At the last Eureka Springs city council meeting before the general election, the Oct. 26 meeting was short and sparsely attended. Council received an update from Hospital Commission Chair John House who in his remarks said, “I’m sure you all have been reading in the paper that we recently changed our management team.”
House briefly explained the firing of Alliance Management Group was not settled yet and shared, “The previous team that we hired about a year ago had an operational style that was not agreeable to the majority of our commissioners.”
Angie Shaw is the temporary CEO replacement of Alliance, someone House said is “well-liked by staff.” House said the commission has the intent to hire a new permanent CEO.
He described medical equipment purchases in the last year but went on to say that ESH is not the place for everyone. “I would not call us a facility that is capable of taking care of really sick patients,” House said using an example of a Covid patient who may need to be on a ventilator and would have to be sent to another hospital.
“Financially,” House said, “we are in good shape.” He then said the September Hospital revenue was $526,000, but expenses were $555,000, “So we still lost $27,000, but compared to the $500,000 a month we were losing a year ago,” said House “we are definitely moving in the right direction.”
A year ago, the commission was still leasing the hospital and its operations to Allegiance, the predecessor to Alliance, and the commission’s only revenue was the lease itself. Since Allegiance’s hospital operations were not the city’s responsibility, nor were the financial statements reported to the Hospital Commission, proof of how the hospital lost $500,000 in September 2019 was not provided.
House did say the hospital is here to stay. None of the aldermen has attended a single Hospital Commission meeting in 2020, hospital meetings are not televised for the public, and the Hospital Commission is not required to provide financial reports to the city council.