INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — At noon on Wednesday, a majority of Indian River Medical Center board members met at the hospital and unanimously voted to approve the latest draft of the Indigent Care Agreement.
The board also voted unanimously to let hospital board chairman Wayne Hockmeyer make decisions on their behalf over minor tweaks to the document, which could take place over the next two weeks.
“It represents a fair resolution of the issues,” hospital lawyer Bill Stewart told the board before the vote.
Board member Keith Morgan asked Stewart, “Are we in a more vulnerable position?”
“We cannot compel the District to levy taxes,” said Stewart, citing the major principle of the new document, which was the result of 15 months of contentious negotiating between the hospital and the Hospital District, whose seven elected trustees direct taxpayer dollars to the hospital for indigent care reimbursement.
The previous Indigent Care Agreement did not acknowledge the District’s right to make the decision on the amount of tax dollars the District trustees would give the hospital. But the new agreement clearly spells out that it is the District’s decision, not the hospital’s.
In figuring what the reimbursement amount will be, hospital CEO Jeff Susi said that the hospital would give a high and low figure for each fiscal year, with the expectation that the District would pay a number in the middle.
“There’s a 50-50 chance we’ll budget above or below what we need. If it’s below, the District has said it is their intent to fund us. Whether they do is at their sole discretion,” said Susi.
At the conclusion of the meeting, District board chairman Tom Spackman, who attended the meeting and sat in the audience with District director Ann Marie Suriano, told the hospital board: “If this (meaning the painful, prolonged negotiations) happens again in three years, I’m going to self-destruct.”
New hospital board member Gerri Smith, whose late husband Trevor Smith was the District’s chief negotiator for five months of the roller-coaster negotiations — until he was killed in a July automobile accident — offered the final words on behalf of her husband and herself: “The community will be thrilled.”
