Eureka Springs Hospital Emergency Room doctor, Dr. James Brecheisen, spoke about problems with the hospital at a city council meeting Monday night. He said after arriving at the meeting he was told he was too late to sign up for public comments, yet he went to the podium and tried to speak before he was escorted out by Police Chief Billy Floyd.
In a phone interview after the meeting, Brecheisen said he had been disturbed by being told he couldn’t speak. “I’m not going to be told I can’t speak about something this important,” he said. “This is ridiculous. I had important things to say about the attitude of fear at the facility generated by Chief Financial Officer Cynthia Asbury.”
Brecheisen admitted that he didn’t do a good job managing his demeanor at the meeting but had kept his mouth shut for so long and decided it was time to speak.
“I love working at this hospital,” Brecheisen said. “I don’t like seeing nursing staff getting bullied. I’ve seen some good people fired and others who left. Everyone is deathly afraid to speak out. There is rampant corruption there. Employees keep their heads down, afraid to say things. When I first came on, I was told by nursing staff to not cross Cynthia because she pretty much runs this place. This is an odd dynamic. That is just very weird to have a CFO running a hospital instead of a clinical manager.
“The administration basically doesn’t care about any of the employees there and it shows. They have blatantly discriminated against the nursing staff. I found a memo saying nursing staff will no longer be available to get holiday pay while other types of employees still get holiday pay.”
Earlier in the meeting commission chair Kent Turner said that the hospital’s lab was open again after having been closed for two weeks after the departure of Lab Director Tina Adams. Samples were being taken to Mercy Hospital in Berryville for testing by Turner, commissioner Sandy Martin and others. Brecheisen, who was on call that Monday evening at the hospital, said Turner lied.
“The hospital lab is not up and running,” Brecheisen said. “On the same day Turner said the lab was open again, the hospital was having to send basic labs to Berryville. And the nursing staff had to defer any cardiac related patients to another facility because of the lack of a lab.”
Brecheisen said staff left at the hospital got very quiet when Shaw and Petrino were fired. He said that initially employees just suspected they could be fired for speaking up about misconduct in the workplace.
“Now they have proof,” Brecheisen said. “It is a very bullying work environment. Cynthia has no rapport with any of the medical staff there. I’ve never even met Cynthia. She and Jodi Edmondson, the HR director who is now interim CEO, just stay in their offices upstairs all the time. The door to those offices is locked. The general feeling is that they are all protecting each other at the top.”
Turner said at the meeting Monday that commissioners would be working regularly at the hospital to make sure the deficiencies identified in the Medicare audit are corrected, and that representatives from the Arkansas Department of Health said that would be acceptable. Brecheisen said that is very unusual; commissions should have oversight, but he has never seen commissioners getting involved in clinical care at a hospital.
“Commissioners are not credentialed,” Brecheisen said. “Where are their credentials? Nurses, doctors, we are all required to be credentialed. How can these commissioners walk in and act like they are running things? I want that hospital to keep on going. This community does need its hospital. But people in the community need to be aware of what is going on. People need to be held accountable because people’s lives have been damaged.”
Brecheisen was also critical of Asbury’s job overseeing finances. He said at the commission meetings he has watched Asbury did not present detailed financial reports.
“It just doesn’t smell right,” he said. “Hopefully you guys get to keep your hospital. Cynthia plays a peculiar role at that hospital. She is the one the employees fear the most. Everyone has been fired or quit, and she is one of the few left. There is something suspicious there.”
Brecheisen said because he spoke out, he doesn’t expect to be invited back to staff the emergency room after completing his temporary PRN assignment. He said he can easily get a job elsewhere, but that is more difficult for many former employees.