The group lobbying to halt Jennie Stuart Health’s acquisition by a larger hospital group is continuing to assert its case to community groups — and now their message also appears on lawn signs cropping up around Hopkinsville.
Save Jennie Stuart representatives Craig Richardson and Dan Kemp spoke Thursday to the Hopkinsville Kiwanis Club about plans for Deaconess in Evansville, Indiana, to acquire Jennie Stuart. Kemp posted one of the lawn signs, which read “Just Say No!! Save Jennie Stuart HOSPITAL,” in front of the speaker’s lectern just before he spoke at the Memorial Building.
Jennie Stuart and Deaconess, both nonprofits, are working toward an agreement called a membership substitution that would result in Jennie Stuart’s ownership being transferred into Deaconess. The Hopkinsville community would not receive monetary compensation for the hospital, although Deaconess would put $5 million into the Jennie Stuart Foundation, officials of the local hospital have said.
“In short, we don’t think this deal makes any sense financially, or otherwise, and it’s a bad deal for our community,” said Kemp.
Often when a hospital changes hands through a membership substitution, the hospital being acquired is in dire financial condition, said Kemp, who served on Jennie Stuart’s board while he was Hopkinsville’s mayor from 2007 through 2014.
“But you see, Jennie Stuart is not broke. Far from it. According to the last audit, it had a net worth of $141 million, and $114 million of that was in cash,” he said.
Previously in an open meeting with community members, Jennie Stuart board chair Leslie Carroll and vice chair Hollis White said the board began looking for a strategic partner because its electronic health records system, or EHR, was failing. That process led to Deaconess. Jennie Stuart’s board signed a letter of intent with Deaconess that was announced in September. The Jennie Stuart board is scheduled to vote on the proposal on Dec. 2. To pass, it must have the approval of a majority of the board.
In an opinion article for Hoptown Chronicle, Carroll wrote, “The fact is that local non-profit health systems across the country are facing significant challenges. Jennie Stuart is not immune to these pressures, and while leadership works diligently to navigate a difficult operating environment, our system lacks the financial resources necessary to make much needed investments in the capabilities and technologies required of a modern health system.”
But Kemp said his group wants Jennie Stuart’s board to pause and take a look at proposals from other organizations, specifically the hospitals at the University of Kentucky and Vanderbilt University.
Secrecy has been a problem, said Kemp and Richardson, an attorney and state senator-elect.
In 2019, Jennie Stuart’s board changed its bylaws and said the mayor of Hopkinsville and judge-executive of Christian County would no longer have an automatic seat on the board.
“They removed the only two people who were accountable to the public by virtue of their office,” he said. “My guess is if Mayor Knight and Judge Gilliam were on the board today we might not be in the situation that we are in — because both of them have raised questions about the secrecy and the wisdom of the proposed Deaconess deal.”
Deaconess had Jennie Stuart board members sign nondisclosure agreements. Local residents did not learn about the proposal until September.
“As a result, this all came to the public in September as a complete shock,” Kemp said. It was a particular shock to the Jennie Stuart Foundation Board, which was running a fundraising campaign for the E.C. Green Cancer Center last year and this year without knowing that at the very same time negotiations were underway to transfer the hospital to Deaconess.”
Richardson said Jennie Stuart representatives are pointing to Deaconess’ acquisition of the Henderson, Kentucky, hospital as evidence that a deal with Jennie Stuart would be good for Hopkinsville. But this is not an “apples to apples” comparison, he said. The Henderson hospital was financially broke when Deaconess took over. And the two communities are just miles apart on opposite sides of the Kentucky-Indiana border.
“All of our issues [at Jennie Stuart] have started and stopped with poor management,” Richardson said. “And I don’t want to mince words. I mean it. We have a management issue.”
Richardson said Jennie Stuart is taking the wrong approach to deal with billing software failures. He said it amounts to someone saying, “We’ve got a spider in the kitchen, let’s burn the whole house down.”
It is unclear if Jennie Stuart can protect the value of its assets if Deaconess were to first acquire Jennie Stuart and then be sold itself to a larger for-profit hospital. Richardson said that detail would be in the “definitive agreement” between Jennie Stuart and Deaconess, and that document will not be shared with the public until after it is signed, if at all.
Richardson asked Kiwanis members to contact Jennie Stuart board members and tell them they want the board to pause its negotiations with Deaconess. The following contact information was provided:
- Leslie Carroll, Board Chair, 270-889-4216, Icarroll@hesenergy.net
- Hollis White, Board Chair-elect, 270-839-9810, Hol.White3@gmail.com
- Charles Turner, 270-887-3682, turner1224@gmail.com
- Matt Robinson, MD, 270-305-2533, Matthew.robinson@yahoo.com
- Tarek Toubia, MD, 313-694-6048, ttoubia@jsmc.org
- Marty Bozarth, 270-498-1489, martybozarth@gmail.com
- Betsy Shelton, 270-839-0901, betsyboazshelton@gmail.com
- Deanna Sova, 270-559-3692, dsova@ascendelements.com
- Alissa Young, PHD, 270-484-7010, Alissa.young@kctcs.edu
- Carter Hendricks, 270-348-6226, chendricks@southwesternky.com
- Steve Tribble, 270-887-5846, steve1947tribble@gmail.com
- Lee White, Board attorney, 270-839-8634, lwhite@wwc-law.com
(After this story was published, a spokesman for Jennie Stuart Health contacted Hoptown Chronicle and said the hospital prefers that members of the public send comments and questions through a link on its website. “The best way for community members to ask questions or voice their opinion [regarding] Jennie Stuart Health/Deaconess remains the link we have provided,” Clay Hart, director of Provider Outreach and Community Relations for Jennie Stuart, told Hoptown Chronicle in an email.)
One Jennie Stuart board member has made a public statement, through social media, about his opposition to the Deaconess deal.
Carter Hendricks, the former Hopkinsville mayor who is now executive director of the local Economic Development Council, posted a statement Wednesday on his Facebook page. He wrote, in part:
“The JSH board has been aware of my position for several weeks. Now, I’m making the public known because JSH representatives continue to use the word unanimous to describe the board decision.
“I only speak for myself. But since I’m not in favor of moving forward, it’s not unanimous.
“We only get one chance to do this right. If JSH follows through with this letter of intent, it’s irreversible. That’s why I’m asking for us to slow down, engage more input, and get a second opinion before making a terminal choice.”
This story was updated to include a comment from Jennie Stuart Health about its preference for members of the public to comment through its website.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
