Kootenai Health Set To Vote On Becoming A Non-Profit, Eliminating Elected Trustees By Mid-December – Trustee Matheson “Concerned” By Actions Of The Board
We Hate To Say “We Told You So” – But We Did…
Over the weekend, the Kootenai County Women Republican Federated held a Town Hall event to discuss the future of Kootenai Health, and invited the hospital CEO and all 9 trustees to dialogue with the citizens of the County and confront allegations that Kootenai Health was in financial disarray and thinking about an anti-democratic takeover of the hospital by a 501(c)3 non-profit.
The CEO of the hospital, John Ness, and 8 of the trustees decided to hide from their constituents, and did not attend the meeting. One trustee, however, showed true courage and leadership. Steve Matheson sat down with representatives Vito Barbieri, Ron Mendive and Tony Wisnewski to answer the public’s questions about the crisis at the hospital.
Unfortunately for everyone in Kootenai County, the situation seems to be worse, and moving more rapidly than we previously reported.
House Bill 603
Ed Bejarana, the host of the Idaho Speaks podcast and the moderator for the Town Hall began the Q & A session by asking the legislators why they voted for HB-603, the legislation that has made it legal for the Trustees to turn the Hospital into a Non-Profit.
According to Rep. Barbieri,
“I simply didn’t realize the ramifications of the text, and I kind of am embarrassed by that. That’s the reason that we did this is because we did not realize the full ramifications of what we were giving them.”
Reps. Mendive and Wisnewski agreed with Barbieri, and clarified that the Bill was not written by any of the legislators, but was instead written by a special interest group called the Idaho Hospital Association. Wisnewski stated,
“It’s no surprise to us, at this point, that it was not a bill that was written by any of the legislators. It was brought to us by a special interest group that represented the hospitals, and you can’t tell me that they didn’t have this prospect in mind when they brought this bill to us.”
One citizen in attendance told the Tribune that “it’s refreshing to see our elected officials actually taking responsibility and admitting they made a mistake. They’re not hiding behind a webcam on Zoom and dismissing our concerns.” He went on, “Y’know I’m not happy about the situation we’re in, but I’ve gained a lot of respect for these guys, to take the bull by the horns like they did today? They’ve got balls. And that goes for Matheson too.”
Matheson Answers Questions
According to Matheson, Kootenai Health will be voting on becoming a Non-Profit entity with un-elected appointed trustees as early as December 13th. Matheson said that he has been struggling “with the timeframe that’s been established,” believing that he and the other trustees don’t have enough time “to actually come to a proper conclusion.” He said “I’m somewhat concerned that the timeframe allowed for the community to participate is even more abbreviated.”
Matheson continued,
“There is going to be a November 21st whitepaper that’s going to be issued by the ‘experts.’ If that timeframe is met, it’s going to be delivered to the board. On December 6th is a special meeting to talk about that, which is about two weeks later. The following week is our regularly scheduled full board meeting which is anticipated, it’s actually – I asked the board chair, ‘does she intend to put it on as a vote on December 13th?’ The answer was yes. I repeated the question just to make sure that I didn’t misunderstand and she says ‘yes it’s going to be on December 13th.’
“So I’m doing the math in my head: can I possibly evaluate this responsibly? I can’t. I don’t think the community has the ability even to come up with an opinion. “
At the Town Hall, Ed Bejarana brought up a whitepaper by the National Library of Medicine titled Comparing the Value of Nonprofit Hospitals’ Tax Exemption to Their Community Benefits. In that paper, the authors state that many hospitals end up “benefiting greatly from it [converting to a non-profit model] while providing relatively few community benefits.”
Matheson stated that, to his knowledge, this study had not been brought before the Kootenai Health board for their review.
Matheson Raises Concerns of Open-Meeting Violations
Kootenai Health Chair, Katie Brody, and CEO, John Ness, have repeatedly stated they have been “transparent” with the community, regarding the possible transition of the hospital, and their words have been faithfully repeated by the Coeur d’Alene Press, but Matheson dropped a second bombshell at Saturday’s Town Hall.
Matheson confirmed that he did in fact file a formal complaint with the prosecuting attorney against the Kootenai Health Board for violating Open Meetings laws. It turns out that there had been extensive discussions about this transition, in secret, that Matheson forced out into the open.
Matheson stated:
“I was rejected in my complaint and my concerns were resoundly disregarded. Legal counsel issued an opinion on that. I didn’t feel like there was any other option other than filing a formal complaint with the prosecuting attorneys office here in Kootenai County given my opinion that current statues, open meeting laws had been violated.
“I was asked to retract my complaint, and I said I would retract it as soon as these conversations are no longer held in secret, but in open session. I won’t retract it before then.
“The next meeting we had the open meeting about this transaction, I then held my word and I retracted the actual complaint. So if you want to see the complaint, I would suggest that you make the ask of the actual hospital board. I will vote to release it, and we will see what the board does.”
Based on Matheson’s testimony at the Town Hall, there is a lot of valuable information in that retracted complaint, especially with regards to the Hospital’s “2030 Vision.” Matheson said that he will be asking for the board to vote on releasing the text of the complaint so that the public can read it, but he needs our help.
Please email the hospital trustees, and ask them in the spirit of transparency to vote to release Matheson’s complaint, and make it public.
Send your emails to comments@kh.org.