The anticipated lease agreement between the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Greenwood Leflore Hospital is going to be complicated. That’s a given.
There are a lot of details to be covered by the agreement — the transfer of hard assets and employees, the scope of medical services to be provided, the limits of liability, the insurance details, the responsibilities of the tenant and the landlord — that whatever document it produces is bound to be chock full of clauses and legalese.
Even intelligent people without a background in medicine or the law might need outside help to make sense of it all.
But isn’t that what lawyers and hospital administrators are for? So why does the Leflore County Board of Supervisors think it also needs to bring in an outside consultant to steer it through its coming deliberations over the lease.
By the time the county board considers the lease proposal, it would have been vetted by senior administrators at the Greenwood hospital and by at least two attorneys — the hospital board’s attorney, Tom Flanagan, as well as a Jackson attorney, Elizabeth Hooper, who is being paid, as we understand it, to help not only the hospital board but also the Board of Supervisors and the Greenwood City Council, the latter two of which will have to vote on whether to approve the lease of the jointly owned hospital.
Even before that vote, two other attorneys will presumably have reviewed the lease proposal as well — the county’s attorney, Joyce Chiles, and the city’s attorney, Don Brock.
Does Leflore County really need to spend up to another $20,000 to get an Indianapolis consulting firm to weigh in, too?
If the four supervisors who voted for this expenditure really think they need more opinions on what’s being offered, we have a cost-free suggestion for them.
They should release UMMC’s proposal to the public. Let everyone in this community who is interested take a look at it. There are sure to be plenty of educated minds — doctors, businesspeople, college professors and other lawyers — who would help vet the proposal at no charge and share their opinion if they see any pitfalls.
The Commonwealth has sought a copy of the UMMC proposal, but so far with no success. Brock, the city attorney, has denied the request, citing a Mississippi law that exempts from public access certain hospital records. We’re not certain that the exemption he cites applies in this case, but even if it does, it does not have to be invoked. The city, the county or the hospital could release UMMC’s proposal if either of them wishes to do so. One or more of them should.
We believe this issue is so important — arguably the future of this community rests on the outcome — that the public has a compelling interest in knowing what UMMC is proposing, and knowing it before the city and county vote on it. Full disclosure might also help the city and county officials have more confidence in their ultimate decision.
We don’t see any other reasonable option than leasing the nearly broke Greenwood hospital to UMMC. We are grateful UMMC is interested in such an arrangement, considering that four years ago a less sweeping affiliation met with a cold response from those who controlled the majority vote on the hospital board at the time.
Nevertheless, the details of the lease need to be fair to both parties, and the Board of Supervisors should be concerned about getting them right.
It just doesn’t need to waste $20,000 on consulting overkill.
