Action tabled on FFH board after public comment

A decision on the fate of the Franklin Foundation Hospital board was delayed by the St. Mary Parish Council Wednesday.
“It has come to knowledge recently that there are some other situations that are affecting the board that I believe that would actually benefit my cause in the removal of this board,” Councilman David Hanagriff told a standing room only crowd of close to 150 people. “That is being investigated as we speak. And because of that, after public comment I will table this until next week’s meeting.”
Due to the Christmas holiday the council will hold its second meeting of the month a week early on Dec. 17.
Hanagriff’s item on Wednesday’s agenda read, “Discussion and action relative to the removal of the Hospital Service District No. 1 Board of Commissioners for gross misconduct while in office and disorderly operations of Franklin Foundation Hospital.”
Hanagriff and several other council members have attended recent Franklin Foundation Hospital board meetings that have caused an outpouring of support for two physicians whose contracts with the hospital have been in jeopardy.
In special and regular meetings over the past seven weeks the board has terminated without cause, reinstated and since extended the current contracts of Drs. Steve McPherson, internist, and Donna Tesi, general surgeon. Amid the public outcry, the board voted four weeks ago to honor both contracts until March 31 and asked hospital CEO Claudia Eisenmann to begin new contract negotiations. Prior to the board’s October meeting when the contracts were terminated McPherson’s contract was good through March and Tesi’s through September.
Last week the board along with Eisenmann retained legal counsel with the threat of defamation, slander and libel litigation against two other physicians, Drs. Brent Allain and Randall Horton. It also voted to remove board commissioner Allan Von Werder from his seat as board chairman.
In public comments Wednesday, the council heard from attorney Bill Bourgeois who said he was retained by McPherson and Tesi after their contracts were terminated.
In seeking answers as to why the contracts were terminated, Bourgeois said he was told by the hospital administration’s legal counsel that “the doctors needed to stop being so disruptive.
“Apparently the medical staff’s vote of no confidence in the administrator was perceived to be disruptive,” he said. “I was also told by the same attorney that Dr. McPherson was a bully and he made nurses cry. The people in a position to know these things confirmed to me that Dr. McPherson is not a bully and he has good bedside manners and good communications with the nurses. In navigating through this issue I found that the ‘disruptive physician’ label doesn’t fit. That term relates to behaviors that jeopardize patient care patient safety.”
He added that, “Anyone who attempts to label the medical staff’s criticism of the administrator as disruptive is misusing that label.”
Bourgeois said the medical staff operates under its own set of bylaws and is required by law to approve administrator appointments by the board.
When the medical staff approved a vote of no confidence against Eisenmann, Bourgeois said, “The better course of action would have been for the administrator and for the board to explore what concerns caused this vote.”
If that had been followed up with talks with the medical staff to address those concerns, “I don’t think we’d be here tonight,” Bourgeois said. “Instead the controversy continued to brew and the board voted anyway to terminate those contracts. The medical staff confided to me that the hospital acted like a dictatorship.”
He said that perhaps acting under public pressure, the board voted on Nov. 14 to rescind the terminations.
“But then it took the administration 21 days to get around to giving the doctors formal written notice as the contracts require,” he said.
That delay “only served to further worry everyone affected by these circumstances,” he said. “Also troubling is that the story changed. We stopped hearing about disruptive physicians and for the first time we started hearing that the terminations were really about finances and that the board actually terminated the contracts to bring the doctors to the negotiating table.”
He said if you asked 100 hospital administrators if they would terminate contracts without talking to the physicians first with a plan to bring them to the negotiating table, “a hundred would tell you that it would be insane to do that.”
He noted that McPherson’s existing contract was only eight months old and only 5½ months ago, Eisenmann had amended the benefits’ section of the contract.
“Several members of the medical staff believe that the administrator and the board retaliated against the medical staff be voting to terminate these contracts,” Bourgeois said. He added that vocal opposition to the administration and board’s actions by some members of the medical staff was protected by a free speech right.
“The board is supposed to represent the public’s interest in providing hospital and medical care in the district,” he said. “The administrator is supposed to be the board’s representative in daily matters and cooperate with the medical staff.
“In my view, since the arrival of the new administrator there has been very little cooperation with the medical staff,” Bourgeois said. “Instead she has served as a lightning rod and we’ve had confrontation and conflict. We have even seen the administrator retain an attorney who then threatened members of the medical staff who expressed their opinions with lawsuits unless they stopped being critical.”
Bourgeois said the administrator gave him new contracts for McPherson and Tesi on Dec. 5 with significant reductions in pay.
“The foundation of any relationship must be based on trust,” Bourgeois said. “Due to actual or perceived actions by the new administration the many of the physicians tell me that they have no trust in the current administration. Consequently they do not desire to continue to be involved with the hospital where they feel the situation has become toxic.”
He added that as well as losing Tesi’s surgery service and McPherson’s internist service, the hospital will likely also lose the orthopedic services of Dr. John Osborne “if the present crisis does not get solved soon.”
Those physicians and other members of the medical staff “are actively looking to practice elsewhere,” he said. “The availability of comprehensive health care and especially surgical services is vitally important to our community. … I promise you that it will be extremely difficult to recruit new physicians when they hear that many physicians at our hospital have no trust in the administration. … The medical staff is divided and the community is divided. The situation cannot continue like this.”
He concluded by urging the council take the appropriate steps “to move this situation forward.”
The council also heard from Dr. Sharad Gunda, a practicing pediatrician, and the board’s attorney, Russel Cremaldi, as well as several members of the public that included Mimi Brooks, Carolyn Cline, Heloise LeBlanc, Kay Schwitz, John O’Niell, Mike Kirkland, Pam Heffner, Tom Haligan, and Oray Rogers.
(To be continued Friday)