in close to $400,000 handling various legal matters for the new entity, including around $165,000 representing Great Lakes Health in the Reese v. Daines case, which was brought seeking openness to board meetings and records for the press and public after Freedom of Information requests had been denied to this newspaper.

That’s the case they lost on September 12, 2008, when Hon Patrick H. NeMoyer ruled that WNYHS must “adhere to the requirements of the Open Meetings Law until such time as the hospital merger is completed and ECMCC is dissolved as a public benefit corporation.”

Rather than accept that ruling and abide by the law, the entity now known as Great Lakes Health decided to battle on in the courts, in the interest of darkness and secrecy, and wound up losing that too, unanimously, in the Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the State of New York in Rochester on May 1, 2009.

The only thing they got from the appeal was a reversal of Judge NeMoyer’s ruling that awarded attorney’s fees to Peter A. Reese, who argued the case against WNYHS. Had they simply paid Reese’s bill, it would have saved them a lot of money, judging by the $480/hour Garfunkel, Wild & Travis attorney Leonard M. Rosenberg charged them, for example.

If you download the pdf available above, check out invoice number 197668 dated January 31, 2009. Rosenberg made almost $15,000 for thirty hours of work that was laughed out of court. Lower members of the firm brought that one bill to $24,160.21. That amount is typical of the sums paid on a monthly basis to a law firm located on Long Island by the group that claims it is “unveiling a bold, new model of healthcare delivery for Western New York.”

Isn’t it also nice to hear that partner Robert Andrew Wild was named Board Chair for United Way of Long Island according to the law firm’s Web site? I wonder how much he donated to the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County, after sucking so much money from the area in a failed attempt to keep the residents of our region completely in the dark about the future of our health care.

Meanwhile the matter of Reese v. Daines is headed for the textbooks. An updated civil practice law book published by Matthew Bender & Co., will be covering the successful Article 78 petition, so all New York State attorneys can learn from the case. Even the high priced ones in Great Neck.

In the interest of transparency and openness, here’s the press release that arrived in my email at 11:30am this morning. I requested it after hearing Tom Quatroche, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Planning for ECMC mention tomorrow’s “community forum” at the end of the Erie County Legislature Health and Human Services Committee meeting this morning.

Artvoice wasn’t included on the mailing list to receive this important community info that apparently went out last Thursday, May 7.

GREAT LAKES HEALTH TO HOLD COMMUNITY FORUM ON MAY 12TH

BUFFALO, N.Y. (May 7, 2009) – Great Lakes Health System of Western New York will hold a community forum on May 12, 2009, at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.

The forum will address the topic, “What will the future look like for healthcare in Western New York?  The area’s largest healthcare network has the answer for you.”

Participants in this forum will include: James Kaskie, President/CEO, Great Lakes Health and Kaleida Health; Jody Lomeo, CEO, ECMC Corporation and Vice-chair of the Board for Great Lakes Health; plus various members of the Great Lakes Health Board.

The forum will be held on Tuesday, May 12, 2009, at 6:00 P.M., in the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Auditorium at the corner of Clinton and Ellicott Streets.

Community residents wishing to attend are asked to RSVP by calling 716-898-4823.  Those individuals who are not able to attend this event, but wish to have a representative speak with their group should call 716-898-4823 to make other arrangements.

###

According to Quatroche, the information was transmitted to the public through advertisements taken out in the Buffalo Criterion and the Buffalo Challenger, as advised by the Great Lakes Health Strategic Planning Committee. Committee members include Great Lakes Health board members Kevin Cichocki, Brenda McDuffie, Mary Gresham, Sundra Rice, Irene Snow, and Hon. James A.W. McLeod.

Isn’t it nice that public hospital ECMC had to pay 40% of the cost to run these ads that were targeted to these two publications?

Evidently, a meeting about the Erie County Medical Center, which is still a public benefit corporation set up to care for all residents of New York State regardless of their ability to pay is not of sufficient importance to merit an ad in Artvoice, much less the Buffalo News. Heck, we didn’t even get sent the press release in a timely fashion, and would not have received it had we not asked for it.

But you don’t have to read the Criterion, the Challenger, or Artvoice, for that matter, to attend this public forum. You just have to be among the priviledged few who happen to find out it’s taking place.

Sorry for the short notice, but it appears there will in fact be a Great Lakes Health Board of Directors meeting at WNED studios tomorrow, December 10, at 8:30am.

I learned this yesterday from Betsy Baumler, James Kaskie’s secretary. Kaskie is the President and CEO of both Great Lakes Health and also Kaleida Health—both entities are located at 100 High Street.

The Open Meetings Law says, “Public notice of the time and place of a meeting scheduled at least one week prior thereto shall be given to the news media and shall be conspicuously posted in one or more designated public locations at least seventy-two hours before such meeting.” I asked her why we didn’t get a notice of the meeting here at Artvoice. She asked if I would like to receive a notice. I told her it would be nice, being a member of the media, and all. She asked for my fax number and I gave it to her. Now here it is after 5pm, some 15 hours before a public meeting, and still no invite in our fax machine at Artvoice. Was it something I said?

Figuring that might happen, I called the downtown library and spoke to Linda Bohen, the person to whom Baumler told me she’d sent the meeting notice last Thursday. Bohen forwarded the email to me, in which Baumler writes: “Could you replace the posting sent to you yesterday from Pat Grasha at ECMC with the attached?  The lawyers have added a paragraph to the bottom.”

You can read the notice, including the additional paragraph at the bottom by clicking here. As you can see, this open meeting will differ from most open meetings in that much of it will be conducted in either closed session or executive session. So much for transparency.

Last Friday, I asked Baumler about all the meetings of the committees within what was then Western New York Health System, or NewCo, and is now known as Great Lakes Health System of Western New York, Inc. I did so since, after all, the Open Meetings Law says, “‘Public body’ means any entity, for which a quorum is required in order to conduct public business and which consists of two or more members, performing a governmental function for the state or for an agency or department thereof, of for a public corporation as defined in section sixty-six of the general construction law, or committee or subcommittee or other similar body of such public body.”

She said she’d check with their lawyers, to see if she could divulge the dates those meetings took place. She didn’t call back, so I called her yesterday. She said she was about to go into a conference call with counsel and would call me back. She didn’t. At 4:50pm I called her back, and she said that counsel said I would have to file a FOIL request to find out when those meetings had taken place.

I told her I just wanted the dates so I could be more specific when I submitted my FOIL request. She said she couldn’t tell me. “OK, but you’ve told me there are four committees. Can you tell me what those four committees are called, so I could include that in my FOIL request?” No. “You’ll have to file a FOIL requesting that information.” She also said I should call the Great Lakes lawyers and ask them. Right.

In the interest of providing you some disclosure, I could post the redacted Newco meeting minutes provided to me by their lawyers (Mr. Wild) in late November.

But to save time, you can click here and read the meeting minutes provided to me by ECMC many months ago. In this document, I went through and highlighted all the crucial elements that the Great Lakes lawyers down in Great Neck, NY, chose to white-out, feeling the people of Western New York have no right to know.