Mendocino Coast District Hospital Finance Committee January 29 2019

Tonight’s meeting was the first with John Redding as the Chair and without Bob Edwards. Committee Chair John Redding posted a strict agenda, with specific time guidelines, and accomplished his goal of ending before 6pm. Kudos to John Redding and the other committee members for sticking to the agenda. There was plenty of time for public comment and everyone that wanted to speak received the time needed. Margaret Paul asked if the public needed to pursue a convoluted processes to determine whom voted for terminating Bob Edwards Contract. Steve Lund replied by announcing the he voted no and Jessica Greenberg abstained, while all of the other Board members voted yes, to terminate Bob Edwards’ contract.

After introductions and backgrounds by the committee members, the subject of Nuclear Medicine came up. The head of the radiology department, Dr. Perry asked how all of the decision making and planning to get rid of a Nuclear Medicine position was performed without his department’s participation or awareness! Dr. Perry distributed some graphs detailing how the position under consideration only spent 10% of their time on Nuclear Medicine, the rest on x-rays and other routine radiology tasks. Dr. Perry requested a review of the process used to make the decision to cut that position in his department. Dr. Perry also touted the previous education program, crediting it with increased usage of the facilities. Chair Redding made a commitment to look into the issue and develop a process to make these decisions more transparent, with input from all of the parties involved.

Later in the meeting there was discussion around investigating how such a situation could have occurred in the first place and fixing that process.

A commitment to preparing a strategic financial plan and establishing realistic goals in 2019, along with a marketing plan got this committee off to a quick start for 2019.