Hospital expenses — ‘Enough is enough’
(These comments were initially made to the Sonoma Valley Health District Board of Directors at its recent public meeting.)
Hello my name is Linda Siemer. I am speaking here tonight on behalf of svhtransparency.com. This group obtained some information utilizing the California Public Records Act and I am here with comments on some of that information obtained and on some of the recent actions taken at Sonoma Valley Hospital.
Let me start by stating that the Sonoma Valley Health Care District Mission Statement states that it is to maintain, improve and restore the health of everyone in our community.” The first contradiction that comes to my mind is the closing of the Cardiac Rehab Department. I won’t pretend to know the numbers that were looked at in order to make this decision, but we were told the department wasn’t generating enough revenue. I don’t believe that the vast volume of residents of Sonoma Valley who used that department, including myself and whose health improved doing so were considered, nor was the mission statement when making that decision. Around this time, labor and delivery nurses took a pay cut in order to keep the Birthplace open, anesthesiologists were requested to lower their fees and employees were laid off.
The hospital’s CEO Kelly Mather whose starting salary of $265,000, $71,000, more than her predecessor, has received annual raises and a $25,000 bonus last year. Hospital employees received 3% and were told they had to “do more with less”. Ms. Mather also receives $1,000 a month car allowance whether she uses it or not, inclusive of all automobile-travel, work related expenses. But, we found many, fuel and hotel charges on the hospital credit card in her name. Most noteworthy are hotel charges in the amount of $299 for a stay at Timber Cove Inn north of Jenner expensed to Palm Drive business which is an hour and a half drive from Palm Drive Hospital. Now I myself love Timber Cove Inn. It’s my favorite somewhat local place to get away from it all. There is meeting space there, but we saw no charges for anything like that. And a charge in the amount of $464 to stay at our local MacArthur Place Hotel memoed to be a “stay for Nelson party”.
Education costs for staff are no longer covered while Ms Mather receives a $7,500 education allowance to attend work-related conferences.
During a recent conversation with Sonoma Valley Hospital Controller Jeannette Tarver I brought up the many charges on Ms. Mather’s hospital credit card for restaurants and bar tabs. Jeannette kindly reminded me that the CEO spent a lot of time meeting with potential donors during the capital campaign. That sounded reasonable to me. Then I thought, what the heck, let’s see what these type of charges add up to after the capital campaign was over. In the 15 months ending March of this year there are 122 charges totaling approximately $16,000 at local restaurants. It’s possible, but not certain that a small portion of these are Foundation charges that could have been reimbursed, but we haven’t received that info from our last request for records. I just don’t understand this and I don’t understand how all of you board members are ok with this type of spending at a time when our local hospital is nearly $13,000,000 in debt with over a $1,000,000 60-120 days past due to vendors as of May 1 of this year. The hospital does have meeting rooms.
I really would be remiss with my comments if I didn’t bring up the $778 limousine bill in March of this year for the Admin. Team to attend the Hospital Council Innovation Symposium. Also in my conversation with hospital controller Jeannette Tarver I was told as she put it, “we have nothing to hide.” She said they would provide whatever documents we asked for and if there were any questions they would run it by the hospital legal counsel and let us know why if anything could not be provided. Ok, one of the things I questioned was why there were so many entries on the Mastercard Backup sheet that indicated that no receipts were provided. I kind of let it go in my head because the majority were there and we all know that happens sometimes. But it’s hard to believe that the operating premise at the hospital is that they have nothing to hide when the last couple months of credit card backup now does not have the column that indicates whether there is a receipt for the charge.
In addition, a document titled “Revised Public Record Policy” has quietly been approved by the Hospital Governance Committee. This policy loosely refers to the California Public Records Act allowing the guidelines of the Act to be administered by the Chief Executive Officer of the District. This new hospital policy actually states that Ms. Mather can determine if records should be made accessible to the public and that she can make that determination on the facts of the particular case, whether the public interest is served by not making the record public outweighs the public interest served by the disclosure of such records. Her decision would also be final unless overruled by the Board of Directors. I briefly perused the Public Records Act. I don’t think this is what was meant by giving her the authority to administer the guidelines set forth by the Act. I had hoped to comment on this policy when it was on the agenda to be approved by the Board, but see that it is not on tonight’s agenda.
In conclusion, my last bone of contention is the second amendment to Ms. Mather’s employment agreement which now brings her base salary to $330,000 and an incentive program for a bonus up to 20% of her salary. And for some reason this amendment was executed in January of this year, a full 6 months before the expiration of her previous contract term. I say Enough is definitely Enough! I do hope that this info gives you as a Board pause for thought. The svhtransparency.com group would like to meet with Ms. Mather in the near future and I hope that this outline of our concerns will help to get as many board members as possible to look into these issues I have brought up this evening and meet with us to discuss how this seemingly unnecessary and extravagant spending can cease.
I do expect that these comments and concerns be fully noted in the minutes of this meeting.
Thank you for your time.
Linda Steiner, Sonoma
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Thanks Linda for bringing up so good points. Your question concerning the Limo charge may be easily answered by the number and dollar amount of bar charges. Clearly no one is in any shape to drive after these meetings.