Roy Exum
I have wonderful friends who are the lawyers on both sides of Charlesetta Woodward-Thompson’s “wrongful termination” trial that is now taking place and fully comprehend that the way lawyers make money is by going to trial. But this is a trial that should have never been heard. Everybody at Erlanger Hospital knows the woman was absolutely incompetent in stormy seas.
My goodness, at the height of her interim reign, the hospital lost $9.5 million dollars one fiscal year and they still talk about her brutally firing over 20 mid-management people who each happened to disagree with her ignorance and lack of leadership skills.
She claimed it was a cost-cutting measure, but there were too many good people lost in the slaughter of such a ruthless act that each fired employee was immediately escorted by a security officer to their car.
Race has absolutely nothing to do with her being ousted at Erlanger. Because she’s black, that’s a card so easily played but, if she wants to flash it, there are employees on every floor who will attest to the fact she promoted more blacks over better-qualified white employees than President Obama has done.
The simple truth is that Erlanger was, in the words of one longtime physician, “a sinking ship” when the board of trustees finally canned the Woodward-Thompson. At the time, some executives genuinely feared it might be too late. Luckily, the board hired Kevin Spiegel in 2014 who – sitting in the same chair – generated $40 million in profit in the fiscal year that just closed and immediately gave bonuses to every hospital employee in an unprecedented show of gratitude.
After she was bounced, a team from Price-Cooper-Waterhouse found dozens of way to turn the ship around; this as “vultures” from huge hospital corporations were trying to find a way to swoop in, capitalize on Erlanger’s frustrating misfortunes, and buy the hospital – knowing it could make money.
For instance, this was the best year Erlanger Hospital has ever had and the belief is that had the board forced Charlesetta out sooner, Chattanooga’s Level One trauma center would have been much better off. It is because of Woodward-Thompson’s lack of leadership that the last capital improvements to the hospital were made 10 years ago.
“We have so many projects going on right now because we finally have the money,” Spiegel spoke frankly as we toured the Emergency Room earlier this week. He pointed to a frayed curtain and said, “Within 30 days we are going to totally restore this emergency room to what it needs to be. New floor, new ceiling, new nurse’s station…the works.”
“At all of our urgent-care facilities we have over 200,000 people come through our ER every year. This is by far our busiest ER and when nothing is done for 10 years, you are right. We need to do this all over the medical center.”
As he spoke, the finishing touches are being made on new and much-improved orthopedic operating rooms and the renovated cafeteria will open sometime in January. Other projects will also begin before the end of the year but the most impressive gem is the hospital’s Operations Center where every incoming ambulance is constantly monitored, trauma surgeons can be called before arrival, and rooms can be even be held on specialized treatment floors.
On Tuesday of this week the hospital had a 95-percent occupancy rate. That left about 35 beds available and Spiegel believes he can help there. “Nobody wants to be in the hospital so our medical staff is aware that when a patient is ready to go home, let’s not keep them any longer than is necessary. We’ll never kick anybody out of the hospital and we want our patients to be comfortable when they leave,” he explained, “but let’s not be wasteful with our resources.”
So, tell me, how did your team come up with $40 million in profit – an Erlanger record – when the red ink was flowing freely when you got here? “It is a concerted effort by a lot of people. We are determined to be smarter, better, but the biggest fact is our patient volume has gone through the roof. When a person comes to our emergency room, they’ll have a board-certified doctor waiting. We are the only hospital for miles that has that."
“A quick story,” he smiled. “When the Amnicola shooting occurred, we had no idea how many patients there would be, what the situation was at the time, but our lead doctor in the emergency room said, ‘Bring every one of the victims here. We can handle it.’ The reason for having all of them was because their families would know where to go, the victims could see each other which really matters in any catastrophe, and we have all the staff a major disaster demands.
“We had over 50 doctors within minutes. We cleared operating rooms, we responded so magnificently I think it was one of our finest hours. Thankfully the tragedy was not as bad as we first thought because the police and sheriff’s department acted so quickly. My point is that Erlanger’s team can handle anything.”
There was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when the same exercise would have been a train wreck. That became glaringly obvious in late December of 2012 when board chairman Ron Loving, who is black, demanded the bewilderedtTrustees at their monthly gathering to march to the Probasco Auditorium, this just seconds after the meeting was called to order.
There the trustees were confronted by a raucous crowd of loud Charlesetta supporters, wearing campaign buttons made up days before with Woodward-Thompson’s face, cheering madly and somewhat wildly for their heroine, and creating the worst circus ever seen at a hospital board meeting.
The crowd, mostly black with more than a few outside faces, was instead an affront and insult to the board and – with Woodward-Thompson relying on the same race card unwisely in December of 2012 – was instead the straw that snapped the camel’s back.
That event alone was ample evidence she was not a leader. The fact she is black played no part in her being hired as the interim CEO – did it? -- and the fact she is female is not a factor. She was canned because of horrible performance, red ink by the barrel, and a solid distrust by the medical staff. “The doctors hated her,” said one MD.
I have little doubt, in a trial expected to last two weeks that Charlesetta Woodward-Thompson will be widely exposed as the worst interim leader in Erlanger’s long history, and there have been some doozies. Again, race had nothing to do with it. If it did, Charlesetta would be the one needing to duck. No, the reason she was ousted was because of her incompetence, plain and simple.
How do you defend a lack of ability? It appears for all the world that Woodward-Thompson threw caution to the wind, seeking some fat pre-trial settlement, but Erlanger was smarter than that. Now it is all going to come out in what will amount to no more than a public shaming. Yet the real shame is that this sham ever got inside the courthouse.
royexum@aol.com