Just a Minute!

Pre-existing condition robs hospital board of its senses (9/30/09)

    If institutional insensitivity sticks in your craw, don’t seek treatment at Valley Medical Center.

     This is not to say Valley Medical handles craw blockage poorly. It may well be the craw-daddy of health care.

     But when you realize the hospital’s own CEO, Richard Roodman, collected a $1.7 million retirement payment without having to retire, you’re likely to relapse. (Roodman also made $900,000 in regular compensation in 2008.)

     The hospital board of commissioners approved the payout several years ago as an incentive to keep Roodman from retiring or taking a job elsewhere. He became eligible to collect it after turning 60.

     It seems the board likes Roodman, even though he was fined $195,000 in 2007 for using taxpayer money to persuade voters to approve two ballot measures. (The hospital’s insurer paid the fine.)

     As a county hospital, Valley Medical gets about $18.5 million a year in taxpayer funds. At a time when King County is looking behind sofa cushions for spare change, this largess by a board that’s clearly out of touch fails the smell test. According to the Seattle Times, a draft audit by the state says as much.

     Moreover, it smacks of the same corporate hardheartedness that put our economy into intensive care in the first place.

John Levesque is a former editor and columnist at the Seattle P-I.