This Publisher’s short Commentary Regarding the Quasi-Private Meeting Regarding the BCMC | Eastern North Carolina Now

    On June 17, 2010, there occurred a meeting between the Beaufort County Medical Center (BCMC) Board of Trustees and the unofficial medical community serving the medical needs of the people of Beaufort County and the region. Local media sources--the Beaufort Observer and Beaufort County Now - who represent the news to the growing number of our county’s citizenry who access their information via computers, were informed by knowledgeable sources that this aforementioned meeting was closed to the media. Therefore, we could not attend.

    Obviously, the Washington Daily News was given a separate and most different notification from the BCMC management team. Of the three legitimate news sources in Beaufort County, only the Washington Daily News was present at that meeting.

    A constituent recently sent me a note requesting that the Beaufort County Commissioners take a more active part in the unraveling of the Beaufort County Medical Center’s administration of this health facility. She stated that the commissioners should have known that the local hospital’s finances were bad and getting worse.

    I concur. We should have known. In my initial years as a commissioner, when Kenneth Ragland was Beaufort County Hospital's Chief Executive Officer, we would meet with the hospital’s board of directors, and would subsequently be shown the yearly profit / loss statement. In the two years that I took a break from the Beaufort County Commissioners, the hospital’s management team stopped inviting the commissioners to share the analysis of the health center’s financial health. It was not until we appointed Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson, as the commissioner’s representative, that we learned of the terrible financial condition of the BCMC.

    Now we are told that BCMC management feels that we must in all haste merge with the University Health Systems of East Carolina, or run the risk of insolvency. This from the same management team who felt it wise to keep the Beaufort County Commissioners in the dark, until they needed us to acquiesce to their wishes.

    Consequently, I hope that it is not the continued intent of the Beaufort County Medical Center to keep the Beaufort County Commissioners, their constituents, and the citizenry of Beaufort County in an information blackout unless that information be disseminated by a source more friendly to their purposeful intent. I am not casting aspersions here. I just find it odd that the Washington Daily News was allowed to participate in the coverage of that meeting, and the Beaufort Observer and Beaufort County Now were told not to attend.

    Publisher’s Note: Our editor, Brandia Deatherage, has requested the following:

Mrs. Shadle,
(cc: Mr. Bedsole,)

I would like to submit a written request that Beaufort County Now be included on the Beaufort County Medical Center media notification list for any open or closed meeting held by the BCMC Board of Trustees, as well as the BCMC Executive Committee. I would also like to request that Beaufort County Now be notified of the public or private nature of said meetings.

Several members on the Board of Trustees as well as several medical professionals were under the impression that their June 17 meeting would be private. Concurrently, two of Beaufort County's news outlets who have been covering the hospital financial/ownership situation were under the same impression and, therefore, did not attend. For the sake of providing the public - who, as you know, have an ownership interest in the hospital - with a well-rounded view of the public meeting, I respectfully request that Beaufort County Now and the Beaufort Observer be provided with a copy of the audio tape of the meeting at the beginning of next week, after it has exhausted its, as you said, 'private' purpose of compiling the minutes. I'm sure that I will need it to help flesh-out the minutes, so that I can provide the public with an accurately informed account of the meeting. Otherwise, I will have to rely on interviews, which might be more opinionated and incendiary than factual, for explanation.

Brandia Deatherage, editor
Beaufort County Now