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Show County Commmissioner Offers All Hospital Tax Revenues to IHC PANGUITCH One hospital board member has resigned and others were frustrated and confused after angry words were exchanged at the Apr. 24 meeting of the Garfield County Commission. The new Hospital Transition Board, a two-year, two-year, nine-member board was appointed by the commission to consider options for operating Garfield Memorial Hospital and Clinics under county ownership. The move followed Intermountain Health Care's (IHC's) year-end announcement that it no longer wanted to operate the facilities after "experiencing a nearly $800,000 loss last year. IHC offered to turn the hospital and its equipment over to the couniy and continue to operate it for the current year while the county deliberated how to operate the hospital for the future. The commissioners proposed a 1 percent sales tax expected to generate between $600,000 (county estimate) esti-mate) and $725,000 (state estimate) the first year to save the hospital and clinics. In February, county voters voted 91 percent in favor of the tax to save their hospital and clinics. Hospital Transition Board A new nine-member hospital board, chaired by Commissioner Maloy Dodds, was appointed to consider options and make recommendations recom-mendations to the commission. Members, in addition to Dodds, include Dr. Shaun Shurtliff, hospital hos-pital staff physician; Ron "Hatch, hospital lab technician; John Houston, businessman; and Janet Oldham, Panguitch City Council, all Panguitch; Mondell Syrett, businessman, Bryce; Linda Man-sell, Man-sell, business woman, and Sheree Rechsteiner, nurse, both Escalante; and Nancy Twitchell, newspaper editor, Tropic. It was Twitchell who resigned following last Monday's Commission Commis-sion meeting. "After the events of the past two weeks," said Twitchell on Tuesday, "I no longer want to be party to what I perceive as illegal actions by elected officials and feel that I need to be free of allegiance to any group other than the public so that I could write objectively about the hospital issue." She said that Commissioners and Transition Board members had agreed in early meetings that they wanted the information and actions from their meetings to be public. Commission Meeting April 24 Twitchell arrived shortly after 10 a.m. at the regular commission meeting on Monday, Apr. 24, representing the Garfield County News as usual. Present were Commissioners Com-missioners Louise Liston, Maloy Dodds and Clare Ramsay and County Clerk Camille Moore. Twitchell found Liston and Ramsay discussing a letter they had just learned about. The letter, dated four days earlier, was an offer to IHC signed only by Commissioaner Dodds. Partial Letter Contents The letter stated in part: "As the Commissioners of Garfield County and the newly appointed hospital board, we have been wrestling with the dilemma facing Garfield Memorial Mem-orial Hospital. As we have discussed dis-cussed all viable options and met with Jon Hoopes from IHC and representatives from Rural Health Management Corporation, we believe IHC is the only option we have to maintain a credible institution. Thus we would like to make the following proposal to IHC, and the IHC Board of Trustees. Trus-tees. "After the hospital assets are turned over to Garfield County, we would like to contract with IHC to manage Garfield Memorial Hospital and Clinics. We would propose IHC receive all revenues generated by the operation of the hospital, and all revenue from the 1 sales tax." The letter had been sent as an offer to IHC without any prior discussion with Commissioners Liston and Ramsay or with any Transition Board members other than those employed at the hospital, and Houston and Oldham. Commissioners' Reaction Liston appeared upset as she read the letter. "I totally disagree with this," said Liston. "I don't agree with that that IHC is the only option." Ramsay said, "Well, it probably can't hurt anything, let's wait and see what ..." "Eric Packer told me that we needed to do this," said Dodds. "Again, the thing that drives this for me the thing that totally drives this is , retirement. And I'm hearing rumblings that they are not going to let us go with the state retirement ... That really puts us in a bad position with anybody but IHC if we don't ..." Liston broke in, "But isn't it premature to just guess...? In fact, Tom Hatch said he would bring in legislation if he had to." Twitchell, who hadn't seen the letter, asked, "Did you make the proposal already? Did you send them the letter already? RHMC Meeting Canceled By Commissioner and Clerk "We did," said Dodds. "They're IHC going to make us a proposal today at 3 o'clock." "IHC or the other outfit or both?" asked Ramsay. County Clerk Camille Moore, said, "IHC. We canceled the other." Ramsay, 'That other group Rural Health Management Corporation Corpor-ation is canceled out?" Moore said, ''Cause IHC wanted to talk to us today and asked that we ask the Stoddard group RHMC to hold off until they had a chance to talk to them." Ramsay, "Oh, did they?" "We've got their proposal," said Moore who also said she had faxed copies to Liston and Ramsay over the weekend. Both Liston and Ramsay said they had come to the commission meeting expecting to meet with RHMC for discussion of RHMC's proposal. Dodds said he didn't want them to think they had to make a decision deci-sion on IHC's proposal that would be forthcoming at their 3 p.m. meeting scheduled with the Transition Trans-ition Board. Employee Retirement Issue "I agree this is a little premature," said Dodds, "but the timing had to be, according to the sources I had had to be today. . . . I think we need to pursue this retirement issue no matter who is going to run the hospital," he said. " I think the retirement issue needs to be turned over to the county. I think we need to pursue that to the bitter end." The commission had earlier discussed the possibility of the hospital employees' retirement package being included with the county's plan. "And how," asked Liston, " can they the hospital employees not want that money? It's so much better than the one they currently have." Twitchell, who still had not seen the letter, and only heard the portions discussed, asked Dodds, "Did you give them IHC a letter to prompt them to make a proposal or is it just conversation?" "I wrote a letter," said Dodds, "and said if we would give you the letter, would you run the hospital? She asked for a copy of the (See HOSPITAL on page 2A) I, iL HOSPITAL From From Front Page letter. Dodds said that he tried to call all the board members over the weekend but couldn't get very many of them. "Well, I cannot believe it," said Ramsay. "I wanted to look at the proposal from Rural Health." Moore produced copies of it. Twitchell asked the three commissioners if they had discussed the letter before Dodds sent it. "No," said Dodds, "I made that decision myself." Twitchell, reading the letter for the first time, "... that's pretty strong to say that they IHC are the only option." Dodds suggested that the offer was just a "proposition that's put on the table. We want to hear what they will do." "Sounds good," said Ramsay. "I was afraid nobody would be very happy about this," Dodds said, "but I felt it was something that I needed to do because of the time frame we were working under. But we are not committed today." Liston and Twitchell Question Sudden Changes "Well, I'm really confused," said Liston because they've IHC told us three times they weren't interested inter-ested in doing it." "And as of Tuesday or Wednesday Wednes-day night when I talked to you, Maloy," said Twitchell, " I thought things were looking very well for IHC possibly even making the employees whole dollar-for-dollar guarantee on their retirement. So what turned around so quickly from our previous meeting?" Dodds said that Packer had provided information that "they IHC would be talking about us up there and if we wanted to make them a proposition, it needed to be done because they were meeting today Apr. 24.." "... If Rural Health Management Manage-ment Corporation got hold of this letter that we were offering the whole sales tax," said Liston, "then they would feel like they were entitled to the whole sales tax as well." The commission went on to other matters for the balance of the morning and early afternoon. Hospital Transition Board Commission Meeting The Hospital Transition Board meeting began at 3 p.m. with all board members except Dr. Shurtliff present, and he arrived approximately approxi-mately an hour into the meeting. Also present was Jon Hoopes, IHC Regional Operating Officer who had met with the board at its previous meeting. Hoopes said that he had seen a draft of Dodds' letter, but not the final version. "Nor had anyone else at IHC when I talked with them on Friday," he said. "But, according to Eric, we knew one was coming and we saw a draft of one that Eric had. No Executive Session" Twitchell suggested that an executive session might be in order and Eric Packer and Jon Hoopes were asked to step out briefly. The clerk reminded them tnat an executive session required a motion. Ramsay motioned, but there was no second and no roll call vote was taken. When Ramsay learned that Hoopes already had a draft copy of the letter he said, " I don't see any point of going into executive session then." They did not enter into executive session. Twitchell Questions Letter Twitchell said, "I have a problem with how this letter went forth and that it wasn't ..." Dodds interjected, "I'll take full responsibility for the problem. The problem was that we had a sense of urgency to get this out." "Okay," said Twitchell, " and I have a real point of order on that sense of urgency, so we can take it up in public meeting, but I want ' everybody to have a foundation of what's going on." Dodds reiterated that "it's just an offer," and John Houston added, "Just a point of discussion." Hatch - Shares Responsibility "I'll take some of the responsibility," said Ron Hatch, "because the word that came from IHC ... was that they didn't know if we were interested in a contract with them and we felt I felt and I conveyed this to Commissioner Dodds and I talked to John Houston and I did try to call you and get hold of you." Twitchell said, "Every other person on earth last week that needed me, got me." Twitchell Asks For Board Poll She expressed concern that other board members coming in had not read the letter and asked that the board be polled as to who knew before or after it was sent or still knew nothing about it. She said that those who knew it was being sent included Dodds, Packer, Hatch, Houston, Shurtliff and Oldham. "None of us from the other side of the county knew," she said. Dodds acknowledged that "I probably overstepped my bounds, but I just felt a certain sense of urgency ... to bring IHC to the table and see what they'll do with that offer." Twitchell said she believed the same objective could have been accomplished in the same time frame with a little more consensus of opinion, "and if the board doesn't have a problem with it as a board, I have a problem with it as a citizen and with my commission. "When we left our meeting two weeks ago," continued Twitchell, Twit-chell, "the group that was supposed to be on the agenda today was Rural Health Management Corporation. We were supposed to be sent pro formas to be studied prior to today. I want to know who authorized you addressing Dodds to go ahead and put that aside and cancel Rural Health's presentation today? Liston added, "The reason that we were to be here today is because we asked them RHMC to come back today because we didn't want to put it off any longer." "Well," said Dodds, "You've got to give me credit for that." "And Maloy," Liston said, "It's that I think it's premature, and when you wanted to send the other letter, we told you that it was premature !" "I can tell you," said Dodds, "that we had to put this on the table now or forget about it ... let's see how they react to it." Ramsay Says Let's Listen; Liston Says No Ramsay said he thought they should listen to IHC "now that they're here," but Liston said, '1 think that it goes against my understanding of what we were going to do and that is choose the one we thought was right." Dodds said, "The only reason, in my opinion, that IHC is the only option, or the best option, is because of the retirement, and whether we can get that changed or not, I don't know." (See HOSPITAL on page 4-A) HOSPITAL From From Page 2A Hatch said that there were other reasons and that he had sent a long list of IHC services pages and pages compiled by hospital employees to send to RHMC to aid them in preparing their proposal. pro-posal. He said that he had made phone calls to employees at RHMC-operated Gunnison Valley Hospital and Nephi hospital for opinions and found dissatisfaction." "But Ron," said Liston, "... I think that should have been our opportunity to do that ... so that we would have been able to talk to them and make a correct decision." Hatch said there had been no decisions made yet and Liston reminded him that he Hatch had called and "probably talked to Maloy " "Yes, I did," said Hatch. Liston continued, " and gave him the idea that it was something that had to be done. And so, it did take the decision out of our hands, more or less." Hatch replied that the person he had talked to at IHC, who didn't want to be named, had said '"that letter needs to be mailed today if you guys are interested in having IHC involved.' That's how urgent it sounded. And I don't think there's any damage done. I mean, this Dodds letter isn't an offer. It came from, signed Maloy Dodds County Commissioner." Twitchell objected, "It's an offer that bears my portion of it as a board member ... over the number of years I've watched this commission commis-sion and other commissions act, anytime there's been something imperative that ... you can at least get hold of one or more board members or commissioners, if not both." Liston said, "And Ron, I disagree disa-gree with that letter because it says, 'this is the best Garfield County' not Maloy Dodds 'can possibly offer IHC and we are hoping you will carefully consider the devastating effect it would have if IHC pulled out of Garfield County.'" Hatch: "And I hope that the commission takes that because I really believe it would have a devastating effect." "But what I'm saying," said Liston, "is that it takes the decision out of our hands, as to our part in it and I know that, and Maloy, I thought you knew where I was because I had told you . . ." "I knew. I knew exactly," said Dodds, " but the point is, I guess I couldn't get hold of you or Clare. I just left messages at both places." "To be honest with you," Liston said, "this took me totally by surprise. I didn't even know about it until Clare told me on the way over here this morning. I hadn't seen the letter until I got here and I didn't know that Rural Health was off the agenda." Dodds replied, "Well, we can discuss this all day. We're not going any place with this. They're here. I would suggest we get them Eric Packer and Jon Hoopes and listen to what they have to say. This is water under the bridge. You've chastized me enough." Ramsay said, "So, let's move out of executive session. I move that. And invite them them back in and hear what they have to say." Twitchell reminded them that they had never entered into executive exec-utive session. Hoopes and Packer returned, but made no proposal in behalf of IHC saying they were not prepared to make a proposal because they, too had just learned of the letter. |