Hospital decision: It's St. Mary's
HUNTSVILLE — “Attentus is recommending St. Mary’s.”
With those words, Scott County Mayor Rick Keeton Monday night informed members of county commission that negotiations with Attentus Healthcare have ended and that St. Mary’s Health Systems will, apparently, assume the lease of the Scott County Hospital on January 1, 2008.
The lease assumption is contingent upon the two companies working out a couple of details and ratification by a vote of the commission, which is expected to come at the commission’s regular monthly meeting on December 17.
Mayor Keeton’s announcement came at the start of the commission’s Intergovernmental Committee meeting during the board’s regular monthly work session.
The mayor said that he had received a call from Robert Hammond, president and CEO of Attentus Healthcare, around 11:30 a.m. Monday, informing him that his firm and St. Mary’s had signed an agreement on Friday (November 30).
The agreement requires that Attentus obtain a release on liens from banks which financed the purchase of equipment and inventory at the hospital, as well as St. Mary’s completion of its “bill coding audit” in order to assume Attentus’s provider number to operate to manage and operate the local hospital.
Paraphrasing comments made by Hammond during Monday morning’s telephone conversation, Mayor Keeton said Hammond “felt St. Mary’s would be a good choice for Attentus, and good for Scott County and Scott County Hospital.”
The announcement comes just a month after officials of St. Mary’s met with the Commissioners in an informal session to announce that their negotiations with Attentus to assume the lease might be in jeopardy due to the fact that a counter proposal had been submitted to Attentus by another healthcare provider, which turned out to be St. Mary’s cross-town rival Covenant Healthcare of Knoxville.
“It has come to our attention other parties are now interested . . . I thought we had an agreement,” St. Mary’s President and CEO Debra London told the Commissioners at that meeting.
County Attorney John Beaty, noting the support on the commission for St. Mary’s, basically told them that their hands were tied until Attentus made its recommendation of which firm it favored to take over the lease.
What transpired between that meeting and Monday night’s announcement was not revealed in Monday night’s work session, but representatives of Covenant Healthcare were present to inform commissioners that they were still interested in assuming the lease if things did not work out as planned.
“We’re here to work with the county in the event something does fall through,” said a spokesman for Covenant, adding that he felt the commissioners should ask Attentus to reveal both proposals “so the commission is aware of what was presented.”
In a letter to Mayor Keeton which was passed out to commissioners Monday night, Anthony Spezia, president and CEO of Covenant, revealed that his firm was prepared to “Immediately assume the current lease and operations of the hospital with no change in conditions or terms,” plus retain all employees with equal or better benefits, and “Immediately invest up to $500,000 in the facility as soon as practical.”
The letter also states that Covenant was “willing to commit” to a 10 year lease extension “with a minimum of $15 million to $20 million” in lease payments and capital improvements.
The details of St. Mary’s lease assumption proposal have not been fully revealed, but it is known that it has agreed to assume the lease (for two years) on January 1, with the stipulation that they will not be required to construct a new facility. St. Mary’s is also interested in negotiating with the county for an extension to the lease in exchange for capital improvements.
A representative of St. Mary’s was also present at Monday night’s commission work session and stated that his company’s bill coding audit is underway and that St. Mary’s and Attentus should be “in full agreement by the end of the week.”