“Vote Against.”
Those who weren’t wearing buttons pressed with that message Thursday night were either holding them in their hands or had them hidden away. It seemed few of the more than 100 people packed into the chancery courtroom of the old Oktibbeha County Courthouse had slipped undetected past the Friends of OCH table set up just outside the building’s front door where the buttons were being distributed.
The crowd had turned out for a town hall-style “informational session” about the potential sale of county-owned OCH Regional Medical Center, an issue voters will decide whether to authorize in a Nov. 7 special election. But from the outset of the meeting, it morphed into a rally for an impassioned group decidedly against a hospital sale — many of whom were either current or former OCH staff members.
Facing the crowd, District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard stood alone behind a lectern at the front of the courtroom. The other four county supervisors, three of whom publicly support a hospital sale, didn’t show.
That did not go over well.
“Honestly, we don’t trust the majority of the board of supervisors,” Will Carter, an OCH anesthesiologist, told Howard. “We trust you. You’re the only one here.”
Howard announced Monday he would host Thursday’s information session. He didn’t speak for any of the other supervisors, other than to offer regrets for District 1’s John Montgomery who was out of town on vacation.
“I’m not here to pit supervisor against supervisor,” Howard said. “All I can say is they were all invited.”
Howard and Montgomery have consistently opposed proceeding toward a sale of OCH, though they’ve voted in the minority since 2016.
“We want to applaud you guys for standing up, and not buckling under the pressure,” Friends of OCH member Allen McBroom interjected at one point in the meeting, speaking of Howard and Montgomery and eliciting a burst of applause.
Meeting topics
By meeting time, most of those in attendance knew Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation, based in Memphis, Tennessee, and Tupelo-based North Mississippi Health Services submitted proposals to purchase OCH.
Supervisors reviewed those proposals in executive session on Sept. 26, and finally released the bidder identities, under intense public pressure, about an hour before Thursday’s meeting began.
Both proposals laid out plans for capital investments, expanded services and OCH employee retention, supervisors indicated after reviewing the bids.
On Thursday, though Howard couldn’t offer more specifics due to confidentiality agreements supervisors signed with the companies, he did say the proposals were much more ambiguous than a concrete bid.
“We don’t have a definite proposal because there were a lot of ‘ifs,'” Howard said. “(They said) ‘We intend to invest. Our intention is to grow. We intend to do this or that if …'”
In response to other audience questions, Howard said the county has paid about $300,000 toward the effort to sell the hospital, from hiring Ted Woodrell as a consultant, Butler Snow as legal advisers and Stroudwater and Associates to conduct a hospital analysis.
This is the supervisors’ second effort to privatize OCH, following a failed initiative in 2012, led by District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer, to transfer operations to Tennessee-based Capella Healthcare.
Howard said even if voters shot down authorizing an OCH sale on Nov. 7, there were no guarantees the effort wouldn’t restart soon unless supervisors voted for a moratorium on trying to privatize the hospital.
“I’ll be happy to make that motion,” Howard said. “… (Bringing it up again) does nothing but keep the community in turmoil,” he said. “That’s not fair to the taxpayers.”
Former hospital administrator Sonny Kelly, who led OCH for 38 years, and McBroom were among the loudest critics of the absent consultant Woodrell — accusing him of conflicts of interest throughout the process (the Stroudwater representative who helped with the OCH analysis once worked for Woodrell at another firm and the county’s agreement with Woodrell apparently includes a “success” fee upon the final sale of the hospital to be paid by the purchaser).
Kelly, who referred to a “consultant” as “anybody 50 miles from home who has a briefcase” said he’s certain Woodrell wouldn’t collect his success fee.
“I’m not worried about losing this vote,” he said. “We’re not going to lose this vote.”
If the vote for the sale goes through, Howard said confidentiality agreements expire and he wants to make open all possible information about the process.
A ‘quiet majority’
After the meeting, Howard told The Dispatch he wasn’t particularly surprised the crowd was one-sided. He would not speculate, however, on whether it was an accurate sample of the overall electorate.
“You never know what’s going to happen on election day,” he said.
Bricklee Miller, who supports the hospital sale and spoke to The Dispatch by phone Thursday night, said a “quiet majority” side with her because “our county hospital is failing.”
Miller has regularly cited, to the news media and on social media, OCH has lost $5.1 million in 2017 and has an occupancy rate of 22 percent.
“If the vote is to sell (OCH), the citizens have the opportunity to lower taxes and get every tax dollar invested over the years in OCH and put it in a trust for the future of the county,” she said. “Plus, we’ll have a nationally recognized system that has the capital to invest in the future of health care in the county while advancing services and growing jobs.”
OCH has adamantly refuted it is losing that much money. As for the occupancy rate, a hospital spokesperson told The Dispatch this morning the 22 percent only represented in-patient stays. In 2016 alone, the spokesperson said OCH conducted 40,000 outpatient procedures. She also noted patients can stay overnight at OCH for observation and not be counted as “in-patient.”
Miller said she didn’t attend Thursday’s town hall because of a work obligation, but some who were there roasted Miller for “deliberately misrepresenting” OCH’s finances to sway the vote.
However, Miller contends she is telling the truth. And while the anti-sale crowd may be the loudest, supporters abound in silence.
“There are so many people on the (pro-sale) side, who because of derogatory personal attacks, are very quiet in their stance,” she said. “I have encouraged people not to speak up, especially when I see so many below-the-belt comments (on Facebook). I just encourage them not to respond.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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