Friends of Washington Hospital, the PAC formed by Fremont Bank exec Mike Wallace, which sent out that negative campaign flier reported $14,895 in contributions.

Wallace, who is also chairman of the hospital board was the biggest contributor, donating $2,500 to the committee. Other well-known contributors are as follows:

Fremont Council Candidate Sue Chan - $250
Her husband Steve Chan - $250
Hospital Board Member Bernard Stuart - $1,000
Former Hospital Board Member Don Amsbaugh - $250
John and Bernadine Dutra - $500
The wife of fomer Union City Mayor Tom Kitayama, Heidi Kitayama - $100
Washington Hospital CEO Nany Farber and her Husband Peter Szekrenyi - $250
Kristi Yamaguchi’s parents Jim & Carol Yamaguchi - $250
Developer Jack Balch - $400
Several doctors at the hospitals also donated.

For context regarding some of the recent comments about Washington Hospital, here is the  mailer that the political action committee, Friends of Washington Hospital, sent out about the two challengers running for the hospital board. Click on it to enlarge it.

As mentioned here previously, the PAC was set up by Mike Wallace who is both the chairman of the hospital board of directors and the vice-chairman of Fremont Bank.

Wallace, who isn’t up for re-election to the hospital board, said he decided to look into Johal’s background after Hospital CEO Nancy Farber showed pictures of Johal at a rally that she and Wallace think was intended to promote Li’s movie “Life for Sale,” but was organized by a member of the California Nurses Association.

There is zero evidence that Johal has anything to do with Li or her movie. Nevertheless, some hospital board members have speculated that the two challengers are actually aligned.

“If (Johal) was an independent person, why does he want to take the same side as Evelyn Li,” Wallace said. “Every point where he has been asked to give his opinion about the movie, he’s been reluctant to disclaim it even through the physicians who were in it said they were duped.”

Fremont Bank does do business with Washington Hospital. The hospital’s spokesman didn’t know how much money it has there. I’ll ask again.

I haven’t had a chance yet to review the PACs contribution disclosure forms, which became available to the  public today. Wallace said the group has raised between $17,000 and $20,000, and that most of the contributions haven’t come from Fremont Bank employees.

Wallace sees nothing wrong with using the bank’s address as the official address of Friends of Washington Hospital. I asked Hattie Hughes, the daughter of the bank’s founder, Morris Hyman, what she thought about a partisan group using the same address as her dad’s bank. She said her dad loved the hospital and that the person to speak to was Wallace.

I’ve written a lot about Washington Hospital CEO Nancy Farber showing pictures of board candidates Ravi Johal and Evelyn Li at an Aug. 25 rally outside the hospital. Farber told the hospital board that the rally was to support Li’s movie, “Life for Sale,” even though it was organized by a member of the California Nurses Association to protest nurse staffing levels.

I was at the rally for about an hour. Here’s what I wrote about it then, and what follows is a bit of a chronology of events from my end.

I was informed of the rally the previous week by CNA State Board Director Robert Marth. On the morning of the rally, at about 7 a.m., Evelyn Li left me a voicemail telling me about it as well. I was busy getting ready to interview City Council Candidate Linda Susoev at a Jack in the Box on Fremont Boulevard.

I spoke to two CNA representatives at the rally, Marth and Tim Jenkins.

There were no full-time Washington nurses at the rally when I was there. I spoke to a part-timer and a former Washington Hospital nurse.

The two CNA representatives clearly had concerns about the hospital. Jenkins compared the administration to the mafia. Marth, in a later phone interview, likened it to the Nazis.

I did see Li there, along with several people holding up signs for her movie. I didn’t see Johal there.

Johal said he stopped by for about 15 minutes, and that he wanted to show support for the nurses.

Marth said that Johal came to the rally to see him, not Li, who, he said, showed up unannounced. “I organized it for the nurses,” Marth said.

Ravi Johal and I have more in common than the same date of birth. We both worked as sate Assembly interns during our undergraduate years for politicians who have had some recent PR problems. Johal ended up with the future Minuteman Bill Morrow, he said, because most of the other internship openings in Sacramento had been filled.

I was assigned to Hon. Anthony Seminerio, a former corrections officer from Queens. Tony will always have a special place in my heart as the man who signed an Assembly proclamation honoring my childhood cat, Tika, on her 12th birthday.

May 1, 1996 was Tika Artz Day in New York State. They told me it was official, just like the proclamation Tony signed for his favorite Italian restaurant. I framed Tika’s proclamation and brought it with me to California. It’s still on my wall.

Tony is still in the Assembly, but things aren’t going his way. Last month, he was indicted in an alleged fraud scheme. I guess Johal would face more negatve mailers if he had ended up working for him.

The race for Washington Hospital Board of Trustees has gotten a little testy. Evelyn Li, who made a movie critical of the hospital and Ravi Johal, a lawyer not affiliated with Li, are challenging incumbents Pat Danielson and Bill Nicholson.

First, Hospital CEO Nancy Farber stepped into district politics during a September board meeting. She showed photographstaken by hospital security cameras of Johal talking with protesters outside the hospital during a rally staged by a CNA representative. She said the rally was really Li’s, insinuating that  the two challengers are somehow allied.

Then, Board Chair Mike Wallace has sent out a fundraising letter for the two incumbents, in which he saysthat Johal has indirect Minutemen ties and notes that he defends “sex offenders, drug violators and white collar criminals.”

Johal isn’t pleased. He thinks Farber crossed the line in showing the photographs during the board meeting which he attended. He also wonders why Wallace, who happens to be vice chairman of Fremont Bank, is getting so active in the race.

“Makes you wonder, is there something they’re trying to hide?” Johal said. “It seems they use the full weight of everything they have to stifle a candidacy.” He also said that he has received the nurses’ union endorsement, even though the letter says otherwise.

As for the Minuteman reference, Johal was an intern for Assemblyman Bill Morrow, R-Carlsbad, who years later joined the Minutemen. Johal, who comes from an immigrant family, said Morrow was one of the few state legislators who had an opening back when he was an undergraduate.

To read the entire letter from Mike Wallace, click where it says to click

Read the rest of this entry »

I hope this doesn’t use too much memory. Lawyers for Washington Hospital sent this letter to Cinemark Theatres in San Jose advising them not to show the movie Life for Sale, which accuses Washington of several misdeeds.

An employee for The Orb, which produced the film told me Cinemark backed out of showing the film after receiving the letter. Washington is a public hospital, which, I think means, taxpayers pay for its legal bills. I didn’t include the second page of the letter. There wasn’t much there to justify the technical complexities.

Dr. Evelyn Li is having a busy year. The Fremont cardiologist is running for the Washington Hospital Board of Directors and promoting a movie released earlier this year that accuses Washington Hospital (and others) of releasing patients who are too sick to go home and retaliating against doctors who stand up to hospital administration.

The hospital says the movie is bunch of bunk.

The Argus was was the only local mainstream paper to write about her movie, and the aftermath, but today Li held a press conference in Oakland with eight patients (not all from Washington) who say they received poor treatment from hospitals.

Li said that Channel 2, CNN and a major Bay Area paper were all there. The Argus was not, nor were our sister papers. I’ll be tuning in tonight and reading tomorrow to see if anything came of it.

Just heard from a good source that Washington Hospital doctors voted  today not to recall Dr. Bhupinder Bhandari as Chief Elect of Medical Staff. A petition was circulated for his recall after it was learned that he was interviewed in the documentary “Life for Sale.”

There’s still fallout at Washington Hospital from Evelyn Li’s film, “Life For Sale”. Doctors have started a recall petition against Dr. Bhupinder Bhandari, who they had elected elected to become Chief of Medical Staff next year, several people at the hospital tell me.

Bhandari was one of three Washington doctors to be interviewed in Li’s documentary. Bhandari’s comments were very vanilla and didn’t specifically refer to Washington Hospital, but the hospital is furious over the film, which it says has no merit.

How mad are they? Well at last week’s board meeting, elected trustees clapped when one doctor urged the board to respond “severely, quickly and expeditiously,” against the doctors who participated in the film.

Later, Hospital CEO Nancy Farber read aloud a petition signed by 276 nurses proclaiming they no longer wanted to work with the doctors and asking the hospital to take action against them.

And, in an even more unusual move, Farber showed security photographs taken of a rally outside the hospital last month and pointed out two doctors who stood with protesters as well as a candidate for the board, Ravi Johal. Her argument was that the protest wasn’t organized by nurses, as was billed, but by Li and supporters of her movie.

Bhandari, who spoke at the meeting, apologized for his participation in the film.

I’ve only been doing this crap for six years, but I’ve never seen anything like that at a board meeting. CEOs of public entities do not usually read aloud calls to essentially fire staff. They also don’t usually show security photographs of a peaceful protest and point out that an employee and a candidate for the board were in attendance. I’ve never seen that happen, and I never thought I would. It was truly bizarre.

I stayed late at work today to blog the League of Women Voters candidate forum for Washington Hospital. This was supposed to be a live blogging exercise, but I had some technical and gastric difficulties — and I took a quick peek at the Cowboys-Eagles game — so instead this is a wrap up.

Quick background, the race got more interesting when one of the candidates, Dr. Evelyn Li, spearheaded a movie that is very critical of the hospital. And last week, Washington CEO Nancy Farber showed the board of trustees security photos taken at a rally outside the hospital last month, which both Li and the other challenger Ravi Johal attended.

The two incumbents, Pat Danielson and Bill Nicholson, support the hospital administration in the face of the movie and didn’t exactly rush to defend Johal when Farber insinuated that he had a link to Li by saying he was at the same rally as her. Drama.

I’m leaving out a few questions and giving partial reactions to questions about Medicare reimbursements and concerns about the hospital not providing flu shots one year. Sorry, but I’m doing this on my own time/dime.

Opening statements:

Pat Danielson: You are Washington Hospital and so is she. She mentions the hospital’s “Patient-first ethic.” That is the hospital’s motto. If last week’s board meeting is any indication, board members and administrators use it with the same frequency that teenagers say “like” and “you know,” and Elmer Fudd says “wascally wabbit.”

Bill Nicholson: Touts experience. He was first elected in 1998. He’s a cardiologist who practices at the hospital, and his wife practices there too. Says he provides strong steady leadership.

Ravi Johal: He’s a lawyer, and possibly a well-connected one, because he’s just rattled off a long list of endorsements, including ones from John Dutra, Alberto Torrico, and at least 4/5ths of the Fremont City Council.

Let’s fast-forward to the movie, “Life for Sale.” Evelyn Li didn’t show up for the debate.

Johal: He didn’t take a stand on it. Says there are two sides to every story and the community should be left to decide the merit of Li’s allegations.

Danielson: She didn’t see it, but she was educated about it at the recent board meeting, which btw, I watched on tape. She says no one should be afraid to go to Washington for treatment.

Nicholson: He mentions the patient-first ethic. The movie is an “outrageous attack on nurses and doctors of Washington Hospital,” he said. He said it’s incorrect on almost every count.

Fast Foward again: Is CEO Nancy Farber’s $580 + bonus annual salary justified?

Nicholson: He said that people in health care are paid well and that the board’s policy is that Farber should be in the 65th percentile of CEO’s in her peer group. He’s comfortable that that is the case.

Johal: He hedges: Farber’s salary, “bothers the community to some extent and it doesn’t bother the community to some extent,” he said. Johal says he will hold everybody accountable.

Danielson: Big defense of Farber. “She is worth every single penny she earns, and the board supports her entirely.” Read the rest of this entry »