By Stephanie Samuel

Sentinel Staff Writer

Maryland and Prince George's County appointed and confirmed the seven-member hospital authority to secure bidders to take over the ailing Prince George's County four-facility hospital system from Dimension Healthcare Systems Friday.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson and members of the Prince George's County Council and the Maryland General Assembly gathered at the Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly to name the appointees.

O'Malley's appointment picks were Joseph Wright, executive director of the Child Health Advocacy Institute at Children National Medical Center and a George Washington University professor, Karen Johnson Shaheed, vice president and general counsel for Bowie State University, Andrea Leahy Fuchek, associate Prince George's County attorney and a former assistant U.S. attorney and Donald Wilson, director of University of Maryland School of Medicine program in Minority and Health Disparities Education and Research. The remaining three board members appointed by the county, are Kenneth Glover, senior vice president of PNC Bank, Thomas Himler, previous director of the Prince George's County Office of Management and Budget and Largo attorney Stanley Brown.

Maryland House Speaker Del. Michael Busch (D-Dist. 30) praised the confirmations, saying that it was an important step in the right direction.

"This hospital has been hemorrhaging for a long time. This is the first time the government and state have stepped up and said we're not going to the municipalities go it alone," Brown said. Johnson noted the county and state partnership and added that the county will also be working together on fixing the system. "We, the council and I, have decided that we will work together as a team," he said.

The promise of partnership is an important one since the next step in the process to finding a new health care system is agreeing on the money to be given to the authority from both the state and the county. County Council Chairman Samuel Dean (D-Dist. 6) said the council has allocated $24 million to give to the system, $12 million from the county's fiscal year 2009 budget and another $12 million to come in the FY10 budget. There has not been any decision made as to how much the state will give. Another issue to be resolved is the rights to the land.

Dimensions board president Bill Williams praised the state and county's authority members. Williams also said he hopes that the board would select a university system to take over the county's hospitals.

"The best thing would be to find an institute that is university based," Williams said. Prince George's Hospital Center's lead Neurosurgeon Najmaldin Karin agrees. He believes that having a teaching program would make a way for new technology and open up residency programs.

"When you have residency programs, you have residents on site to take care of a lot of specialties," Karin said that residency programs existed in the hospitals as recent as 20 years ago but have since disappeared. He said that selecting a university-based hospital system would bring back those residency programs.

Dean said the county would be in favor of a university hospital system.

"We're looking for a hospital system to come and turn the hospital [around], to rebrand the system ... a teaching hospital would offer cutting edge technology," he said. However Dean said that Ascensions, a Catholic hospital system rumored to be negotiating with the county, would likely not be among the bids considered.

No matter what decision the authority decides, it will likely be a tough decision. The newly appointed authority members are already bracing themselves for an arduous process.

"This stuff is not an easy political decision," Glover, chairman of the newly appointed authority, said of the authority's upcoming task of deciding a new management system for the county healthcare system. Glover displayed his grit saying, "I'm not taking this on to fail," and citing the county's recent bond rating as the agenda setter for the whole process.

"We are a triple A community, we are a triple A state and we need a triple A health care system," he said.

Contact Stephanie Samuel at

ssamuel@thesentinel.com