Specialists Teaming With Gridiron Greats To Offer Care For Ex-NFL Players

Terry Simpson, University of Chicago alumnus and devoted Chicago Bears fan, planned on spending the night before Super Bowl XLII reveling in memories of The Fridge and crazy Jim McMahon.

The physician, eager to party with his idol Mike Ditka, laid out $6,500 for a table at the Gridiron Greats Super Jam, a Phoenix fund-raiser for the Green Bay-based nonprofit group that provides social services to needy former players. Simpson was thrilled to meet the heroes of his youth - but he left the event troubled, too.

“I heard story after story about the guys I watched on TV when I was growing up who are now destitute because of injuries,” says Simpson, an obesity expert who has a stake in the physician-owned Surgical Specialty Hospital of Arizona. “I saw guys who couldn’t walk and guys who could barely walk, and I thought it was disgraceful how these guys have been abandoned by the NFL and the Players Association.”

Simpson and officials from OAA Orthopedic Specialists in Allentown, Pa., will be in Chicago on Tuesday to announce they are teaming up with Gridiron Greats to offer free health care - including spine surgery, joint replacement, pain management, obesity counseling and physical therapy - to the ailing and financially strapped ex-players.

Gridiron Greats will screen players for financial need, and then refer qualifying retirees to the Allentown and Phoenix facilities. Executive director Jennifer Smith hopes hospitals and medical groups near other NFL cities will offer their services, too.

“If I were the NFL, I’d be embarrassed,” says former Dolphins running back Mercury Morris, who will take advantage of the program to determine if he needs surgery for wrist and knee injuries. “Why does it fall on these hospitals to provide the care the NFL and the union should be providing?”

Simpson wants to change the way the NFL looks at medicine: Team doctors, he says, are more worried about getting hurt players back on the field than treating injuries.

“Doctors that put players on the field that don’t belong there, that’s malpractice,” Simpson says. “Doctors who shoot up players with cortisone and xylocaine so they can play, that’s malpractice. We will report that to boards of medical examiners. There are clearly patterns of abuse here.”

Simpson says he expects the number of NFL disabled to skyrocket in the near future because of performance-enhancing drugs.

“Steroids contribute to the overall injury patterns,” he says. “You don’t see as many injuries in older players as you do younger ones. We suspect there is a steroid component to that. People don’t understand the impact these drugs can have long-term.”

Former players have complained for years that the disability system run by the NFL and the NFL Players Association is set up to stonewall players debilitated by injuries suffered during their careers. Retirees complain about lengthy delays and a callous bureaucracy. Phone calls are not returned, they say, and claims are denied for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

“We’ve been talking about these problems for 60 years and nobody in the NFL or the Players Association has had the vision to do what Gridiron Greats is doing,” says Ditka, a member of the organization’s board of directors. “We’re not trying to embarrass anybody, but there are a lot of people willing to help. Why isn’t the NFL or the Players Association doing this?”

Lawmakers will ask that question and others later this year, when Congress holds its third hearing in two years on the NFL’s disability plan.

House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) plans to examine the 144-page report released last month by the Congressional Research Service that concluded the disability plan requires a significant overhaul. The hearing has not yet been scheduled, but a Capitol Hill source says it most likely will be held in June or July.

The NFL will have positive news to report at the hearing, says executive vice president of labor relations Harold Henderson.

In October, the NFL’s 32 owners agreed to contribute $10 million for joint replacement surgery, cardiovascular screenings and assisted living for former players. That donation more than doubled the $7 million earmarked for retirees in July by the NFL, the Players Association, the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Alumni Association, a coalition known as “the Alliance.”

Thanks to the efforts of the Alliance, Henderson says, 32 retirees have been awarded grants of up to $5,000 to help with joint replacement surgery bills and other related costs. Alliance funds will pay for joint replacement surgery for two others who are uninsured.

The Alliance has also paid for health screenings for hundreds of former players, Henderson added. The disability plan will hire a doctor to help streamline the claims process.

But for Robert Palumbo, an orthopedist with OAA Orthopedic Specialists, it’s too little, too late. Palumbo, a second opinion doctor for the NFLPA, had offered his services to the union in 2005, before he moved his practice from Orlando to Allentown, but officials never took him up on it.

“We never received a call back from them,” says Palumbo. “It became a situation where we were putting in all the effort to stay in contact. So when we heard from Jennifer (Smith), we got very excited. Having Gridiron Greats handle the screening takes the burden off our staff - we get the easy part, practicing medicine.”

The doctors won’t be paid, but the publicity that comes from treating former NFL players should help their practices, especially in Allentown. Palumbo and his partners opened a state-of-the-art center in 2006 that they say is one of the nation’s best.

“We want to be known as the destination practice of the Northeast, but we all have busy practices,” Palumbo says. “The real reason we are doing this is because we want to help.”

Simpson, too, is ready to rebuild the bodies of the players who gave him many thrilling Sundays. The NFL, he says, can play catch-up if it wants.

“You would think they would be excited to work with two excellent medical centers,” Simpson says. “We are willing to work with the NFL. The only reason we are doing this is because the league and the union are not.”

- Michael O`Keeffe, New York Daily News.