ATLANTA — Candice Saunders, president and CEO of Wellstar Health System, defended the health system’s decision to close two Atlanta hospitals over the past year during a Monday state Senate committee called to examine Georgia's health care infrastructure.
The nearly hour-long testimony by Saunders and the system's chief financial officer, Jim Budzinski, represented the first in-person defense of the controversial closures, which sparked a citywide conversation about healthcare access. Wellstar first closed the Atlanta Medical Center south campus in East Point last spring, then closed the main campus in Old Fourth Ward last fall.
It would have been financially impossible to keep the AMC facilities running, and Wellstar took many steps to prevent the closures, Saunders told members of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee.
“This is not the outcome we wanted, nor was it a decision we made lightly or abruptly,” Saunders said. She pointed to low patient volume, lack of public funding, increased labor costs, and the end in emergency Covid federal aid as some of the reasons for the closures.
