Last EPH Board meeting brings mixed feelings

There were fireworks and kudos at the final meeting of the Estes Park Health Board of Directors Thursday night.

With only 10 days left before Estes Park Health turns over all healthcare management to UCHealth, the agenda for board members called for one last formal action required before the transition to UCHealth takes place – approval of a resolution to complete and implement the affiliation as originally defined in the definitive agreement outlined between the two organizations in May.

However, before that agenda item could be discussed, under general board member comments, Tom Leigh took the opportunity to review his first six months as a board member since being elected on May 6.

“I want to start off by thanking the employees and the physicians at the hospital who have struggled through a number of very difficult years,” Leigh began. “Their commitment to this community has been extraordinary, and I want to thank them. I’d also like to thank my colleague here, Brigitte Foust, for dedicated and principled service to this board. I think her commitment to this community has been exemplary,”

Leigh’s positive comments ended there.

“I’d like to talk about some of the ways in which we have fallen short. We failed to perform meaningful oversight. We failed to develop strategy, acting instead as placeholders. We failed to adopt policies, particularly reforms, for how complaints about the leadership team are handled,” Leigh said.

“We failed to address serious concerns about the conduct of certain senior leaders. We failed to evaluate the CEO as required by our bylaws. We failed to confront the caustic work environment at Estes Park health. We failed to hold the CEO accountable for dismal financial performance, including declining clinic visits and surgeries,” Leigh continued.

“We failed to conduct a community needs assessment. We failed to survey hospital staff and physicians. We failed repeatedly to comply with Colorado’s Open Meeting Law. We failed to be transparent with the Estes Park community or to advocate successfully on their behalf,” Leigh said.

“We failed to respond appropriately to multiple CORA requests. We did not resolve the Estes Valley Voice lawsuit for which the district was required to pay legal fees,” Leigh said.

Foust simply said, “Dr. Leigh, I appreciate your push for accountability and transparency, and I was glad to stand with you on those principles, because this matters deeply to me, and I also want to thank our employers for all the hard work.”

Those comments outraged board member Steve Alper.

“I just find it extremely hypocritical that if you talk about transparency when you met with the Valley Voice without letting us know is incomprehensible. You went behind our back and who knows what for over two hours last week,” Alper said.

“There are privileged documents that Valley Voice gets. We don’t know how. That’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t know how they get there, but this has been going on before,” Alper said.

“Tom you were elected, so we are very aware of that. So the fact that you have repeatedly talked about this board not being transparent, and you go behind the board’s back to talk about Valley Voice, which has tried repeatedly to stop this agreement, which is not the will of the board, which is your fiduciary responsibility to uphold,” Alper said.

“You have repeatedly broken your fiduciary responsibility, and this stuff about you being holier than thou, and being heroes for transparency and open records is a sham. I think you’re blinded by arrogance. I’m tired of it. I have no trust in either one of you, and I seriously recommend you think about your standing on this board,” Alper said.

After completing its agenda by approving adopting the resolution cementing the affiliation transaction and naming Janet Zeschin and Alper to represent the board on the new UCHealth advisory board for the Estes Valley Medical Center, the board heard from one constituent.

Robert Franken, a retired leadership advisor in Catholic hospitals across the country, said he wanted to address the board to “say how proud I am of the work that you all have done, how important the work that you all have done is for this community.”

“I, for one, am appreciative of what you have done,” Franken told the board. “There have been arguments and there have been disagreements. That’s life. That’s how politics works. That’s how systems are functioned, and that’s how we come to the best and possible agreements that we can come to,” he said “It’s not about winners or losers,” Franken said.

“We’re all winners. We’re all winners because we’ve made a decision, and we will exist into the next decade because of what you have done here today. And for that, I am forever grateful, and I hope this community is forever grateful for the work that you have done, and the discussions, and the arguments, and the negotiation that has all taken place. It’s some of the hardest work that you will probably ever do. And it’s some of the best. Thank you so much,” Franken said.