Mr. Chairman, fellow Trustees, and members of the Estes Park community:
My goals as a Trustee of the Park Hospital District are to ensure excellent health care for the residents and visitors of Estes Park for the foreseeable future. I want to reiterate my support for an “affiliation” with UCHealth; it could be stabilizing and transformative. I strongly support a deal, but not just any deal. This is now in the attorney general’s hands.
I want to acknowledge the anxiety and concern of the hospital employees, medical staff, and community during this waiting period.
Supporting the affiliation does not mean abandoning oversight and governance.
We need to regain the trust of our community, and we must ensure that our physicians and hospital staff are engaged, happy, and feel supported and valued, but I have several concerns about the performance and productivity of our Board of Directors.
Our primary duties as board members include developing strategy, performing CEO oversight, and setting policy. We have been together for three months and have done very little in any of these realms, and as Trustees, we have a fiduciary responsibility to this community, which we are not discharging.
Our strategy so far appears to be to do as little as possible and hope and pray that the acquisition by UCHealth is approved by the Attorney General ASAP. It appears that our goal is to be placeholders and leave our issues to UCHealth to sort out because we collectively lack the will and the ability to do so ourselves.
I reject that.
I have asked that we carry out our fiduciary responsibilities to run this hospital and develop a plan in the event that the agreement is not swiftly approved by the attorney general or that UCH pulls out of the deal.
I have been ignored.
As for CEO oversight, arguably our most important function, we have done absolutely nothing. We have overlooked oversight. This appears to me to be a continuation of the prior board’s approach.
This hospital is not well-run.
I have asked that we conduct a CEO performance evaluation, which our bylaws require to be done every May. The result: nothing so far but delay and obstruction.
I have requested that this be done by an independent third party to ensure an objective and fair result, and have, incredibly, encountered resistance to that approach.
I have asked to see the CEO’s job description and the employment contract: nothing.
I have asked for an accounting of the $300,000 in unbudgeted surprise legal expenses from April of this year: nothing.
I have asked to see the purported comprehensive assessment that was done justifying the need for an “affiliation.” The result: inaction by our board chairman and CEO.
I reached out to our prior board chair by email. The result: crickets.
I have been forced to submit a CORA request to access information I should have received within a day.
I have asked to revise the hospital employee grievance policy since it does not properly outline an appropriate means for addressing complaints about senior leadership team members. The result: nothing.
I have asked the CEO, privately and publicly, to schedule a meeting of the board joint conference committee, which exists to facilitate communication between physician leadership, the board, and the CEO. This has not happened despite the CEO’s publicly stated promise to set it up.
I asked that EPH assign email addresses for all board members so we could communicate with constituents and promote transparency – no joy.
I asked for an employee satisfaction survey and a community needs assessment. The answer: NEIN!!! I asked for an accounting of all employees who were dismissed after signing NDAs and what their severance pay cost the hospital. The answer: NYET!!
This is just a partial list.
Our financial reports are always late. The board treasurer must ask to see them. Our monthly end-of-the-month board meetings are performative and give little information about how this community’s hospital is really doing.
Middle management has been decimated, and the hospital’s organizational chart is incoherent and riddled with holes. There has been no ED nurse manager for months.
This board is perpetually tripping over itself on its way to its next CORA violation. And just to put a fine point on it, these are repeated violations of the State’s Open Records Act. The board has remained non-transparent.
As for policy development, we have done nothing yet.
Some in this community believe the acquisition with UCHealth is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It could be, and I hope it is, but nothing in the deal obligates UCH to much of anything. And if UCH pulls out of this deal after a few years, which they have every right to do according to the contract, this hospital will probably be in dire straits.
I have been sounding the alarm for ten months. The prior board was opaque, secretive, and uninformative at best. This board leadership has chosen obstructive politics instead of cooperative management of this hospital. Does someone have something to hide? It is almost as if the board’s motto is the old saying: Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-acquisitions.
I want to let the people who voted for me in May know what has transpired over the last three months. The road ahead looks even bumpier unless this board chooses a better path forward.
This board and hospital administration have become an embarrassment. It is time for this board to step up, do the work, and do the right thing. If we can not improve our performance as a board, we must consider a change of leadership.
Thomas E. Leigh, M.D., is a retired emergency physician who worked at Estes Park Health for nine years.