A Sharp eraser: U-T omits key transplant facts

Another day, another silent ode to those behind the history of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the once powerful newspaper formerly owned by Helen Copley, and later her son, David.

Last week, the U-T — currently on its fourth owner in six years in the form of layoff-threatening Chicago-based Tribune Publishing — paid tribute to late sheriff Bill Kolender, while omitting reference to anti-strike services he provided for Copley and her sybaritic son.

This week the paper is out with a 30th anniversary paean to Sharp Memorial Hospital's heart-transplant program.

But the most publicized patient in the program's history, as well as the millions of dollars he gave to Sharp, along with a $6.2 million federal settlement involving the hospital’s fraudulent heart-procurement practices, are left unmentioned.

"There was pressure not only to succeed, but also to prove that a community hospital like Sharp Memorial could and should be doing transplants," says the piece, quoting surgeon Peter Hoagland as saying, "We knew we were under the microscope."

The story notes that the first operation was done in October 1985, with number 400 soon to come.

The Copley connection came ten years ago.

"David C. Copley, chairman and chief executive officer of The Copley Press, announced yesterday that he is recovering from heart transplant surgery," the U-T reported on July 2, 2005.

"For me, of course, this is wonderful news," the paper quoted its publisher, then 53, as saying.

"The surgeons and their team at Sharp Hospital in San Diego did a magnificent job. Indeed, over the last two years, they literally have saved my life several times. Thanks to their skill and the scientific advances that make their work possible, I can look forward to many years of renewed vigor and productivity."

Once morbidly obese and arrested three times for driving under the influence, Copley's health had been in decline for years, leading some U-T staffers to quietly wonder whether he was the best candidate for a fresh heart and to lead the paper, already facing sliding circulation and revenue. In the months before the operation he had been outfitted by Sharp with a state-of-the-art device to assist his ravaged organ.

Post-surgery, Copley vowed both he and his newspaper dynasty would live on. "As we celebrate a century in the newspaper business I want nothing more than to be a good custodian of a great legacy."

Soon after, on July 12, 2005, he announced that he was rewarding Sharp with $5 million from the Helen Copley foundation.

"The surgeons at Sharp improved my mother's quality of life in her later years and literally saved my life several times in the last two years,” Copley told the U-T.

Less than four years later, Copley sold off the U-T and its real estate holdings, including the paper's Mission Valley headquarters, in May 2009, to Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills vulture investing outfit run by Los Angeles billionaire Tom Gores.

Two and a half years after that, Gores sold the operation and its headquarters, minus La Jolla real estate, to Republican kingpin Douglas Manchester, who used it to advance various political efforts before it was turned over yet again, stripped of its Mission Valley building, to Tribune for $83 million this past May.

Within weeks, the paper's own heart, its printing press, was closed down and dismantled, and the nightly newspaper run was transferred to the Los Angeles Times.

Following his transplant, Copley enjoyed a seven-year respite before death.

On November 20, 2012, the former publisher died after crashing his Austin Martin in La Jolla following a reported heart attack.

Sharp's heart-transplant program has also had its share of trouble.

In March 2003, the U.S. Justice Department announced that "the San Diego Hospital Association and one of its facilities, Sharp Memorial Hospital, have agreed to pay the United States $6.2 million to settle allegations that Sharp submitted false claims by fraudulently misstating organ acquisition costs on the hospital's Medicare reports for 1991 through 1999."

Continued the release, "The allegations arose from a lawsuit filed by Judith A. King under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, which allow a private person to sue on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery. King, a heart-transplant coordinator at Sharp Memorial, will receive $1.2 million of the settlement proceeds."

King, who was still at Sharp at the time of the settlement, told the Associated Press, "It's like being an Enron employee. It's embarrassing."