Local

LHS board, dissenting doctors hold meeting on hospital issues

By ANDIE LEATHERMAN, LTN Staff Writer

March 4, 2002 - Board members from Lincoln Health Systems, which owns Lincoln Medical Center, and a group of local physicians met last week to talk about the doctors’ concerns with hospital management.

Dr. David Nachamie and Dr. Timothy Dunn spent an hour Wednesday afternoon with hospital Board Chairman Darrell Gettys, and mediation committee members Bob Cantwell, Harry Huss, Harry Brogden and Bill Kaplan.

Nachamie and Dunn are part of CHAMP, Citizens Health Alliance with Medical Physicians, an advocacy group for area private doctors. Some of their complaints center around management practices of hospital President Pete Acker.

It was the first time board members have met to discuss the doctors’ concerns without Acker present, a positive sign according to the CHAMP physicians.

“They are starting to realize there are problems,” Nachamie said.

During the meeting, Nachamie told mediation committee members that Acker has personally attacked doctors who criticize his policies. Nachamie said Acker began the personal attacks after he addressed the full board in 1998, warning them Acker’s leadership was putting LMC in perilous financial shape.

Nachamie said he told committee members that hospital staff have been warned not to talk with select doctors about management issues. Nachamie said he showed committee members a copy of an employee’s paycheck. A note on the check read, “the squeaky wheel gets replaced,” he said. Nachamie also said that the hospital stopped exit surveys with outgoing employees because these generate negative reports about management.

Nachamie said he fears the climate of intimidation can negatively affect patient care.

“The bottom line is problems have to be talked about,” Nachamie said.

Nachamie is hopeful that the board is beginning to change.

CHAMP is asking for a stronger presence — 50 percent — of physicians on the board.

Hospital by-laws require Lincoln County Commissioners to approve most board nominees.

In late 2001, a majority of commissioners said they would turn down the LHS choice — Dr. Gordon Crowell as a board member. He was generally considered a hospital insider. Crowell withdrew his name from consideration before the vote was taken.

The Board of Commissioners has since asked the LHS and the dissenting doctors to reach an agreement on a board selection.

Nachamie also took issue with Acker’s 1996 decision that the hospital hire physicians, calling the move “five years behind the times.” He said that if more physicians had been on the board, the practice would not have been approved.

Nachamie said the private physicians created $3 million in debt for the hospital.

However, Gettys defended Acker’s performance during an interview Saturday, saying the criticisms lacked support.

“Nothing they brought out had proof to it,” Gettys said.

Hospital officials say a marketing research firm did not identify Acker as a problem.

“Nothing pointed to him as a problem,” Gettys said.

Gettys said Acker’s willingness to bring researchers to the hospital proves he is open to both positive and negative feedback.

Over the past two months, marketers from Park Dansan Healthcare surveyed groups of randomly selected doctors, hospital employees and past patients.

Board members heard the results of the study during a closed executive session of Wednesday’s board meeting. The board meeting was separate from the mediation committees meeting with CHAMP representatives.

Gettys said the meeting was closed to the press and the public because he did not want competing hospitals to learn what area LMC was trying to improve.

During the open portion of Wednesday’s board meeting, one area of the marketers’ research was briefly discussed: the entrance to the hospital’s emergency department needs improvement, researchers said.

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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