Correction: A comma was left out of the quote below that made it appear that Bryan Brady was the CFO of HaysMed. Bryan Brady is the vice president of physician practice administration and ancillary services. Michelle M. Beckner is the CFO. See a complete list of the administrative staff HERE.
"I think, in my opinion, the overall consensus is that we need to eliminate the entire administrative hierarchy of the top five with the CFO, Bryan Brady, but at the top of that food chain is Eddie Herrman," he said.
By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Several current and former doctors have come forward with criticism of the HaysMed administration.
Former HaysMed Dr. Wallace Michael Curry started a string of social media comments from concerned employees and patients after he shared his criticism of the HaysMed administration and the board for retaining CEO Edward Herrman.
SEE RELATED STORY: HaysMed issues statement on financial losses.
Other doctors and staff have joined the discord, saying the hospital is being mismanaged and that it does not have the staff needed to provide quality care.
Four doctors have recently left the hospital, including Dr. Wallace Michael Curry, longtime OBGYNs Drs. Lee Hodny and Joel Fort, and oncologist Dr. Anthony Acursso.
HaysMed has imposed noncompete contracts with its doctors, so if the doctors want to leave, for all intents and purposes, they have to leave the state. All four of the physicians above have left the state.
A physician who did not want his name published said he was considering leaving the hospital due to the lack of leadership from the administration and inadequate staffing.
He said HaysMed is a great hospital, but the current administration is putting making money over patient care and its staff. He said the entire executive staff needed to be fired.
The physician said the administration has slashed his staff in half despite increased cases.
Veteran nurses are leaving because of the poor treatment and pay, he said.
The hospital is staffing wards with caregivers who barely speak English or are right out of school, he said.
As doctors and other medical staff leave the hospital, the doctor said it may not close but will lose its ability to provide key services.
HaysMed is filling gaps with traveling nurses and locum tenens, which are temporary physicians.
He said those temporary staff don't have the same relationship with their patients.
"The HaysMed people who are still here care so much," he said. "This is the public outcry."
A second Hays physician, who did not want his name published, also expressed concern about the hospital's direction.
He said he is also considering leaving the hospital.
"My biggest concern is that we are concentrating on the financial aspects when the care of the patient is not even second. It's third, fourth or fifth, even further down the line," he said.
"I am concerned that they are expecting much more revenue with less and less resources every day," he said.
Treatment that once took a week to schedule is now taking two or three weeks because the hospital has not been able to retain the staff to provide that treatment.
"We are talking about doubling and tripling time they have to wait for very sick and anxious people," he said.
His nursing staff also has been slashed even though his department is seeing more patients. He said nurses with specialized training have been replaced with nurses who do not have that special certification.
"The problem that we are having is when you have a nurse who is not certified and doesn't know our system, they don't know when bad is bad," he said.
"What ends up happening is you hire a nurse from the outside that has half the ability and costs twice the rate," he said.
He said it causes low morale among the permanent certified nurses because they already have issues with their pay, and the hospital is hiring someone for more with half the skills.
After a consultant observed and made recommendations to the hospital, the physicians were reprimanded for referring patients outside HaysMed for procedures despite the delays in treatment in the HaysMed system.
The doctors were also told they had to cut their clinic appointments from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.
"As a physician, I'm not going to let the buzzer roll over and say I'm not going to talk about this," he said. "We are going to spend the time that we need, which is going to put us 30 or 45 minutes or an hour behind. [Patients] are reasonably frustrated because they had to wait an hour."
"This is a conversation I have had with multiple other physicians. I think, in my opinion, the overall consensus is that we need to eliminate the entire administrative hierarchy of the top five with the CFO, Bryan Brady, but at the top of that food chain is Eddie Herrman," he said.
The doctor said he has been bringing similar concerns to the administration for years and has been disregarded.
He said he wants to see leadership that is responsive to the medical staff's concerns and will be strong leaders.
"I think if you take care of patients, the financial aspect will take care of its self."
He added, "I can't continue to do what I love and what I think I do best without significant resources, and those resources come in the way of people. It comes in the way of nurses, CNAs, everything—from the people who help shovel the snow on a bad day to our highest administrative sites. We are in really dire, dire circumstances right now."
Dr. Curry sent the following comments to the Hays Post from an outside hospital administrator, who he said summed up his concerns.
I just wonder about your CEO and his credentials because some of the policies and attitudes he apparently has strike me as the opposite of what an educated administrator would likely have.
Any administrator should have some knowledge in human relations and should share the attitude that employees are NOT replaceable at any level.
It should be obvious to anyone in rural medicine that physicians are not easy to replace! More than that, any quality employees at any level or position are hard to find, and when we do find them, it is important that we keep them.
Any good CEO and administration would implement a program to make sure that all employees feel valued. This, in turn, should help all employees make their patients feel valued.
This is the approach of an educated and intelligent CEO. Any administrator that tells employees that they can be replaced, should be the one replaced!
Hays Dr. Don Tillman is not employed by HaysMed but said he has been sending letters to the board expressing his concern about the hospital's leadership and direction. His letter can be read on the Hays Post HERE.