OSF's Keith Steffen and Long Waits in the Emergency Department

In today's Journal Star there is an article on long waits in the nation's emergency rooms.

Dr. Nick Jouriles, emergency medicine chief at Akron General Hospital in Ohio was quoted in the article:

"The longer people stay in the emergency department, the more likely they're going to have complications, deaths. If they are elderly, they're more likely to end up in the nursing home."

In 2001 I wrote Keith Steffen, CEO at OSF-SFMC in Peoria this letter.

The next day I was put on probation for six months and Keith referred to me as "a malignancy in the emergency department."

I think OSF-SFMC was keeping the hospital full of elective surgical cases to the detriment of my Emergency Room patients.

A few months later Mr. Streffen fired me, and in July, 2002 he cut all OSF funding of Haitian Hearts patients.