Senate President Ronald Russell is seeking to restrict the authority of Jeff Nelson, chief executive officer of the Juan F. Luis Hospital on St. Croix, but the hospital chair said Thursday the board supports the CEO “100 percent.”
Russell sent a letter to Lynn Millin-Maduro, chair of the Territorial Board of the Virgin Islands Government Hospital and Facilities Corp., pointing to what he felt were problems with the authority granted to Nelson.
The Source left phone messages for Millin-Maduro, who is also commissioner of the Department of Property and Procurement, and for Nelson, but neither returned the call by late Thursday afternoon.
In his letter Russell expressed concern about the scope of authority Nelson was granted by the hospital, calling it “very problematic.”
The senator said he was concerned that Nelson is both CEO and chief financial officer, which Russell said “should be avoided at any cost.” He said contracts have been executed without appropriate advertisement for bids or competitive negotiation. He also questioned Nelson’s decision to eliminate the titles/positions of licensed practical nurse and certified nursing assistant at JFL, which caused the termination of 85 employees.
Russell said that decision “has resulted in uncertainty regarding patient care.”
Attorney Kye Walker, chair of the district board, which directly governs the JFL Hospital under the aegis of the Territorial Board, said she thinks Russell has mistaken the hospital for a central government agency.
“The senator may be comparing apples and oranges,” Walker said. “He’s comparing the authority the board gave to Mr. Nelson to the limitations placed on commissioners of government agencies. We believe the authority granted to Mr. Nelson isconsistent with the CEO of an autonomous or semi-autonomous agency” such as the hospital, she said.
Nelson was hired a year ago as a “turn-around” expert, charged with pulling the hospital out of the economic slide that was threatening to bury it. While the budget red ink has been mostly stemmed, the hospital is still $28 million in debt.
In an effort to increase revenues by increasing the number of procedures performed at JFL, Nelson in February announced that the hospital was shifting to a “registered nurse dominant” model in an effort to become a “magnet hospital.” As a result, 85 licensed practical nurses and certified nursing aides were laid off.
Russell told the JFL board at its Feb. 29 meeting that the Senate would examine the structure of hospital management in the territory, saying “Everything is on the table.” At that same meeting, the board gave Nelson his annual review, praising the job he has done.
The hospital board is scheduled to meet Wednesday evening. There has been no announcement of when the next Territorial Board meeting will be held.
So instead of the CEO running the business he was hired to run, we’re going to have the senate running it? You hire a man to make hard, smart business decisions for a nauseatingly bankrupt hospital, and then you want his authority taken away when he makes those decisions?
That’s so sad it’s laughable. Good luck, Virgin Islanders!
When will we Virgin Islanders learn to tap into our own resources. What great genius has ‘superman’ Jeff Nelson brought to the table to turn the hospital around? Staff reduction??? Sounds great, ‘a magnet hospital’. Old Jeff is just eating up time on his contract and laying off staff so that at some future board evaluation meeting, he can demonstrate how much money was saved during his tenure. Is Jeff being realistic in thinking that the VI hospitals will attract more patients because of nursing qualifications? In the states, more and more Physician’s Assistants are seeing patients instead of doctors. Hmmmm. In the world of big business, when you implement staff reductions as a cost cutting measure it is only because you have run out of options or ideas (no offensive strategy). Is this the best idea that can come out of the ‘turnaround don’, Jeff?
When you’re running at a $100m+ deficit and just lost, in their estimation, 400-600 paid procedures this year due to the HOVENSA closure, you can’t afford to keep the place staffed with everybody that wants a job.
Welcome to the real world. When you only have $100 in your checking account, you can only spend $100. The hospital can’t afford to give out free procedures and care to anybody that doesn’t want to pay, and continue to hire everybody that wants to work there. Either they need to collect from the deadbeats, or lay people off, it’s that simple.
The people in the VI need to get over this fantasy of unlimited government money. When I’ve got $100 in my checking, I can’t go out and buy a $2000 television set. When the hospital only has so much money, they can’t afford spend twice that amount on payroll and free procedures. It’s really that simple. I wish the ‘resources’ of the VI would tap into a 1st grader’s math book and figure out that 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 3.
Instead of being so critical of others, please share YOUR solution to the deficit problem the hospital has. Raise the prices? Raise our taxes? Or cut costs?
After all these years of being run by LOCAL leaders who put us in this mess in the first place, why are you so against giving an outsider a chance?
I appreciate those who can miss and bolster my point at the same time. There are a limited number of control points that can be manipulated in order to close the debt gap at the hospital. Common sense and basic math can figure that out. I would like to know why we Virgin Islanders need to hire a highly paid ceo to delegate to us what controls to manipulate? We have many successful business people within our community who are qualified to implement effective business models. The layoff’s may have been required but I, like many others, was expecting more strategic based ideas from Jeff. I was expecting more from him than what I would expect a ‘first grader’ to do.
So your problem is that a white man from the states is doing it, instead of a local West Indian?
Either they need to cut services and payroll, or increase revenue. There’s nothing strategic to it. If the VI government isn’t going to allow him to collect from people that claim they’re incapable of paying, and they’re unwilling to raise taxes on the people of the VI to close the budget gap, then he has to cut payroll and services. It’s really that simple.
The problem lots of people seem to have is that it’s a white man from the states doing it.
Frankly, I like the idea of an outsider running it. The government and their GSEs are rife with corruption, cronyism and nepotism. The only people that I can see making fair, hard decisions is somebody that isn’t intertwined in the community’s crookedness.
So other than the layoffs, tell us what other things he has done, or not done, as part of his strategy to improve the hospital that you do not approve of? And your solution, of course, is welcome.
You are opening the window about race and I sense an unwanted draft in the room to where this conversation is going. Do you remember the ceo of the St. Thomas hospital who alledgedly embezzled the hospital’s funds? He is black; yes, he is not a local. This is not a black and white issue, this is ‘we as a Virgin Islands can do for ourselves’ issue. Like Moses said to Pharoh, ‘Let us go to do for ourselves’.
So after 80+ years of ‘doing for ourselves’ , why are we in such deep doodoo in almost every area of goverment in the VI?
If the JFL CEO says the hospital is broke & the laid off nurses insist on going back to work, I say let it be. No harm done, right? Now if I was in that predicament & my boss told me point blank he was broke, I sure as hell wouldn’t be interested in continuing my employment there & would immediately be seeking greener pastures. Buy hey, that’s just me…
The VI people dug this hole for themselves over decades with their entitlement culture and politicians that fed that culture with handouts they couldn’t pay for.
I don’t see them filling that hole in now, especially with the current batch of “leaders.”
*double post*