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OAKLAND, Calif. — Kaiser Permanente has announced Paul Minardi, MD, as executive vice president and chief executive officer of the KP Medical Foundation — the nonprofit organization created to organize expertise, systems, resources, and standards to manage ambulatory care operations in Kaiser Permanente’s Colorado and Washington state markets.

Through the KP Medical Foundation, the Colorado Permanente Medical Group and the Washington Permanente Medical Group will have even more aligned responsibility and accountability with the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan to lead each market as one organization, including strategic planning, business planning, capital planning, growth, culture, and marketing.

As EVP and CEO of the KP Medical Foundation, Dr. Minardi will oversee the delivery of health care services and capabilities to medical groups in participating markets to support integrated delivery of high-quality, affordable health care. He will also focus on growth and furthering relationships with organizations in Kaiser Permanente’s other markets. Dr. Minardi will report directly to Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals chair and CEO Greg A. Adams and sit on the KP Medical Foundation Board of Directors.

“Paul is an accomplished physician leader with proven experience in leading care delivery,” said Adams. “We are confident that his leadership will guide the KP Medical Foundation to quickly and expertly support our Colorado and Washington markets in delivering on the mission of Kaiser Permanente.”

Dr. Minardi has served more than 36 years in medicine, most recently as the executive medical director for the Washington Permanente Medical Group, one of the highest-ranked medical groups in the state by the Washington Health Alliance. Prior to that he served as executive vice president of Finance and Strategy for The Permanente Federation — the national consortium representing the 8 Permanente Medical Groups — and as medical director of Business Management for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America’s leading health care providers and nonprofit health plans. Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has a mission to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 12.6 million members in 8 states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal Permanente Medical Group physicians, specialists, and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery, and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education, and the support of community health.

Dr. Barbara Zind of Grand Junction, the daughter of a Muslim and a Jew, went to Gaza to help children. Her timing was unfortunate, arriving just hours before Hamas unleashed a surprise attack on Israel.

When CBS News Colorado asked about her reaction, she said, "I'm astounded by how tragic it is, especially the targeting of civilians, and I fear because we know how Israel retaliates."

Zind went to Gaza as a pediatrician for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. Then the war began.

"They have been targeting children's hospitals. One of them has been destroyed, which I visited last year," she said.

"The fighting has left many innocents dead or injured on all sides," she continued. "I feel awful. These are my patients, just like those in Grand Junction."

Unable to perform her mission, she witnessed destruction and deprivation.

"The numbers of children injured from bombs and attacks, then add to it the number of children with chronic diseases that can't get medication," remarked the Colorado doctor.

As the fighting intensified, Zind moved from a hotel to a UN center in southern Gaza and was able to leave last week.

"You do what you can to be safe, and then you just hope for the best," she said.

After reaching Cairo, Egypt, she is now back in Grand Junction, while the war she left behind continues.

Rick Sallinger

Rick Sallinger is a reporter for CBS News Colorado. Read his latest reports or check out his bio and send him an email.

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Yuri Agrawal, MD, MPH, an accomplished clinician with a substantial research portfolio and a demonstrated commitment to education, has been named chair of the Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, effective August 1, 2023.

Agrawal is professor of otology, neurotology, and skull base surgery in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an attending physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“I am pleased to welcome Dr. Agrawal, and I am confident that her expertise will contribute to the ongoing successes of our school of medicine,” said Dean John J. Reilly Jr., MD. “Our school and our clinical partners support her vision to build on the department’s successes in ways that will elevate its standing in rankings, funding, training, and patient visits.”

“I am excited by this opportunity to expand a strong program and to work with the talented faculty at the University of Colorado,” Agrawal said. “The school and its hospital partners have shown a strong commitment to providing the best care, education, and research for the benefit of the entire community, and I look forward to leading teams contributing to those outcomes.”

Agrawal is principal investigator on multiple major National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that focus on the vestibular system in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. The vestibular sensory system housed in the inner ear is critical for the sense of balance, yet the impact of aging on how that important system functions is poorly understood.

Among her currently funded projects, her lab uses state-of-the-art computational image analysis techniques to determine age-related changes in central vestibular structures. In another study, she aims to help people with Alzheimer’s disease, for whom falls are a major cause of injury. One of Agrawal’s projects aims to design studies that could improve vestibular function and prevent falls in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Agrawal is widely recognized for her research work, publishing more than 100 manuscripts, lecturing at major national and international scientific conferences, and serving as a member and chair of the NIH Sensorimotor Neuroscience Study section.

As an educator, Agrawal has been active in all phases of training. In her lab, she has mentored more than 30 pre- and postdoctoral fellows, residents, and students from Hopkins and other institutions. She also mentors junior faculty through an NIH grant. For her department, she serves as vice chair of academic affairs overseeing committees related to mentorship, promotions, wellness, professionalism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

She has also been a leader among peers in the otolaryngology community. She currently serves as president of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology and has served on the American Board of Otolaryngology as an oral board examiner and is a member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. She also serves as education director of the American Neurotology Society, responsible for medical education activities.

In clinical practice, Agrawal is an accomplished ear and skull base surgeon. Additionally, she oversees the largest otolaryngology clinical practice site in her department. During the past four years, that practice doubled the number of patients receiving care, and developed new multidisciplinary service lines for treating head and neck oncology patients and those with facial nerve and skull base tumors.

Agrawal earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard University and her MD from the Yale University School of Medicine. She then completed her internship, residency, and fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She also earned a master of public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

At the CU Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, Agrawal succeeds Herman Jenkins, MD, who stepped down in February 2022 after 21 years as the department’s chair, and Todd Kingdom, MD, who has served as interim chair.

As Colorado abortion providers continue to care for out-of-state patients, Denver's oldest hospital has stepped in to help meet the demand. Denver Health has always provided medically necessary abortions, but now they're offering elective abortions.

Dr. Spencer McClelland is the Medical Director of Denver Health's new Reproductive Choice Clinic.

He says the reversal of Roe v. Wade accelerated a conversation on elective abortions the hospital was already having.

"Denver Health's mission is to take care of the most vulnerable patients in our population. Given that abortion restrictions tend to affect those patients the most, we felt that it was worth taking a look at whether our mission was being fully met until we started providing that service as well," said McClelland.

RELATED: Abortions in the U.S. rose slightly after states began imposing bans and restrictions post-Roe, study finds

McClelland says abortion care in the area has become strained, and Denver Health could no longer rely on the availability of clinics around them to treat their patients.

Colorado abortion providers have been feeling the impact of neighboring states' new restrictions.

According to Planned Parenthood, the number of out-of-state patients they see for abortion care in Colorado has tripled. Right now, about 35% of their abortion patients are coming from out of state.

The influx of abortion care created a ripple effect, impacting other health services at some providers. McClelland says the women's care long offered at Denver Health won't suffer.

"When we thought about offering our abortion clinic, we made sure that we were looking at the balance of all the other services that exist within OB/GYN and how to maintain those under current volumes. We haven't seen an issue providing our other routine services," said McClelland.

RELATED: Virtual visits for abortion care increase in Colorado

The cost of an abortion at Denver Health is comparable to other abortion providers in the area.

With the help of groups like Cobalt, an organization that helps women with barriers to abortion access, McClelland says their patients have had to pay little or nothing for procedures.

The Cobalt Abortion Fund provides direct financial assistance to individuals seeking abortion care, from procedure funding to travel assistance. It's 100% donor-funded.

"What happens is someone will call a provider and say they've got an appointment and need help paying for it. Then they reach back to us for financial support. What we do is patient-driven and we work with numerous providers within the Rocky Mountain region," said Laura Chapin with Cobalt.

Colorado's constitution prohibits the use of state funds for abortion care.

Women who get their health insurance through a state or government employer and those who receive Medicaid coverage can't rely on their insurance to cover any portion of the cost of abortion care. They must pay for the entire cost of care themselves.

"How patients pay for it is separate from funds for the hospital. This is a self-pay service," explained McClelland. "It's not covered by most insurances, and particularly by Medicaid, which is the insurance that most of our patients have."

McClelland says Denver Health has received a lot of support outside the hospital for its Reproductive Choice Clinic.

However, pro-life organizations like Colorado Right To Life say the clinic is nothing to celebrate.

In a statement to CBS News Colorado, CRTL President Will Duffy writes:

"Denver Health has a Labor & Delivery Unit, where they do everything they can to keep their patients' unborn babies alive before, during, and after birth. In that part of the hospital, they know the fetus is a unique human being whose life is worthy of protection at all costs. Now that Denver Health is doing abortions in another section of the hospital, they are without excuse. The same tiny human beings in the womb that they refer to as a baby in one part of the hospital, are now going to have their lives ended in a different area of the hospital. And they will not call them a baby in that area, so as to not remind everyone involved of the reality of what they are doing. This is tragic and nothing to be celebrated."

While patients at Denver Health aren't required to live in the state, Denver Health says most patients at the clinic are already registered in their system. They say that speaks to a need in the community not being met.

The clinic is open one day a week and offers abortion procedures through 11 weeks of pregnancy.

McClelland says they've already begun discussions on how to expand.

Tori Mason

Tori Mason is a reporter at CBS News Colorado. Read her latest reports or check out her bio and send her an email.

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A Colorado business that was temporarily shut down by court order has been allowed to resume operations but without the ability to sell a multitude of fake documents it previously offered.

Propdoks created and printed bank statements, medical marijuana cards, college degrees, eviction notices, police reports, high school diplomas, temporary protection orders or child custody paperwork (complete with a judge's signature), titles, out-of-state temp tags and proof of insurance for vehicles, resumés with letters of certification to operate heavy machinery or work as a nurse, regardless of your actual training.

All of it, according to state investigators, is fraudulent.

RELATED: Colorado halts operations, freezes assets of company allegedly creating fake documents

Prosecutors claimed the business filled tens of thousands of orders over the past two years and expanded its offerings to more than 70 types of false documents.

A judge in August ordered the business's doors shut and its assets to be frozen following a months-long investigation.

"Defendants know that their documents will be used to commit fraud; they do not care," prosecutors wrote in the state's complaint against Visual Prop Studios LLC.

Visual Prop Studios is the entity that was doing business as PropDoks. It is registered with the state by its owner, Erdis Moore III, a 49-year-old Aurora resident. The three-year-old business is registered to Moore's home address near Utah Park. However, customers were directed to a storefront once they made a purchase on the company's website. Since the company refused to mail or deliver documents, customers were directed to this storefront to pick up their purchases directly.

In March, an undercover investigator purchased a false tax return, a temporary license plate and an insurance card, then a false protection order and child custody order from Propdoks. Inside the Propdoks store, that investigator reported seeing signs which stated, "We Make Proof of ANYTHING," and ""Your Imagination Is Our Limitation." Another sign instructed customers to not tell the business how the fake documents were going to be used.

The business advertised its products as theatrical props, educational tools and material for playing jokes.

Investigators uncovered further deceptive practices after Propdoks was initially ordered to cease operations. These include methods of "resetting" consumer credit using credit privacy numbers, which the Colorado Attorney General's Office deemed "essentially fraudulent Social Security numbers." The victims of the scheme were often children, older adults and inmates, according to the office's research.

The company agreed to end its sale of fake documents and credit "reset" services, the state AG's office announced Wednesday. Propdoks will also pay $20,000 to the state. That money will be held for any victims of the business's practices, the AG's office stated in a press release. It will also go toward consumer protection education and enforcement.

Logan Smith

Logan Smith is an assignment desk editor and former photojournalist and editor for CBS Colorado with more than 30 years of journalism experience in print and television media.