Friday, August 15, 2008

So, today the LA Times has a story about alleged recurrent fraudulent hospitalization at City of Angels Hospital. There are two doctors listed in that story as being linked to alleged fraudulent hospitalization: Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam, and Dr. Frederick H. Rundall. There is one Dr. Sabaratnam listed on the California medical board web site; that Dr. Sabaratnam went to medical school in Ceylon. I couldn't find out more about Dr. Sabaratnam.

As for Dr. Frederick H. Rundall: he graduated from the University of California, Irvine. One of my experiences during my University of California, Irvine internship is, I believe, relevant to the question of where Dr. Rundall may have learned about the propriety of hospitalizing people who may not actually need hospitalization.

There was a related story about fraudulent hospitalizations at other hospitals in the LA Times last week: 3 Southern California hospitals accused of using homeless for fraud. The only person, other than Drs. Sabaratnam and Rundall identified as a physician in that story, and about whom I could find out anything with a quick web search, was Dr. Kenneth Thaler. Dr. Thaler has also been linked to alleged fraudulent hospitalization. Based on a web search, Dr. Thaler apparently did his residency at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center.

There it is again: the University of California (UCLA is the University of California branch of Los Angeles). Based on what I know about UCLA (see previous posts), I believe that it's clear that Dr. Thaler may have learned poor medical ethics from the Harbor UCLA medical center.

Just another pair of data points.

Monday, August 11, 2008

That ...
IS ....
GEORGIA!


The title of this post should say it all, but I'm not quite as laconic as some of my forebears. Therefore, I'll make it more clear. Georgia, a democratic, peaceful republic has been invaded, and it's people slaughtered, by forces seeking to recreate what previous generations referred to as the evil empire. What we of the West do in response, will guide the flow of history. I pray that we fight the Evil Empire and that we are victorious.

That's about as laconic as I can get.