The controversy surrounding Eureka Springs Hospital and its governing commission were at the forefront of the Eureka Springs City Council’s regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 9, with council members calling for resignations and a doctor from the hospital being escorted out of the meeting after shoving another audience member.
Hospital commission chair Kent Turner addressed the council regarding recent events at the facility — which has seen its chief executive officer and chief nursing officer terminated by the commission, had one commissioner resign at the request of Mayor Butch Berry and had its Medicare agreement placed in jeopardy after a pair of inspections by program auditors.
“I am not necessarily anxious to give this report,” Turner told the council, “but I will tell you that I’m a whole lot better today than I was three weeks ago. It has been a tumultuous period of time at the hospital for us in the last in the last month and a half. Actually, it’s been longer than that. The best way I can explain it is, it appears that we kind of lost our focus. And the good news about that is we had something occur that showed us that we had lost our focus.”
Referring to the recent surveys by Medicare inspectors, Turner noted that a similar survey was conducted in May with only minor issues being reported.
“The report that we just had in November was pretty dramatic,” Turner said. “The best way I can describe it to you, and I said this to the commissioners, I sat in on the exit conference with the Department of Health Services and they said: ‘It appears to me that nothing has been done since May.’ They meant that in all levels of the hospital. … We had a significant amount of issues.”
Turner said the hospital has submitted a plan to correct those issues.
“We have given them a full plan of correction and we believe it is a solid plan of correction,” Turner said. “We have until they will come back and visit us sometime between now and December 22nd to make sure that what we said we’re going to do, we have done, and we think we’re in a very, very, very good position right now.”
Turner said the commission has reinstituted hospital policies and procedures that “had just been ignored, that weren’t being done, weren’t being carried out.”
‘I take responsibility’
“As chair, I take responsibility for that,” Turner said. “Sometimes, I guess, when you’re on a commission, you think that you’ve hired the right people to do the job and this was not the case. This was clearly not the case.”
The hospital commission voted to terminate chief executive officer Angie Shaw at a special meeting on Nov. 1. Three days later, the commission held a series of special meetings at which they voted to terminate chief nursing officer Jessica Petrino, place chief financial officer Cynthia Asbury on a 60-day Performance Improvement Plan and elevate human resources director Jodi Edmondson to acting CEO. Shaw and Petrino filed wrongful termination lawsuits last week against the hospital and the six remaining commissioners.
Barbara Dicks, who was the commission’s vice chair at the time of the terminations, resigned at Berry’s request on Nov. 15. The resignation came one day after the Times-Echo reported that Turner and Dicks exchanged text messages about firing Shaw as early as Aug. 15, and also discussed other personnel matters by text, as well as meeting together with Asbury in private, all violations of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
The commission held a regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 2, then continued to discuss hospital business after the meeting was officially adjourned — another FOIA violation. The continuation of discussions after the meeting was adjourned was captured on an audio recording.
A letter from an Arkansas Department of Health official regarding the Medicare survey findings said that termination of the hospital’s Medicare agreement could result if the hospital does not achieve compliance with conditions of participation in the Medicare program.
Turner told the council he does not believe the hospital is in jeopardy.
“I can say I’m sorry. That doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “I can tell you this: At this point, we are not looking at termination of the hospital, closing of the hospital. I wouldn’t have said that a week ago because we had some significant issues in our lab that we had to address. Those were addressed. Our lab was closed for two weeks. It reopened today. And it’s fully staffed again. And so consequently, that was probably the most serious thing, the most serious item that we confronted.”
‘A different view’
Turner said the commission has taken “a different view” in regard to its responsibilities.
“We believe we have to take a more active view from the day-today operations of the hospital, at least until we build our staff back up to people where we believe that they are in fact doing what they are supposed to be doing,” he said. “That said, in my opinion, you can never get into a situation where you assume that that’s the case anymore.”
Council member Autumn Slane asked Turner: “Politely, how did the wheels fall off so badly?”
“There’s no reason to be politely,” Turner answered. “We thought we had some people in positions that were doing their job. Clearly some of that was not the case. I don’t want to go into the detail of that because I don’t talk about personnel matters. But clearly that was not the case. When you have the leader of the Department of Health team that’s on the ground tell you that it doesn’t look like anything has been done — and I don’t mean turning on and off the lights. I mean detailed clinical work had not been being done since May. That that gives you an indication of where the problem lies.”
“Are there any more of the people still left at the hospital that were doing the things that we’ve heard about?” Slane asked.
“There could be,” Turner replied. “And we’re actually monitoring that very, very, very closely.”
In response to a question from Slane, Turner said commissioners are in the hospital and added that an attorney has advised the commission that commissioners being present in the hospital “as part of their oversight” does not constitute a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Affordability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
“We don’t go in and look at records, but if we need to to see a record to determine whether or not things are being done the way they’re supposed to be being done, that’s not a HIPAA violation,” Turner said.
Council member Susane Gruning said the council has heard from current and former hospital employees who felt “sabotaged.”
“There were a lot of people that spoke, for a small hospital, and that is very concerning to us as a commission,” Gruning said. “So I hear what you’re saying about the clinical side, maybe the staff, but we need the right people in the right places and they need to feel trusted that they’re doing their job and somebody is not coming in trying to tell them what to do, even if it’s not the right thing to do.”
Later, Gruning asked Turner: “Do you feel like there’s a lot of validity to what a lot of these employees are saying?”
“There was some validity, yes,” Turner said. “… But I’m also saying things weren’t always the way they appeared.”
Council member David Avanzino told Turner that “the integrity and public confidence of the commission and the hospital staff is in jeopardy.”
‘It looks like crap’
“It looks like crap,” Avanzino said. “And it’s up to this commission to fix it. And very quickly, I don’t think you can fix it with the current staff in place. You’ve had the majority of these employees that are either still there or have been terminated or they’ve left at will, telling you that the current administration is not working and they feel intimidated and they feel that they’re consistently and constantly under fire from administration. So y’all need to take a look from the top down, not start eliminating from the bottom up.”
‘Will you resign?’
After some discussion regarding the council’s ability to intervene in the duties of the hospital commission, council member Harry Meyer noted that the council does have the power to remove commissioners.
“If four members of the council vote to remove a commissioner, we can do that,” Meyer said, speaking to Turner. “And if you take full responsibility, I’d like to see your resignation.”
Meyer said the controversy surrounding the hospital has gone on for “months and months.”
“Somehow or another, the administration has got away with murder,” Meyer said. “It’s like Mr. Avanzino said, it starts at the top. It starts with you and then it goes down to the administration. It’s not the nurses. It’s not the people that work in the lab. No! It’s not them. It’s the people that work at the top that create that sort of thing. Will you resign?”
“Sure,” Turner replied. “I’ll resign.”
After more discussion, Berry suggested that the council hold off on any decisions regarding commissioners.
“I know there’s a lot of feelings with the chairman, but he and the commission have worked real hard on dealing with a lot of the information that the state health department has asked for us. I think we need to follow through and allow to see what the results are from the state health department before we make any decisions.”
Both Berry and Turner said Tuesday, Dec. 10, that Turner has not resigned.
‘Time to not be nice’
An already contentious meeting became even more quarrelsome when Dr. James Brecheisen, who said he works in the hospital emergency room, took the microphone during the portion of the meeting designated for public comments.
Berry asked Brecheisen to sign up and wait his turn to speak, but Brecheisen refused to give up the microphone. Berry’s assistant, Kim Stryker, approached Brecheisen, tapping him on the shoulder, but Brecheisen continued to speak.
“You guys, there’s zero confidence…,” Brecheisen said.
“Speaking for the employees and the patients, there is zero confidence. There is zero confidence in this commission and in the hospital leadership. Cynthia has to go. There is no other way about this. If you’ve ever seen that movie, ‘Roadhouse,’ with Patrick Swayze and you go into a small town, it’s nothing but corruption. That’s what this hospital and this commission is. They have fired everyone who has ever dared speak out against them. The employees that are left will not say anything out of fear.”
At that point, resident Damon Henke approached from Brecheisen’s right.
“You gonna remove me?” Brecheisen asked before shoving Henke in the chest.
At that point, Berry said he was asking for Brecheisen to be removed. Eureka Springs police chief Billy Floyd approached from Brecheisen’s left and shut off the microphone at Berry’s direction. After some brief contact, between the two, Floyd escorted Brecheisen out of the room.
Later, Henke spoke to the council about a request for a temporary entertainment district on New Year’s Eve — which was approved by the council.
“I have nothing to do with the hospital,” Henke said. “The only reason I walked up here earlier was because I thought if it was a freefor- all, I wanted my turn next. But apparently he took offense to that.”
Also speaking during public comments were former hospital employees Richard and Samantha Webb, Tina Adams, Elizabeth Collins and Charlotte Bunyar, all of whom described a poor working environment at the hospital.
‘No Integrity’
Also addressing the council was Bradley Tate-Greene, a member of the city advertising and promotion commission, who urged the council to “open your eyes to what is really happening.”
“Because Kent Turner failed to bring up the fact that every single commissioner violated FOIA after their meeting by talking about the hospital,” Tate-Greene said. “Do you know what that tells me? None of them can be trusted. There’s no integrity. There’s no trust in the entire commission. So therefore that translates over into the hospital. Because who’s running it? Nobody. You’ve got two people running the hospital that have no idea how to run a hospital.”
‘Call For Resignations’
During the portion of the meeting designated for council members’ comments, Avanzino called for Edmondson and Asbury to resign.
“I just want to, I guess, publicly call for the resignation of the acting CEO and CFO of Eureka Springs Hospital,” Avanzino said. “And that’s my opinion, based on the amazing amount of complaints that I’ve gotten about working in a hostile work environment.”
The city council does not have another regular meeting scheduled until after the New Year. Monday’s meeting was the last regular meeting for Slane, who did not seek a third term in office in the November general election. Her seat will be filled by Michael Welch, who ran unopposed in November.