A recording device used to document a special meeting of the Eureka Springs Hospital Commission was never turned off at adjournment and continued to record illegal conversations between commissioners regarding hospital matters.
The commission met Monday, Dec. 2, to approve a letter of engagement with a Little Rock law firm to help draft a response to recent findings from an audit by the Arkansas Department of Health. It only took the commission six minutes to discuss and approve the agreement and adjourn the meeting.
Since the meeting was not video recorded, an audio-only device was used to record the meeting, as is required by state law. However, once the meeting was officially adjourned, the recording was not stopped and commissioners could be heard casually discussing various matter regarding recent hospital controversies for the next 12 minutes.
The voices of chair Kent Turner and commissioners Sandy Martin, Sharon Deramus, David Carlisle and Kate Dryer could be heard discussing the hospital after adjournment. Dryer had joined the meeting via phone and was only involved in the post-meeting discussions briefly, while commissioner Brian Beyler was not at the meeting.
The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act prohibits two or more commissioners from discussing commission business outside of regular or special commission meetings.
The illegal conversation, which at times is garbled and difficult to decipher, begins with talks about planning a workshop for the following day, Tuesday, Dec. 3.
“Please know that I’m available by phone for clinical opinion,” Dryer said on speaker phone to Turner, who then asked when she was returning, apparently from out of town.
Turner asked the other commissioners if they could meet Dec. 3 with Dryer saying she could join the meeting remotely.
“We don’t need a quorum for that so anyway we can set a time and if you’re a little late …,” Turner said.
The group agreed on a time for the workshop.
“Did you need a second on that adjournment?” Dryer then asked Turner, referring to the special meeting that had ended a few minutes earlier.
“No, no,” Turner said. “OK,” Dryer responded.
“Once the single item is done we’re done anyway,” Turner replied.
About a minute later, Dryer hung up and left the conversation and Carlisle asked about his hospital email address. All commissioners have such an address.
“… I don’t know what’s wrong with my email,” Carlisle said.
“They’ve been blocked,” Turner replied. “Somebody has blocked them. They should be OK now. We’re having Pinnacle look into it tomorrow as soon as they get there.”
After a few moments of conversation that was garbled, discussions turned to recent controversies at the hospital, which included an unfavorable audit report from the Arkansas Department of Health and recent staffing changes made by the commission that have drawn the ire of current and former hospital employees and members of the community.
“If you go through and do a word search for ‘does not comply’ you only come up with 28 items,” Turner said, apparently referring to report from the health department.
“Clearly it’s a department head problem,” Martin said shortly after.
Turner replied: “And it’s all clinical.”
Moment later when talking about the hospital, Turner said “…I don’t trust anybody anymore and I’m a pretty trusting guy, but any of these people I don’t trust …” “I hear you,” Martin responded.
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you, some of this stuff appears to be sabotage to me,” Turner then said. “There’s entire notebooks of P and Ps that have been emptied.”
Martin replied: “And that’s illegal.”
After a bit of garble, Turner said “policy and procedures.”
“We have a whole restraint training program and that notebook’s completely empty,” Turner said.
Turner and Martin then started discussing recent events and a “timeline.”
“When everything goes to s**t…,” a male voice says.
“The minute that Angie sent out the memo which was in mid-April that said all the changes are coming …. that was on the 15th of April,” Martin said, seemingly referring to recently terminated CEO Angie Shaw. “Becky Gillette (a reporter with the Eureka Springs Independent) contacted me on the 29th of April saying she was doing a story and some, you know, (unintelligible) accusations were in there, (unintelligible) quotes in there, (unintelligible) and then all hell started breaking loose. And then I’ve been trying to put the timeline together to show and even with the limited information that I had because Kent’s got the real critical things when he talked to Jodi and Angie. (Unintelligible) you just look at that, I sent it to Kim, I just said, what would you say if you say something like this. And she said ‘I think you were set up.’
“… Even to the point that when Angie sent a memo out October 1st after she had already met with Jerry at the city and bypassed our HR, Jodi …. great job on the workshop and putting together a (unintelligible) .”
A few moments later, Turner referred to positive reactions he’s gotten on recent visits to the hospital.
“You know what’s sad about it, is it doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “… Sandy and I have been running, we’ve been toting blood back and forth with Berryville, because our lab is down. I can’t tell you how friendly it’s been every time I’ve been there. And I figured they would just be (unintelligible) .
“And we just had the best conversation with all the nurses …” “Maybe they’re realizing now that without certain people…,” Martin responded.
“They got had,” Turner said.
“Yeah,” Martin replied.
“They got had,” Turner said again, adding “I think they were shocked I was over there doing that. I did it two days. I did two nights. One night all night long.”
Martin then referred to a recent report in the Times-Echo by editor Scott Loftis regarding communications betweem former commissioner Barbara Dicks and the hospital’s chief financial officer, Cynthia Asbury. The report referenced Dicks’ professional background but did not mention the backgrounds of other commissioners.
“By the way, I got a little ticked off when I read Scott’s article and the only commissioner he singled out was Barbara’s resume,” Martin said. “(Unintelligible) I sent all of our resumes to Scott and said I read the article and I totally get why you singled Barb out, but one of the accusations has been that there’s no medical or professional experience on the commission … fyi, (unintelligible) I got an immediate response, and I did it just strictly for his background, and he said I’ll try to (unintelligible) as soon as possible. … But it just ticked me off.”
‘I WOULDN’T HAVE A COLONOSCOPY’
Deramus then brought up the topic of outpatient services at the hospital, which led to a discussion regarding a portion of the Department of Health audit report that said some areas of the hospital facility “failed to maintain a sanitary environment to avoid sources and transmission of infection ….”
One area specifically mentioned were endoscopy suites.
“The failed practice did not ensure that expired supplies would not be used during procedures performed in the Endoscopy Suites and had the likelihood of affecting all patients having endoscopy procedures,” the report reads, adding that expired supplies were observed during a visit to the hospital on Nov. 4.
“During a tour of the Endoscopy Suites on 11/4/24 from 2:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., showed there were 4 Flexible Endoscopes (2 EGD scopes and 2 Colonoscopes) hanging in a closed cabinet in Endoscopy Suite #1 with no identifying information as to when they had been last cleaned,” the report reads. “During an interview with the ER Director at the time of the observation, she stated that she was responsible for processing the endoscopes on the monthly procedure days between cases and she confirmed the scopes were only cleaned on procedure days and once during the 7 days prior to procedure day.
“She stated and confirmed they were not cleaned every 7 days. She was unable to state to the surveyor which professional standards or guidelines were followed by the facility. She confirmed there was no visual indicator on the scopes that showed when they were last cleaned.”
During the discussion between commissioners after the Nov. 2 special meeting was officially adjourned, Deramus asked, “…are we not doing outpatient procedures now at the hospital?”
“Not right now we’re not,” a voice replied.
“Did you read?” Turner said. “I wouldn’t have a colonoscopy.”
Turner’s comment led to laughter with someone saying, “Oh my God.”
“…I’ve had like seven because it runs in my family,” Turner said. “… But, stuff wasn’t clean. I’m going: ‘Oh my God.’ ” “…The cleanliness stuff was just really disturbing,” Martin said.
“…The open drug carts,” Turner responded.
The conversation between commissioners then wraps up and sounds of people exiting can be heard. The device, however, continues recording for another 3 hours, 25 minutes.
