BOC tries to close the barn door after the horse is gone...and call it supporting Pungo Hospital | Eastern North Carolina Now

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

    appeared before the Commission and told them that he and most of the community were not satisfied with what Vidant CEO David Herman told those assembled at a community meeting last week (9-24-13). Herman made it sound like emergency services would continue to be adequate. What the Commissioners heard was that this is not entirely true.

    O'Neal told the board that there is grave concern about the adequacy of care that will be provided stroke and cardiac patients and that unless the facility is classified as an eligible hospital by Medicare that ambulances will not be authorized to take emergency patients there as they do now to Pungo. In the end the board voted to appoint a committee to participate with Belhaven leaders in working with Vidant. You can hear ONeal's presentation below:



    Later in the meeting Beaufort County Emergency Management Director John Pack briefed the board on the impact of closing Pungo on emergency medical services in the northeastern part of Beaufort and Hyde County. You can watch that presentation and discussion below:



    During the meeting, Commissioner Hood Richardson offered a motion that he argued would help prevent another event such as the closing of Pungo without prior community knowledge or involvement. Essentially he argued that the fundamental problem is the lack of competition in the health care delivery system in northeastern North Carolina and blamed that on Vidant having a state-protected monopoly. He suggested that if Beaufort Hospital had been leased to Community Health Systems (or some other competitor) that CHS would have offered Vidant competition and services would likely be more extensive and less expensive. You can listen to that presentation, motion and discussion in the video below:



    Commentary

    It's too late to save the horses by closing the barn door after the horses are gone. It's like Wal-Mart coming to town. The small local business don't stand a chance. Wal-Mart sucks millions out of the community and sends it to Arkansas, then to China or who know where. The Mom and Pop operations disappear. Once Wal-Mart is established, it is too late to try to save the Mom and Pops.

    Notwithstanding Robert Belcher's protestations, Hood is once again proven correct. All during the debate on what to do with the Beaufort County Hospital he kept saying that the loss of local control of the health care system was not in the people's best interest. And what Vidant has done with Pungo makes him look like a prophet. Belcher was one of Vidant's major cheerleaders, speaking at a public hearing advocating the Commissioners conveying Beaufort's health care system to Vidant. Likewise, Al Klemm, who spoke at the September 24 meeting, was a key vote to give the health care system to Vidant for a pittance (a loss of more than $150 million as we have documented here.)

    As Hood so correctly points out, were there competition in the delivery of health care in Beaufort County the people would be better off and all the pure BS that Belcher, Klemm and other Vidant supporters touted about Vidant being a better choice because it is a "non-profit" is now being shown to be the lie that it always was.

    Yes, we are cynical about Klemm, Belcher, Booth and Langley and others now trying to offer their concerns about Pungo. It was inevitable. And the same thing is likely to happen to Beaufort Hospital. These people gave Vidant absolute control not only of the health care system, but the land and buildings owned by the people of Beaufort County and did so without any contractual guarantees of the kind of services Vidant will provide. Herman made it abundantly clear, confirming what Hood said all along, that Vidant is most committed to its bottom line. It is siphoning off millions of health care dollars from Hyde and Beaufort County and taking them to Greenville. Then it says the service providers in Belhaven are not "breaking even" and refused to shift those dollars back into the local community where they were generated. And we predict that they will do the same again and again if it means they can move those resources to Pitt County to support the exorbitant salaries they are paying doctors and administrators there.

    The fundamental problem is that these non-profit hospitals suck up the revenue, most of which comes from the taxpayers and they and they alone decide what will be done with that revenue. They use outlying clinics and doctors' practices as a feeder system for Pitt. They do so with a decision-making system that includes no representatives of the people, but rather is controlled by a self-perpetuating governance system mostly controlled by the high salaried administrators. And they operate in secret. They make secret deals and refuse to disclose basic information to the public - such as allowing the press to sit in on these decision-making meetings. They use secret contracts they refuse to disclose to the public and much of what is decided even the board members do not know about.

    It is a corrupt system. The resolution to make Vidant and other non-profits subject to the Open Meetings and Public Records laws is just a start. The next step is to guarantee the people, through their elected representatives, have a voice in selecting the governing boards of these monopolies. Only then will situations like the closing of Pungo be addressed.