Hospital meeting video goes kerplooie

Social limitations on public group meetings are posing difficulties when attempting to provide live virtual government meetings. Monday night was no exception when more than 10 minutes of the Hospital Commission meeting was held without public airing.

As with earlier city meetings in the last month that have been inaudible, a technical difficulty occurred that removed both video and audio from the YouTube channel, and instead of pausing during the glitch, which was during Mayor’s Assistant Kim Stryker’s discussion of employees who are asked to stay with the city for one-year after receiving paid training, commissioners continued.

Before the connection was lost, a hospital employee was asking commissioners for payment of upcoming training which would cost $150 an hour. Commissioners had not voted but were in discussion when the video came to a halt.

To be sure the administration was aware of the outage, Scott Stone, a hospital employee also participating in the meeting, phoned an official to let them know of the outage, but the meeting resumed.

According to the agenda, and during the 10 to 15 minutes of the outage, commissioners most likely discussed and considered the employee’s request for training and its expenses, as well as considered details of Alliance Management’s contract with the hospital.

Two Zoom meeting participants were left without the video, commissioner Ty Burdon, was rung in by phone so he could finish the meeting knowing he could not see or hear the video. (Pic provided of Ty on the phone during the virtual meeting that was not public)

• Audible parts of the meeting were that Treasurer Barbara Dicks could not give a current bank balance, only as of the end of April, which was about $2 million.
• Commissioners agreed to remove the admission limitation on courtesy staff.
• Alliance Manager Darryl Parke said the hospital has received the Medicare 855A OK for billing and collections, an approval the hospital has been working on for four months.
• Commissioner and physician Christopher Baranyk made a public “challenge” to all members of the commission to work as active staff members for the hospital and attend regular staff meetings. Baranyk also suggested that commissioners volunteer at the Purple House to assist the auxiliary to raise funds for the hospital.