Just seven days ago, we received some kudos from community leaders for our editorial observation last week that Erlanger's plan to name a new CEO so quickly - at its regularly scheduled Sept. 26 meeting - was ill conceived.
We contended that Erlanger owed us patients and customers a studied CEO search, especially after concerns over patient safety was at least in part what prompted former CEO Kevin Spiegel's departure.
Clearly we were misguided. This Erlanger Health System Board of Trustees thought it didn't even need two weeks. Its 11 members barely needed one week.
Elvis - er a, the ousted Spiegel - had barely left the building seven days before when, with still no mention of a nationwide or even internal search for a new leader of the 10th largest public hospital in the nation, trustees at a special called meeting Wednesday voted to install Erlanger's chief medical officer, Dr. William Jackson, as the new CEO.
Not interim CEO, mind you. Full CEO. On a one-year contract. The board's public vote came after members met for about three-and-a-half hours privately behind closed doors with no media or public allowed in to listen.
"To go with the uncertainty of an interim title would put Erlanger in a position of not being able to move forward," trustee Gerald Webb said after the meeting was opened and the vote was taken.
And board chairman Mike Griffin said, it was "very critical that we fill this leadership post at this time."
Really? Makes you wonder what's coming around the corner, doesn't it? But the board's blazing speed is only a fraction of the puzzlement conjured by this move.
In early May, physicians - fed up with three years of unanswered concerns about patient safety at Erlanger's emergency department - took the extreme action of making a "no confidence" vote on the hospital's top management, specifically hospital CEO Kevin Spiegel and two of his aides. Leaders of Erlanger's 17-member Medical Executive Committee - doctors elected by the hospital's collective physicians - made the board of trustees aware of their no confidence vote in a letter dated May 9.
The doctors said their concerns - chronic operational issues, such as understaffing, overcrowding in the emergency department and operating rooms, inefficiency and poor morale and policies - consistently fell on deaf ears. They also wrote that patient overcrowding at the main campus emergency department "has resulted in prolonged boarding of patients and difficulty in appropriate staffing, which has unfortunately contributed to adverse patient outcomes."
The phrase "adverse patient outcomes" really gets your attention, doesn't it?
In late August - nearly four months later - the board decided to talk about this publicly, briefly, just long enough to decide not to decide anything.
Nothing was so critical for "three years of unanswered concerns" about patient safety.
Nothing was worrisome enough from early May to late August to prompt public board discussion.
Suddenly, one week after Spiegel's departure, it is said to be "very critical."
So critical that they only had seven days to name a new CEO.
And that new CEO is the same guy who, nearly four years ago, Spiegel put directly in charge of patient care.
Spiegel even told the Times Free Press editors at a meeting several weeks before his exit that he specifically tasked Jackson with streamlining the emergency department operation.
And the board surely knows this. Here's a snippet from a press statement by the board chairman Wednesday.
"As Erlanger's Chief Medical Officer for almost four years, Dr. William Jackson was responsible for oversight of Quality, Safety, Erlanger Medical Group, Physician Services, Research, Medical Affairs, and inpatient and outpatient care delivery for the health system. In this role, he also focused on advancing a clinical agenda that supports Erlanger's Medical Staff and outcomes critical to their success."
Does anyone see a disconnect here?