ATLANTA — Democratic Georgia legislators, regional authorities and the NAACP are asking federal authorities to examine a health care system that closed medicalfacilities in downtown Atlanta and a southern suburbanarea, declaring Wellstar Health System has unlawfully discriminated versus Black individuals and broke its tax-exempt status.
State Sen. Nan Orrock, an Atlanta Democrat, stated Wednesday that she and others submitted problems Tuesday with the IRS and the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“WellStar must be held to account,” Orrock stated at a news conference at the Georgia Capitol. “Wellstar needto be needed to repairwork the damage that it’s triggered to this long-established system of care for the people previously served by these centers.”
Based in rural Marietta, Wellstar last November closed the 450-bed Atlanta Medical Center, a essential health care supplier for numerous low-income locals, simply months after closing the smallersized Atlanta Medical Center South in East Point. Wellstar had ran both healthcenters consideringthat 2016 after purchasing them and others from for-profit operator Tenet Healthcare Corp.
An e-mail lookingfor remark was sentout to a representative for Wellstar. When the system closed the healthcarefacilities, it stated it had invested more than $350 million to cover losses and make enhancements at Atlanta Medical Center, losing $100 million in the year priorto closing. Wellstar stated then that it attempted and stopworking to discover federalgovernments or others to assistance with sustainable services.
But regional authorities, consistingof Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, madly responded that Wellstar provided them no notification or opportunity to assistance. State and county authorities pumped cash into Grady Memorial Hospital — a openly owned security web healthcenter obstructs away from Atlanta Medical Center — to shot to take up the slack. The medical center’s closure indicated the loss of the city’s just other emergencysituation space besides Grady