Beaufort/Hyde losing Pungo Hospital | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    The people DownEast, specifically in the eastern portions of Beaufort County north of the Pamlico River and those in Hyde County are being faced with a double whammy - the loss of the inpatient facility at Pungo Hospital in Belhaven and the loss of a reported 127 jobs, one of the largest employers in Belhaven. Vidant Health is closing Pungo and replacing it with an outpatient facility that will employ about 30 people.

    The decision was made by mostly Greenville residents who serve on the Vidant Pungo Board. They are reported to be: Dr. Marcus Albernaz, Phillip K. Flowers, Bruce E. Gray, W. David Harris, Thomasine S. Kennedy and A. Ray Rogers and well as Vidant CEO David Herman. Immediate efforts by the Observer team have been unsuccessful in finding anyone in Beaufort or Hyde counties that were involved in the decision, either on a consulting or voting basis.

    Herman is reported to have told local media sources that residents of Beaufort and Hyde needing inpatient services can use Vidant Beaufort or Vidant in Greenville. There were no indications that Vidant would try to place the displaced staff at Pungo.

    Rumors picked up by the Observer team have speculated that Pungo was on the chopping block for some time now. In fact, there are those in Beaufort who believe the issue at Pungo is directly related to Beaufort Hospital. These sources tell us that Beaufort is continuing to struggle to remain solvent, even after all of the hulabaloo about Vidant "saving" Beaufort's hospital. Our sources tell us that there is much dissatisfaction among some of the staff about what they perceive as arbitrary decisions being made that are not in the best interests of patient care. Of course, those sources will not speak for attribution but the speculation is that Pungo is being closed in order to funnel more patients to Beaufort and that this is primarily what the "24/7 clinic" mentioned in the Vidant press release is intended to do: Funnel patients to Beaufort or Greenville.

    We have also learned that a number of Belhaven and Hyde leaders are upset that they were not involved in the decision to close Pungo. A rally is being planned for Thursday evening in Belhaven to express support for Pungo. The meeting will be at 6:00 p.m. at the Town Hall, according to Mayor Adam O'Neal.

    Mayor O'Neal told us: "the people of Belhaven and adjoining Beaufort and Hyde County are upset that the decision to close Pungo was made without any involvement by the community leadership. When Vidant bought our hospital they talked about supporting the health care needs of our area. They talked about community participation. Yet they made this decision without our being included. We are not sure they considered all of the alternatives. This is a crushing blow for Belhaven. Pungo is the largest employer in the town and it will also be a tremendous blow to the town in the loss of electrical revenue, although we have a substantial investment in utility infrastructure to support Pungo. It will have a negative multiplier effect on the entire community. The very least they could have done would have been to include us in the decisions."

    The sting from the closure of Pungo to prop up Vidant's bottom line is exacerbated, according to some we have talked to, by what is viewed as exorbitant salaries paid some of the top people in Greenville. According to the 2011 IRS Form 990, three of the top people (McRae, Herman and Holston) were paid $4,950,636.

    Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson, who worked long and hard for Beaufort County to retain ownership of Beaufort Hospital when Vidant was trying to take it over said: "Well, I hate to say 'see, I told you so' but all of these people who argued for Vidant to take our hospital because it 'was a non-profit' and would insure quality health care should see in this decision that the 'bottom line' is what it is all about."

    Click here to go to Vidant's press release on the closing of Pungo.