Parish council mute on Franklin hospital ruckus

St. Mary Parish Council members took no action Wednesday on the controversy surrounding the board that oversees Franklin Foundation Hospital.
Two weeks ago Hospital Service District 1 board members who are appointed by the parish council terminated the contracts of internist Dr. Steven McPherson and general surgeon Dr. Donna Tesi.
The physicians were each given a 90-day notice without cause in which time the board instructed hospital chief Executive Officer Claudia Eisenmann to renegotiate their contracts.
The action came in a special meeting of the board on Oct. 29 in front of a standing room only crowd that was mostly in support of the physicians.
Those supporters and many more crowded the parish council meeting room Wednesday.
Those to speak on the subject were Evelyn Salone, Dr. Brent Allain and Skippy Hebert.
“My concern is this hospital and its reputation, the staff that’s there and the care that we receive there,” Salone said.
She added that in the past she was a victim of a personal tragedy in which “without Franklin Foundation I would have not survived.
“We’re taxpayers, we pay for this and I expect to see something resolved with the issues that are going on,” she said. “It all just seems kind of fishy.”
She asked for more transparency in the hospital board’s proceedings.
She added that she was at a hospital in central Louisiana last week and said while there she discerned that “Franklin Foundation Hospital has become a joke and a laugh in the medical field.” Salone said doctors at that hospital had heard about the “big upheaval” at FFH and asked her, “What doctor wants to go to work there, now?”
Allain, who is an attending physician at the hospital, said the FFH board is dysfunctional and its actions along with those of the hospital’s chief executive officer “are polarizing and will definitely tarnish the reputation of this fine institution which good people of Franklin and the surrounding area have trusted for over sixty years.”
Eisenmann is an employee of Quorum Health Resources, the hospital’s management firm. She has been on board as CEO since early June.
Allain cautioned the council that if the terminations stand, the hospital could lose as many as three additional physicians who would also leave.
“It is time now to act and dismiss this board and (the) Quorum Health Resources CEO,” he concluded.
“The main problem is, we don’t know why,” the terminations were made, Hebert said. It is “affecting a lot of people and if you don’t have doctors, you don’t need a hospital.”
He told the council that “this is coming back to y’all.”
There was no discussion by the council during the meeting, however, Councilman David Hanagriff said after adjournment the board would be given the chance to rescind the terminations before the council would consider taking action at its next meeting, which is next Wednesday, Nov. 19.