Louisville Magazine

FEB 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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C The Story That Almost Didn't Break By Jenni Laidman In hindsight, the reasons the merger between Catholic Health Initiatives-owned hospitals and University Hospital was denied are fundamental and obvious, but it almost didn't work out that way. Here's the story of how a cloudy business deal was, belatedly, exposed to public scrutiny. hefs in tall white toques sculpted elegant finger food. A string quar- tet played a sprightly version of "Stairway to Heaven," and a who's who of Louisville turned out in black tie — or at least nice suits — to celebrate the opening of the Yum! Center in October 2010. Among the guests were Jessica Loving and her hus- band, Frost Brown Todd attorney Sheryl Sny- der. But what Loving remembers today is not the food or the music or even what she was wearing. What she recalls is a conversation she had with University of Louisville School of Medicine dean Dr. Edward Halperin. As revelers scouted the city's new airy bas- ketball palace, Halperin repeated the assur- ance he had made to Loving before — an assurance she had heard in previous months from U of L president James Ramsey and Dr. Larry Cook, then the school's vice president for health sciences. Halperin told her that nothing in the proposed merger between University Hospital and the giant Catholic Health Initiatives organization would affect patient care. Neither reproductive care, nor end-of-life decisions, nor any other medical treatment would change because of the Cath- olic view of health care. "He said very clearly that he would never allow any kind of merger situation where University Hospital's delivery of medical care would be compromised," Loving says now. "Tey would provide medical care exactly as they always had." Loving, who served 13 years on the U of L Board of Trustees until 2009, was not the only one asking questions. Among some at University Hospital and the U of L School of Medicine, concern about the merger grew daily. "I was getting calls from doctors who thought I was still on the board," Loving says. "How could you do this?" they asked her. "Why don't you do something?" Worry was particularly high among doctors who still remembered what some called the "Vatican Bypass" — the regular necessity to wheel pa- tients across a pedway from the old St. An- thony Hospital to Highland Baptist Hospital on Barret Avenue when a woman needed a procedure Catholic strictures forbade. "Tere was a lot of talk — Louisville's a small town in some ways — and I was in the middle of that talk," says Loving. A [54] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.12 pparently the town was not quite small enough. Closed out of any discussion of potential conflicts was the city's media. In fact, a year would pass between the first public announcement of the merger in June 2010 and any story examining what a mar- riage between a Catholic concern and Uni- versity Hospital might mean.

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