You can almost see the nose of Robert Braithwaite, the CEO of Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, growing. After Hoag's board finalized a partnership with Catholic health group St. Joseph Health System, Braithwaite revealed via a letter to his doctors that they will no longer provide elective abortions, swearing the decision was made on medical and not religious grounds.
Uh, riiiiiiight …
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If the decision was truly medical, it certainly surprised Hoag medical practitioners. Gynecologists and obstetricians are expressing outrage over the policy change, saying they were led to believe the new affiliation with St. Joseph would not alter the nature of care they offer.
So here's Braithwaite's “medical” justification: Hoag performs fewer than 100 such abortions a year, and low volume can mean low quality of care.
That's good to know for anyone who suffers from a rare injury, disease or other malady. According to Hoag Memorial Hospital CEO Robert Braithwaite, his Hoag Memorial Hospital is incompetent when it comes to treating anything it does not treat often. Good to know where NOT to go in such instances (while also knowing where Braithwaite SHOULD go).
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.