Centegra Responds to Dr. Bill Dam’s Special Meeting Invitation – “[Do] Not Attend”

At the end of August Dr. Bill Dam sent out a letter about his concerns of the direction that Centegra is taking.

He asked that members of the not-for-profit corporation not sign their proxies away to the administration, but come to the meeting and vote in person or assign them “to a trusted fellow member of the corporation.”

The long-time Fox Lake physician and reform politician wrote that topics up for discussion would be

  • administrative salaries
  • pending lawsuits
  • by-law changes without membership notice or consent
  • the process of becoming a member
  • the process for nominating candidates for the Board of Governors

You can read the article about the meeting he is having September 25th here, along with back-up material concerning administrative salaries.

Now the Centegra Board of Governors has countered with the following letter urging people not to attend next Thursday’s meeting.

The “core issue,” the letter says is about Centegra’s hiring of hospitalists to provide “hospital patients around-the-clock access to physicians that specialize in inpatient care.”

You can read the entire letter below:

An undated letter from Centegra.

An undated letter from Centegra.


Comments

Centegra Responds to Dr. Bill Dam’s Special Meeting Invitation – “[Do] Not Attend” — 7 Comments

  1. Well. If you really want to improve the statistics, just give the hospital to Advocate.

    At least Advocate has figured how to play they “quality” game, whereas Centegra’s executives are just now reinventing the wheel, and taking over physician practices under the guise of quality improvement.

    Let Advocate take over, save the millions that Mr Eesley now gets, and live happily ever after.

  2. By the way, paragraph 2 is false. As I have understood it, establishing a hospitalist service is not an issue, as a matter of fact there have been hospitalists at Centegra for years.

    The issue is that the hospitalist service, after January 2013, started taking patients away from the private medical practices.

    If you go to Centegra, you will have to make an effort to have your private physician called and notified to come see you there.

    By default, your medical providers will now be Centegra employed hospitalists.

    After you leave the hospital, they will try to make you follow up with one of the medical practices that they own.

    Previously this would have been a huge money loser due to the presence of a large number of uninsured and Medicaid patients in the community.

    However, methinks, under Obamacare, Centegra expects to have more people with insurance and fewer no-pays. And so they made a move to take over the medical practice in the entire county, that’s what this amounts to.

  3. The letter from Centegra telling people not to attend the Wednesday 25th meeting underscores the very reason why this meeting should be held.

    The meeting is not about hospitalists.

    Personally, I embrace the concept.

    I use hospitalists to help coordinate the care of all my patient admissions, every time, everywhere.

    The problem is that there is no efective communication with the administration.

    The reason for the meeting, as a 35 year member of the Centegra Community Corporation, is that I want my vote to count once again.

    The Community Corporation membership has been essentially hijacked.

    I did mission work for 2 years in a socialist country.

    At election time there was only one hand-picked candidate.

    Everyone was required to take a day off work to vote “yes.”

    This is not how it works in America.

    Learn about this and more.

    At first I invited fellow Corporation members.

    Now, since this is supposed to be an organization of “Community Governors” I would like to invite all interested members of the community.

  4. Woodstock & NIMC were community hospitals, founded by the goodwill of the citizens in the community they serve.

    I was an emergency physician on the staff of NIMC for over 20 years.

    I do not approve of the shameless executive salaries that are paid out.

    $2,400,000 to CEO Michael Easley is profiteering pure & simple.

    250 struggling families in our community could have had full health insurance on that salary, Mr. Easley, it doesn’t take talent to do what you do, it takes greed, lack of compassion, and indifference for the less fortunate.

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