McPherson gets contract extension; Tesi in ‘transition’

Dr. Steven McPherson has been granted a 30-day extension through April on his contract with Franklin Foundation Hospital but Dr. Donna Tesi will be in a 90-day transition period beginning Wednesday.
The board also approved a 90-day “termination agreement” on McPherson that would begin May 1 if a new contract agreement has not been reached by April 30.
That was the outcome Thursday of a three-hour meeting of the Hospital Service District 1 Board of Commissioners.
Board members spent two of those hours behind closed doors in executive session. At one point, raised voices and the pounding of the chairman’s gavel could be heard in the hallway outside of the hospital board room where a dozen or so anxious local residents awaited the board’s return.
The termination agreements give the physicians “90 days to transition into private practice, or whatever, and we would have a 90-day transition period for their patients,” said hospital interim Chief Executive Officer Craig Cudworth after the meeting. He added that terms of the physicians’ current contracts would be extended through the transition periods.
In special and regular meetings over the past six months, board members have terminated without cause, reinstated and then extended McPherson and Tesi’s current contracts until March 31. In that time, the hospital has seen the arrival and departure of Claudia Eisenmann as its chief executive officer.
Many local residents have attended all meetings of the board in support of McPherson, internist, and Tesi, general surgeon, since the controversy began.
In December, the St. Mary Parish Council retained the mediation services of attorney Gary McGoffin of the Durio, McGoffin, Stagg & Ackermann law firm to negotiate new contracts. An original $10,000 cap on his fee was later extended to $25,000 at a rate of $300 per hour. At the same parish council meeting in December an agenda item to consider removal of some or all hospital board members was pulled.
The actions Thursday were approved on 6-1 votes with Dr. Nick Accardo, retired, in opposition. Voting in favor were Didi Battle, Clegg Caffery, Dr. Roland Degeyter, Bobby Judice and Allan Von Werder. Chairman Eugene Foulcard only votes in case of a tie.
Accardo left the executive session and abstained from voting when the board took up the issue of a contract renewal for his wife Rebecca Accardo, OB/GYN. A three-year renewal on her contract was approved unanimously by the rest of the board.
In other recommendations by Cudworth, the board approved “a contractual review of medical staff bylaws,” and an “external peer review of the medical staff.”
It also gave the CEO permission to contact orthopedist Dr. John Osborne who who recently left FFH to practice in New Iberia, in regard to uncompleted medical records here.
In other discussions the board heard from Chief Financial Officer Ron Bailey that the hospital received a clean opinion on its 2014 fiscal year audit.
Bailey’s financial report indicated that the hospital lost $380,342 in the month of February bringing the year-to-date bottom line loss to $719,336 through five months of the fiscal year.