Members of the Patrick County Board of Supervisors had a strong reaction to a statement issued last week by a Foresight Hospital and Health Systems official.
Doug Perry, vice chairman, said he couldn’t bring himself to read all nine paragraphs of what he referred to as a “never-ending rant. What I did read of it, I just shook my head and questioned where he’s coming from.”
Perry’s comments were regarding a statement issued last week by Joseph Hylak-Reinholtz, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and general counsel for Foresight, in which he stated that he was “enraged” by comments made by Brandon Simmons that the hospital was not reopening as planned.
“Rarely in my career have I ever been blindsided so callously by a local government official,” Hylak-Reinholtz wrote.
Perry said the company “never kept us in the loop and never did those things to say, ‘we may be behind schedule, but we are moving forward.’”
“I hate that Mr. Hylak-Reinholtz thinks this is so unprofessional. He seems to think I’d want this board to not keep the public informed,” said Simmons, who is the chairman of the board.
Perry said the letter came out of left field.
“Again, it was just a never-ending rant, pointing fingers, blaming everybody. (I) just shook my head like, ‘Where’s this coming from,’” Perry said and added that after the letter, he doesn’t foresee the company doing anything in the county besides wasting its time and other resources.
Because a hospital is so needed, “I hope they come through as we can patch the relationship, and they do all these things they said they were going to do, but I don’t have a lot of hope for it,” Perry said.
As a new board member, Jonathan Wood, of the Peters Creek District, said he cannot speak as to what may have been said or done in previous months or years between the county and Foresight.
“All I can say is that the citizens of Patrick County need access to medical care 24 hours a day,” he said.
Clayton Kendrick, of the Mayo River District, said he believed Hylak-Reinholtz was out of line with his letter.
“I don’t want to stir up anything. They got so hard on Brandon, but Brandon just told the people what they really need to hear ’cause we weren’t seeing progress anywhere,” he said.
Steve Marshall, of the Blue Ridge District, said Hylak-Reinholtz’s statement made zero sense to him.
“My understanding was they promised an up-and-running medical center, not a psychiatric center. And to me right from the get-go the timeframe just didn’t seem great with the amount of work that needed to be done on the building. It just wasn’t feasible,” he said.
Marshall, who also is a new board member, said Foresight would have had to use an extraordinary amount of money and a huge number of work crews, “which we’ve never seen,” to get the building working on the 2023 timeframe it set.
“And on that note, the fact that they’ve never paid taxes to me makes it seem to ring false that they ever intended to do any sort of work,” he said.
As of February 8, Patrick County Treasurer Sandra Stone said Foresight still had not paid any of the taxes owed to the county, which is $79,062.27 in delinquent taxes for 2022 and 2023, plus penalties and interest.
Marshall believes a project needs to be done, but that Foresight’s idea and angle will never work.
“I think we absolutely need to get state help on this. I honestly think what needs to happen is the state needs to take eminent domain on that property, mitigate all the problems, take that building down, and then make some kind of deal between the county, state, and one of these large medical providers.”
Marshall noted there are several large medical providers within an hour to an hour-and-a-half of Patrick County.
“I’m sure we could work with one of them to bring their system down here,” Marshall said, adding that would take a few years and a lot of work but could be done if there was state cooperation.
County, state, and others met with several providers when the hospital shuttered, but they were unable at that time to strike a deal. Additionally, hospitals are for-profit businesses, and as such are under the auspices of economic development.
The county does “absolutely not” need to be in the hospital business, Simmons said. “We can’t afford it.”
Perry said he’s also unsure if the county itself should be in the hospital-owning business because he can think of pros and cons of that happening.
“We see what happens when we’re not in charge, or we don’t have some control over something, but at the same time in this day and age with the way our healthcare system is set up, if you’re not part of a bigger, bigger, bigger entity, it’s hard to stay afloat and stay open,” he said.
Perry added he would need to sit down with someone who has more experience in this subject and get those assessments and the numbers crunched before firmly making a decision.
Wood also doesn’t believe Patrick County should be in the hospital business.
Kendrick agrees with Simmons that the county cannot afford to operate a hospital.
“Where are we going to get the money for that,” Kendrick asked rhetorically, and noted that he had “seen it mentioned somewhere that almost $10 million” is needed “to bring it up to code.”
Years ago, Kendrick recalled that the Economic Development Authority (EDA) worked on this issue and tried multiple avenues to reopen the hospital.
“The only thing close we got was” one other health system potentially interested, he said and added that the provider wanted the county to buy the property, “bring it up to code, and then they still wanted $2.5 million a year to subsidize it and run it for us.
“The money just ain’t there,” Kendrick said.
