Hospital Board Does Little To Address Woes

Most of last week’s meeting of the Jeff Davis Hospital Authority progressed smoothly with hospital board members hearing a variety of routine reports on finances, personnel matters, medical staff reports, clinical matters, compliance, etc.
Chief Executive Officer Barry Bloom informed the board that the contract had been signed with Rural Physicians Group to provide hospitalist care at the hospital and the service is expected to be in operation no later than June 3.
When the public comments section of the agenda came up Landon Chavis reported that he had received no forms from people requesting to make public comments after which Authority Chair Shirley Maley entertained a motion to adjourn the meeting.
But at that point, Dr. Jason Laney, who had earlier submitted his resignation from the hospital staff, asked if the board — of which he is still a member — was going to talk about a letter board members had received the previous week.
When he received no response, he discussed several matters pertaining to his effective full resignation date of March 8. More specifically he questioned how the hospital would fill the void left by his resignation between March 8 and the June 3 date at which time the hospital’s contract with Rural Physicians Group went into effect.
CEO Bloom said the hospital had some local physicians stepping in to fill in at the hospital during the interim.
Board member Sharon Brown expressed her concern that the community was as upset as it was with the move to the hospitalist program which was the catalyst that led to Dr. Laney’s resignation.
That led to Daniel Ellis commenting on the situation as a member of the community, saying that information was circulating in the community and, with little information coming from the hospital, “we don’t know what’s true and what’s not …. I think there needs to be more transparency.”
Brown questioned how people could ask questions about the move to the hospitalist program and other issues, wondering if some type of public forum could be held to enable members of the public to express their concerns.
“I’ve had people visiting me at work, calling me — some very respectable people in the community,” she said, adding that people want someone to address their concerns.
There was some discussion about how to make the hospital more accessible to communicate public concerns and how to reassure the community about administrative decisions affecting the hospital and community health concerns.
In the end, no decisions were made about addressing the community’s concerns and most authority members did not address the situation during the meeting.
Ultimately, the authority met in executive session, excluding the public from further authority business.