Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

Sunday, February 21, 1999     Page: 3A

Prescription for mistrust
   
Recovering addicts and ex-offenders could be working anywhereOne-time
junkies pump gas, serve meals in restaurants or care for elderly people in
nursing homes. One-time criminals tend bar, teach college and head up
businesses small and large.
    These people could be doing almost anything.
   
More power to them.
   
After treatment, many former wrongdoers learn to function well within the
limits and laws of society. Communities must be willing to put some faith in
the prospects of people repairing their lives .
   
Wilkes-Barre boasts several local lawyers who have broken the law and/or
been addicted to drugs yet have resumed practice after fighting to re-enter
society.
   
Now we have a doctor with a past that includes drug abuse and arrest.
   
Dr. Robert T. Adkins, 39, of Dallas, has practiced medicine for the past
five years in the emergency room at Mercy Hospital in Wilkes-Barre.
   
But we still don’t know enough about him.
   
His boss, Dr. John Consalvo, refuses to tell us much about his employee
other than to swear that Adkins is a great healer whom Consalvo would trust
with the lives of his own family.
   
Consalvo wrote such sentiments in a letter to the editor published in this
newspaper last week.
   
Consalvo’s diagnosis isn’t good enough. Prospective patients need far more
reassurance than that. However, hospitals are not required to tell us how many
one-time junkie doctors they employ.
   
Documentation is readily available to prove that Pennsylvania is overrun
with physicians who once rivaled neighborhood crack dealers for illegally
dispensing and using drugs.
   
All we can do is trust other doctors to monitor their behavior.
   
But, as each day passes without evidence of Adkins’ continuing recovery, I
am less willing to trust their observations. It doesn’t help that police are
looking into the Jan. 17 death of Adkins’ wife, Delinda, who succumbed to a
viral infection.
   
Meanwhile, Consalvo continues to head up a company that supplies physicians
to hospitals.
   
Consalvo also serves as the part-time medical director for the newly formed
Wilkes-Barre Health Department. Ironically, city officials refuse to provide
background information on Consalvo.
   
Despite drawing a salary from the public payroll, Consalvo’s past is more
of a secret than Adkins’.
   
City Personnel Administrator Christine Jensen said she cannot divulge any
background information about Consalvo or any other Health Department employee
unless that person signs a waiver granting her permission to do so.
   
But, Consalvo refuses to return phone calls.
   
Mayor Tom McGroarty personally hired this guy.
   
Why?
   
What did Consalvo have to offer city residents that dozens of other doctors
couldn’t offer? How many other applications were received? Is Consalvo trained
in the specialities needed by the city department? Since the department will
specialize in immunization, is Consalvo an immunization specialist? Exactly
what training does he have to offer the taxpayers of Wilkes-Barre? How good a
doctor is he?
   
Nobody at City Hall will talk.
   
New Health Department Director Mike Elias, who is paid $52,000 a year, said
information about Consalvo would have to come from Jensen. Elias spent 18
years at Mercy Health Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania, the outfit that
runs Mercy Hospital.
   
Why do city officials consider public job applications private, anyway?
   
Reporters here have regularly obtained such information from county
officials for years.
   
Stonewalling of any kind lessens public confidence in the institutions
designed to serve the public.
   
Bedside manner means something.
   
So do ethics.
   
Steve Corbett’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. E-mail him at
[email protected]