Once Again, Pae Exposes Her Ignorance and Intellectual Dishonesty on the Hospital Fiasco

[Brian Essi]

Jenn Pae has had a long and distinguished career in public service performing competently in her area of expertise. However, in the last several months through her official statements and posts on social media she has exposed her ignorance and intellectual dishonesty on important matters concerning the hospital. Most recent examples are in posts she made on a goofy neighborhood blog.

Here are the facts:

1. The Master Agreement at Section 5.3 (pages 9-10), provides, in part, that “no Healthcare System Provider will permitted to operate or manage a health care facility or service, and no signage identifying such Health Care System Provider will be permitted on the Current Hospital Site without the Clinic’s prior written consent while the Clinic owns and operates the FHC.” Consequently, Mrs. Pae’s claim that the Master Agreement “only prohibits certain types of inpatient facilities” at the hospital site is blatantly false. The Master Agreement effectively prohibits EVERY system provider competitor of CFF from operating ANY medical facility or ANY medical service at the hospital site. It is hard to imagine someone as competent as Mrs. Pae does not understand this clear contract language, so it appears that she has chosen to proactively misrepresent the facts.

What's worse is the obvious: If the City failed to lift a finger to market the hospital as a going concern or as a medical facility while it was still operating as such unrestricted, why would Mrs. Pae and City leaders have us believe she and City leaders will make any effort to solicit medical users once it is gutted and empty and can only be marketed to independent physician groups?


2. Mrs. Pae’s comments also expose her contributory negligence that will cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars on the hospital debacle. In what is best described as her emotional fear in taking responsibility for public assets valued at $120M, she has alternately claimed that she and the City would be left to operate a hospital at great taxpayer expense or be left with a series of empty worthless buildings. Never mind that her fears in both regards were manufactured and highly unlikely straw-man scenarios and a blatant effort to shirk her public duties. She promoted a “deal” where: (1) a very marketable state of the art medical office building and surgical facility was sold at $2-$4M below market without any listing or advertisement for sale; (2) the so-called CCF “FHC Site” was transferred to CCF with a net expenditure of $3.4M in charitable/taxpayer dollars—a total bust for the City; (3) the City is left with a gutted empty single use facility that it is contractually prohibited from marketing for that single use and which is further encumbered by CCF’s right to occupy a portion of it for CCF’s parking needs; and (4) on top of all that about $70M in value has been gifted to CCF. All so that Pae and City Hall don’t have to take responsibility for fulfilling their duties to the residents who pay them.

3. In furtherance of her emotional obfuscation of her own failures and shirking of her public responsibilities, Mrs. took to making false statements about my wife and me---ascribing false motives on my part for opposing her and her bosses and their inane plan. My wife is a 4th generation physician who enjoys an excellent reputation. Her reputation and the legacy of her parents’ practices cannot be changed by the closing of Lakewood Hospital. In fact, my wife enjoys such a good reputation that she could not meet the demand for patients wishing see her, so she recently hired a Board Certified Dermatologist to meet her patients’ needs. My wife and her physician employee practice general dermatology and do all of their surgeries and procedures at their offices at 1991 Crocker Road, Westlake, Ohio (and always have). My wife told me that she has only been in the Columbia Road facility a handful of times—to take her late father to doctors’ appointments. So whatever happens at 850 Columbia has absolutely no impact on her medical practice nor does it have any financial impact on her or me for that matter. Likewise, the Master Agreement and the closing of Lakewood Hospital will result in no financial consequences or financial losses to my wife’s medical practice.

Consequently, Mrs. Pae’s claims that my wife is “an independent doctor who has a lot to lose in the master agreement between the City and CCF especially the potential loss of access to the outpatient surgical facilities at 850 Columbia Rd.” are complete fabrications. Her statements expose her ignorance of the medical field generally and general dermatology specifically--general dermatologist don't do surgeries outside of their own offices. So while Mrs. Pae may wish my wife is affected by the Master Agreement, unfortunately there are many independent physicians who actually have been and will be affected by it. So in an effort to smear me, Mrs. Pae has made an unwitting admission that the Master Agreement that she promoted and supports “threatens” and causes damage to independent physicians.

4. I would estimate that I have spent over 2,000 uncompensated hours on the hospital matter—I have no client nor do I represent any person or organization in my efforts in trying to protect the underserved and the potential victims of this looming disaster. If I had chosen to take on clients in legal matters during that time and charged my time at my usual $250 per hour rate, I could have billed nearly $500K for my time. So Mrs. Pae’s comments about me acting in “self-interest” are absurd and dare I say that she is being "mean spirited".

5. Despite Mrs. Pae's claim that I have somehow “spread false information in order to perpetuate [my] own self-interest” it seems from the clear language in Master Agreement and Mrs. Pae’s own words, that Mrs. Pae is spreading false information for her own self-interest and/or for her own political purposes all while enjoying the benefits of being on the public payroll. This is a more serious violation of public trust than simply pressing the EASY button. It appears to be an active public fraud with multiple bad actors acting in concert with Mrs. Pae.

[cameron karslake]

Brian,

I feel much the same way, that much of this is due to the "decision makers" (Pae et all) not wanting to do their job AND and making sure that they won't have to in the near future (while they are still "on the job"). I'm talking from the LHA on down...of course the CCF is all too willing to take advantage of that attitude! None of those involved had the cajones to try and deal with the problem (the CCF) and tell them to shape up or ship out! Hence, the people of Lakewood have been sold out!