Sabatini

NEW YORK -- In less than two hours yesterday, Gabriela Sabatini ended 2 1/2 years of frustration.Sabatini broke the serve of Lindsay Davenport 10 times in 14 games, in one stretch breaking the teen-ager six times in a row, en route to a 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 victory in the final of the season-ending Virginia Slims Championships at Madison Square Garden.The victory in a match that took just 1 hour, 41 minutes gave the 24-year-old Argentine her first title since the 1992 Italian Open, a string of 43 consecutive tournaments without a championship.

Standing before the bar of justice to answer for his crimes, former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell was accorded a stature he never quite attained. He was hailed as a mighty poobah, one of the "most powerful," a lion of the legislature whose wish could not be safely ignored. Those who watched him in General Assembly councils remember a somewhat different figure. He was a bar owner who flaunted his rough edges. He was a big man with a dark, wavy forelock. He laughed a little too loudly.

Maryland's health secretary, joined by more than 100 doctors and Baltimore's health commissioner, yesterday urged approval of Question 6, the new abortion law that goes before the voters Tuesday."

Nelson J. Sabatini, who retired as state health secretary a year ago, has become president of a startup Medicare HMO for people with chronic diseases. Called Care Improvement Plus, the HMO will serve Medicare-eligible people with diabetes, congestive heart failure or late-stage renal disease. The HMO is run by a Baltimore company, XLHealth, that was founded as a diabetes management company called Diabetex in 1998 and eventually began to manage other chronic conditions as well. XLHealth received a boost early this year when it received $63.75 million in new financing from an investment group headed by Goldman Sachs & Co. Sabatini served separate stints as health secretary, one when William Donald Schaefer was governor and the other under Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. In between, he was an executive for the University of Maryland Medical System.

Nelson J. Sabatini, head of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has informed his staff that he will leave his position at the end of the month. Sabatini's departure has been expected, although a date had not been set. He previously held the job under Gov. William Donald Schaefer, and reluctantly returned at the insistence of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., agreeing to stay through two legislative sessions. Sabatini, 64, plans to split his time between Hawaii and Maryland, and to launch a consulting business.

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. -- She looked like the old Steffi Graf, winning the first set 6-0. But Graf wasn't playing the old Gabriela Sabatini yesterday in the Lipton tennis tournament.The Sabatini of the '90s is a confident player who does not run out of hope or energy. The improved Sabatini climbed out of the hole and beat Graf again 0-6, 7-6 (8-6), 6-1.Sabatini now challenges Monica Seles in tomorrow's final. Seles, the defending champion and the No. 1 player in the world, trounced Mary Joe Fernandez 6-1, 6-2 in last night's semifinal.

NEW YORK -- Dennis Ralston's coaching contract with Gabriela Sabatini ran through the end of the U.S. Open and apparently it won't be continued.Ralston, the former U.S. Davis Cup star, couldn't be reached for comment and Sabatini would say only that "we haven't talked." But sources close to Ralston said he has decided not to continue with Sabatini.The source said Sabatini is negotiating with former world No. 2 Guillermo Vilas, also an Argentine, to replace Ralston.Ralston was hired just before the Lipton tournament this year and laid out a three-phase program to move Sabatini up in the rankings.

Under pressure from established seafood dealers to crack down on unlicensed crab pickers on Smith Island, Maryland Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini is backing away from his agreement to give the isolated Chesapeake Bay watermen's community more time to comply with strict state food-handling regulations.Mr. Sabatini said yesterday that he probably would deny a group of watermen's wives and widows in Tylerton permission to keep selling crab meat this spring and summer while they work on plans to set up a crab-picking cooperative that can meet state health requirements.

NEW YORK -- Mary Joe Fernandez turned professional before she got her driver's license, missed her high school graduation to appear in a Grand Slam semifinal, and banked her first million at an age when most people are still angling for a first job.So, you would expect Fernandez to be comfortable with the stress and strain of appearing at the U.S. Open.Of course, you would be wrong.For the past week, Fernandez has been a tennis anxiety attack, playing one nervous three-set match after another, barely advancing to the next round.

NEW YORK -- Monica Seles and Gabriela Sabatini did not merely produce the longest match in the modern history of women's tennis yesterday. Nor did they merely team up in the most dramatic final ever in the Virginia Slims Championships. More important than any reference to the past was the glimpse they provided of the future.Not since they dressed for the sport in ankle-length skirts at the turn of the century had two women participated in a five-set match. That they happened to be named Seles and Sabatini not only was a tribute to their endurance, but also to their promise.

Nelson J. Sabatini, head of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has informed his staff that he will leave his position at the end of the month. Sabatini's departure has been expected, although a date had not been set. He previously held the job under Gov. William Donald Schaefer, and reluctantly returned at the insistence of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., agreeing to stay through two legislative sessions. Sabatini, 64, plans to split his time between Hawaii and Maryland, and to launch a consulting business.

Maryland's top health official said yesterday that he is pushing for criminal and civil investigations of two Baltimore group home operators that engaged in abusive "behavior of the worst kind." The state health department has moved to shut down both companies, Autumn Homes and Netcon & Earthkins, which were paid millions of dollars by the state to care for severely disabled residents. But state Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini told The Sun he wants to go further. "I want them to answer to every possible authority they can answer to," Sabatini said.

YEARS AGO, when another governor stared down a year or two of demoralizing deficits, Nelson J. Sabatini came up with a way to help. It looked a lot like a scam. The state would manufacture an increase in doctor fees. Federal authorities would then send the state more money because it gave Maryland about half of its expenses. If the doctor fees went up, the reimbursement went up. Maryland doctors agreed to send these extra millions to the state. In polite society, the plan was called "fool the feds."

State Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini is poised to become the first Ehrlich Cabinet secretary to depart voluntarily when he resigns in the next few months, and the search for a replacement includes a conservative General Assembly member who is an outspoken abortion opponent. The governor's office said yesterday that state Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a medical doctor from Baltimore County and the Senate minority whip, has been interviewed for the high-ranking post. Another candidate is Robert R. Neall, the former state senator and Anne Arundel County executive who is a finance director at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health Systems.

WASHINGTON - State Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini severely criticized the nation's system for regulating hospitals yesterday, warning a congressional subcommittee that patient safety problems as serious as those found at Maryland General Hospital likely are occurring across the country. "It would be a terrible mistake to categorize this as an isolated incident," Sabatini said. "I believe that the Maryland General experience is merely a symptom of a system failure." Sabatini and others who testified in the three-hour hearing before the House Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources subcommittee acknowledged that inspectors from the public and private sectors repeatedly failed to communicate with each other, failed to follow up on their own inspections and realized the extent of problems only when a second whistleblower came forward.

Citing what they say may be a multimillion-dollar abuse, Maryland health officials are tightening controls over emergency medical care provided to residents of foreign countries under the Medicaid program. Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini says he suspects that up to $12 million a year in Medicaid funds is being spent improperly to provide health care to aliens who have come to the U.S. expressly for medical treatments that are sometimes expensive and "esoteric." In a series of recent interviews, Sabatini also said he suspects that the problem stems from hospitals that might be steering patients to Maryland for expensive treatments at public expense.

Nelson J. Sabatini is opening lines of communication between Springfield Hospital Center and its South Carroll neighbors.Mr. Sabatini, state secretary of health and mental hygiene, said he will "make certain" that residents of the communities surrounding the hospital know when potentially dangerous patients walk off the grounds and when they are returned.The policy change follows a meeting Tuesday at the center, during which Mr. Sabatini discussed the proposed transfer of 18 violent patients from Rosewood Center in Baltimore County to any of 10 other sites in the state.

A University of Maryland medical school official said yesterday that he was "shocked" at the state health secretary's suggestion that he should be fired for his remarks about his project to mummify a Maryland man.Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini did not take issue with the mummy project itself. But, on Friday he said that Ronald S. Wade, director of the anatomical service division at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, should be fired for what Mr. Sabatini called Mr. Wade's "poor taste" and "insensitivity" in describing the experiment to The Sun."

Under pressure from Maryland's top health official, a national accreditation organization has reversed itself and turned over to the state its most recent inspection report on the troubled laboratory at Maryland General Hospital. State Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini said the inspection report arrived yesterday by Federal Express from the Illinois-based College of American Pathologists. The organization had rebuffed prior requests for the report, contending that it did not have "a relationship with the state of Maryland."

Maryland's top health official is threatening to revoke the automatic approval for about 120 medical laboratories across the state unless a national accrediting organization agrees to release its inspection reports on those facilities to state regulators. In a letter sent yesterday to Peter Mockridge, head of the College of American Pathologists, state Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini gave the organization a Friday deadline to respond to his demand for the release of inspection reports.