Allegheny

The Allegheny health system beefed up its legal defense team yesterday in response to a broad government investigation that now includes a criminal probe. Allegheny asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Bruce McCullough to widen the scope of responsibilities and the doubling to $500,000 the retainer paid to the law firm of Hahn Loeser & Parks. McCullough must approve such moves and expenditures since the Pittsburgh-based health system filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 21, listing $1.3 billion in debts.

The Allegheny crisis is a vivid example of the seismic shifts in Greater Philadelphia's health-care economy that the Pennsylvania Economy League warned about nearly 2 1/2 years ago. Nothing that has happened since the report's release - including the proposed acquisition of Allegheny's hospitals - has changed the fundamentals of the situation. Allegheny's plight is symptomatic of major stress in the entire hospital industry. In 1996, the largest regional hospitals sustained an operating loss of $222 million dollars, and only 13 of 51 didn't lose money on an operating basis.

Vince Mariniello is one of 80,000 creditors who will be lucky to get 15 percent of the $200,000 he is owed by the bankrupt Allegheny health system for floors installed by his Grays Ferry company. As Daily News writer Don Russell reported last week, Mariniello also is an Allegheny creditor of another sort. He is a member of the Variety Club, which raised $1.5 million for the pediatric wing at Hahnemann Hospital - which now, like the other Allegheny institutions in this area, becomes part of Tenet, a for-profit chain.

Pennsylvania's attorney general last week filed the first criminal charges against the leaders of the defunct Allegheny health system, alleging that they misspent $52.4 million in restricted endowments, orchestrated illegal political contributions, and in one case gave away $50,000 in Allegheny funds for the renovation of a high school locker room. A grand jury in Pittsburgh brought felony theft and misdemeanor charges Wednesday against former chief executive Sherif S. Abdelhak, 54; former chief financial officer David McConnell, 45; and former legal counsel Nancy Wynstra, 58. All three face maximum sentences of 10 to 20 years.

Vanguard Health may be second-guessing its $460 million bid for the bankrupt Allegheny health system, prompting speculation that the Nashville company may lower its offer or drop out of the bidding, several sources said yesterday. Such a move heightens the uncertainty surrounding Allegheny's already shaky future, adding to the ripple effect that promises to roil the entire health-care system - the region's largest employer and economic generator. "I haven't heard from Vanguard in a long time," said Henry Nicholas, president of the Hospital and Healthcare Employees Union District 1199C.

Stephen Borland helped keep up Allegheny's mainframe computer before the health giant went bust five years ago, and he still keeps in touch with nearly two dozen former employees. His e-mail lighted up with emotional intensity last week when Allegheny health system's former CEO, Sherif S. Abdelhak, was sentenced to 11 1/2 to 23 months in a work-release facility for raiding $30 million in medical endowments. Only 11? months or less! This guy should be spending life in prison.

Whoa. The air of crisis surrounding Allegheny health system's huge financial problems should not turn into a panicked stampede to accept any Allegheny scheme to avoid bankruptcy. Rumors are swirling and employees are freaked out, but there are more options than the artificial either/or that has been set up: Either Allegheny is allowed to dump some or all of its nine Philadelphia hospitals to a for-profit bidder of its choosing, it is implied, or it will go bankrupt, which will in turn imperil its medical school since $100 million in federal funding would be jeopardized.

Just think of it as the Philadelphia region's Enron scandal. Before it collapsed into bankruptcy, the Allegheny health system was: Losing $1 million a day. Firing hundreds of workers. Raiding charitable endowments for millions of dollars. Covering its tracks with public relations spin and creative bookkeeping. From the looks of it, the Pittsburgh-based pirates who ran the nine-hospital system did everything but unfurl the skull and cross bones. The Allegheny collapse remains personal and painful for some folks around here - even as the mopping-up operation from the 1998 bankruptcy gathered steam this week.

Dr. Joel J. Roslyn, surgeon, teacher, devoted father and behind-the-scene Samaritan during the collapse of the Allegheny health system, died Sunday of melanoma at his East Falls home. He was 48. Dr. Roslyn was among the first of many young medical talents to be recruited by Allegheny, which in 1988 began expanding into the Philadelphia region from Pittsburgh. In 1992, he left the University of California at Los Angeles, where he had spent 15 years, to become chairman of surgery at the Medical College of Pennsylvania (MCP)

What Allegheny did here was a terrible thing. A billion and a half dollars run up in debt. Thousands of jobs put in jeopardy with both physicians and patients at risk. The entire face of health care in the region changed, irrevocably and not for the better. Without a strong manager, Allegheny's medical school may be forced to close. Now there are new allegations that some of the research and endowment money was used to pay operating expenses of the floundering Allegheny empire or used for other purposes entirely.

Before the game and after the second intermission Saturday, the volume of the music from La Salle's locker room rivaled that of IceWorks' public address system in Aston. La Salle, coming off its third straight Flyers Cup, was loose, confident, and expected to win its second straight Class AAA state ice hockey championship, even trailing by a goal entering the third period. Despite being outshot, 13-5, in the final period, North Allegheny pulled away for a 6-2 win. "There are an awful large number of seniors in there who had the opportunity to win a state championship last year," La Salle coach Walter Muehlbronner said.

This, Coatesville coach Matt Ortega realizes, is not the same North Allegheny team that captured state gold in 2010. That year, when they closed with a 21-0 blanking of La Salle, the Tigers used a smash-mouth approach on offense. Now, with a Division I-A recruit at quarterback, they run and pass equally well. "That's why they've had so much success this year," Ortega said. "They switch things up, run different personnel groups in there, and keep you guessing. " Coatesville, bidding for the program's first state title, will square off against District 7's North Allegheny, located outside Pittsburgh, in the PIAA Class AAAA final at 6 p.m. Saturday at Hersheypark Stadium.

County % of vote   Obama   Romney   Other    Adams 100   14,893   26,490   590    Allegheny 98   327,240   238,679   6,790    Armstrong 100   8,694   19,231   397    Beaver 100   36,833   42,118   1,064    Bedford 100   4,696   16,369   202    Berks 100   79,895   80,857   2,501    Blair 100   15,516   31,500   615    ...

Employees of Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania will soon be able to extend their health and dental benefits to a gay or lesbian partner. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has signed an executive order allowing county workers to enroll an eligible same-sex domestic partner in benefits starting Monday for coverage beginning April 1. Officials say the new policy makes the county the 187th municipality in the nation to extend health...

Allegheny College has cursed the darkness, with its researchers documenting in a series of polls the decline of civility in American politics and the risk that rising nastiness poses to self-government. Tuesday, the college plans to light a candle. Pundits David Brooks and Mark Shields are to receive the inaugural Allegheny College Prize for Civility in Public Life in Washington, honoring them for the elevated tone of their regular debates on PBS's NewsHour . "People talk so much in America about those who are not civil.

HARRISBURG - Republicans revamped their proposals for redrawing Pennsylvania's Senate districts while party leaders labored Thursday over what they hoped would be a bipartisan compromise in the House of Representatives. The special panel in charge of the decennial redistricting process is scheduled to vote Monday on a final plan encompassing both chambers. The most noticeable change in the Senate plan released late Wednesday by Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware) jettisons an earlier proposal for a Central Pennsylvania district that critics widely derided as a blatant example of gerrymandering.

The Allegheny County District Attorney has closed an inquiry into allegations of child sex abuse by priests who served under former Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua when he led the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the 1980s. District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. reviewed the cases and "determined that none of the allegations merited criminal prosecution," his spokesman, Mike Manko, said Friday. The decision dims one spotlight on the retired church leader as another is flaring across the state.

Juliann Sheldon, 21, of Plum Borough in Allegheny County, was named Miss Pennsylvania during the pageant Saturday night in Pittsburgh. Sheldon has attended Point Park University. She performed a jazz dance routine and spoke of raising mental-health awareness. She will represent the state at the Miss America Pageant in January in Las Vegas. - Inquirer staff

"Harlem" was never on the front of his jersey, but Lynard Stewart certainly trotted the globe during a 12-year professional basketball career. From China to Spain to the Czech Republic to Israel to England (twice) to Belgium. Now, he's back in Philly and yesterday he was named the head coach at a school that's maybe a 5-minute drive from where he was raised (Allegheny West). Not nearby Simon Gratz, where he starred to such an extent in 1994, his senior year, he was named the Daily News ' City Player of the Year.