In January, Mayor Mike Summers announced the Cleveland Clinic’s plan to close and demolish the hospital and open a family health center on the site. Since then, the city has grown divided over the future of the hospital — and over a perceived lack of public accounting for the Clinic’s past actions.
Amid the discovery process in a civil lawsuit filed by five Lakewood residents (Case No. CV-15-846212 in Cuyahoga County court), documents have been made public that outline a “master plan” to “decant” services from Lakewood Hospital to other, wholly owned Clinic sites (like nearby Fairview Hospital).
“Based on documentation only recently produced through the lawsuit, from 2007 to 2012 the Clinic and its steering committee shockingly plotted a secret plan, which, if implemented, would dismantle and demolish the same Lakewood Hospital,” Kucinich said.
Councilman Tom Bullock, a member of the Lakewood Hospital Association and the most outspoken city representative in the past eight months, insisted that Kucinich’s remarks were based on inaccurate readings of the court documents. “Kucinich has no credibility on this issue. He’s absolutely wrong about the facts on Lakewood Hospital,” Bullock said.
When asked if he knew of anything revealed in the court documents to be false, Bullock replied that he did not. “I don’t think that the court document is what’s relevant here,” he said. “Every single bit of evidence that Mr. Kucinich raised today we are considering. I’m sorry to say that his interpretation is inaccurate.”
City Council has the final say on any deal to close or alter Lakewood Hospital as an in-patient facility. Five votes are required, and, to date, council has been unable to meet that threshold. Three of the seven council members are known to be openly questioning the Clinic proposal.
The press conference came three days after a motion was filed in court urging an emergency order to compel the Clinic to produce more documents pertaining to the decanting process. The motion discusses a long-running and alleged cover-up on the part of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and the Lakewood Hospital Association, one which involves concealing records that are germane to the “master plan” timeline (i.e. were Clinic officials secretly plotting the dismantling of Lakewood Hospital even as they assured City Council of the hospital’s long-term viability?).
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2015.
See more UFOs Dennis? He fits in perfectly with the SLH group. How did saving St. Michael Hospital go for you Dennis?
Kucinich is a showman who can draw the attention of national media members for a couple news-cycles. But his track record is about as “impressive” as Nick Saban’s versus Ole Miss over the past two college football seasons when hopping into community issues after concerned citizens toiled away to develop sincere and pointed talking points……before the air got sucked out of the room.
Sad that the Mayor and most of the City Councilmen have become puppets for the Clinic in this mess.
They should be defending the City at all costs and instead they read condescending statements (likely prepared by the Clinic) at a rally of their own concerned citizens. Councilman Bullock: how are we misinterpreting the document? By taking it at face value? Please advise us on how we should interpret a plan produced by the Clinic that clearly shows a deceptive agenda to move long-standing profitable services and patients from Lakewood Hospital to the Clinic’s hospitals in Fairview and Avon so that the Clinic would have economical justification to shut down LH and break their lease with the City?
The barbarians that you represent in Lakewood are obviously too stupid to make sense of such sophistication. Please help us…
I hope you were promised some great position at the Clinic after this is all said and done as it looks like you’re more than willing to go down with this ship.