At the same time the Eureka Springs Hospital Commission was meeting in the basement of the Auditorium on Monday, Feb. 17, a small group of former hospital employees was airing their grievances in a separate gathering at the Carnegie Public Library.
The former employees who spoke at the meeting — former facilities director Becky Burt, former coder Justice Trent and former housekeeper Richard Webb and his wife, Samantha Webb, a former medical records clerk at the hospital — reiterated allegations of a toxic and hostile working environment in the facility.
Also speaking at the meeting were Bradley Tate-Greene, a local business owner and member of the City Advertising and Promotion Commission.
Several employees have either been terminated from the hospital or left on their own accord over the past 18 months. Among those are former chief executive officer Angie Shaw and former chief nursing officer Jessica Petrino, both of whom were fired in early November during special commission meet-ings. An attorney representing Shaw and Petrino has filed separate lawsuits on their behalf in Carroll County Circuit Court, alleging that they were wrongfully terminated.
Samantha Webb worked at the hospital from February to September 2023 before being fired and ultimately winning a dispute over unemployment benefits.
Burt was terminated in late January after more than 15 years as a hospital employee.
The former employees’ complaints largely center on Jodi Edmondson, the hospital’s human resources director and acting CEO, Continued from Page 1
and chief financial officer Cynthia Asbury. The former employees allege that Edmondson and Asbury have engaged in a pattern of bullying, intimidation and retaliation.
Before moving to the library for Monday’s meeting, the former employees and supporters gathered in the parking lot of the Auditorium shortly before the commission meeting was scheduled to begin. Richard and Samantha Webb held up cardboard signs with messages including: “This isn’t going away,” and “Stop the Bullying.”
At Monday’s meeting, Tate-Greene said there is clear evidence of bullying at the hospital.
“Good documentation was provided by several hospital employees who recently left or were terminated,” Tate-Greene said. “It was proven and detailed concerning a presence of a consistent pattern of multiple incidents of bullying behavior that cannot be easily explained away – especially when said behavior is clearly creating a hostile work environment for hospital staff, but instead of addressing it, terminating everyone who tried to address it was the solution, and that is sad, especially when it starts happening again because we did not address the root causes.”
Tate-Greene called on the hospital commission to intervene.
“The documentation that has been provided proves a pattern of intentional destructive behavior is present, and the commission really has no choice but to take action,” Tate-Greene said.
The hospital commission voted at one of three special meetings on Nov. 4, 2024 — three days after terminating Shaw — to place Asbury on a 60-day Performance Improvement Plan, to be monitored by the commission. At the other two special meetings that day, the commission voted to fire Petrino and to elevate Edmondson to acting CEO.
The Times-Echo reported that then-commission chair Kent Turner and then-vice chair Barbara Dicks had exchanged text messages in August about firing Shaw and also had met privately with Asbury to discuss hospital business — all violations of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Dicks resigned in November at the request of Mayor Butch Berry. The Eureka Springs City Council voted at its Jan. 27 meeting to remove Turner from the commission.
At recent hospital commission meetings, chair Sandy Martin has praised Edmondson and Asbury along with other members of the hospital staff. Speaking to the city council at the Jan. 27 meeting, Martin said the commission began looking into staff complaints in August 2024. She also said the results of a November survey that placed the hospital’s Medicare agreement in jeopardy was “not a total surprise.”
“Certain personnel and management were clearly not doing their jobs, and they were putting the hospital in jeopardy and under additional strain,” Martin told the council on Jan. 27.
The hospital submitted a plan to correct the issues identified in the survey and is no longer in jeopardy of losing its Medicare agreement, according to a Feb. 6 email from a registered nurse surveyor with the Arkansas Department of Health.
