The Randolph Guide On Bob Morrison's Legacy: "A Small Town Doesn't Mean Slim Pickins" (Subtitled: "I Wonder What Mary Thinks?")

More and more these days, I hear from Asheboro folk who, for one reason or another, have just discovered my blog. 

"You GO, Girl!!!", seems to be the prevailing theme (apart from disappointment that I went on an extended break just as they found me) . . . especially from world-weary contemporaries who were raised in Asheboro, but could not count themselves amongst the mill-town's well-named, well-connected or financially-padded.  Most of them left the town behind in the dust as soon as they could.

And those giving the high-fives concur that one of the biggest reasons our hometown is on life-support now has much to do with the peculiar brand of "journalism" practiced for well-over-a-decade by the Courier Tribune.

Indeed, this blog exists because the "hometown newspaper" failed to do right by a hometown girl . . . they failed to tell the truth.

Asheboro's "free press" sold its soul long ago.  David Renfro, the Courier's publisher until a year or so ago, was nothing if not a Rotarian, and (being married to Miss Bonnie over at the Economic Development Corporation) he couldn't report anything bad about the town or its VIP occupants/institutions.  The theory seems to have been that a local newspaper reporting bad news might scare new businesses away.  Any criticism was "destructive".  Better to sweep all of Mayberry's ugly under the rug.

Nobody ever really talked back to power . . . dissent was squelched.  And/so a tightly-circled small group of "right people" controlled the town.

Now it's just the "ordinary" townsfolk who are scared . . . for their town.

Here's the scenario spelled out in a little more detail:  If beloved doctors were caught driving drunk or were just flat out clinically dangerous . . . if respected lawyers (key word lawyers) were raving alcoholics and/or snorting cocaine and/or beating their wives & children (when they weren't cheating on them) . . . if hot-shot executives and local politicians and preachers were chasing skirt while professing their conservative values. . . if the local mill owners never met a Hispanic man they couldn't exploit for money (dumping the medical care and education of the families that followed on public services poorly-equipped to handle them)   . . . if local developers were allowed to run roughshod over anything and anyone in their path to profit . . . if our hospital was monopolizing public resources and chewing up/spitting out doctors under the pretense of charity . . . if the fortunes of once rock-solid banks were stupidly pissed away by lawyers-pretending-to-be-businessmen . . .  you were not going to read about it in the "upbeat" Courier until after the whole world knew it anyway - and it was too late to do anything but cry (whilst drying your tears with the pages of Forbes magazine).

But hey, cheer up people.  If Randolph County Manager, Dick Wells, has his way, pretty soon, we'll be Greensboro's new landfill.

There's been NO LIGHT and NO AIR in Asheboro for a very long time. 

And that brings me back to the retirement of Randolph Hospital CEO, Robert Morrison.  Predictably, the Courier's article on the blessed event (which I will not bother to link because it's behind a paywall) was fawning, and the Randolph Guide's initial piece was even worse . . . singing Morrison's praises and accomplishments . . . particularly as it pertained to keeping Randolph Hospital "independent" (translation: incestuously insulated) all these years. 

But the "piece-de-resistance" came when another friend called up last week, alerting me to (and lambasting) yet another article in the Guide in which Morrison's life history (seemingly filled with happy fortuitous accidents) was chronicled. 

I quote the opening line in this example of "in-depth" local journalism  (I'll link the article if and when the Guide puts it online), "For Bob Morrison, small town doesn't mean slim pickins." 

And I mean really.  When I finally got my hands on the article, it was worth a coffee sinus wash. How in God's Holy Name did reporter Larry Penkava, if he had done any research at all on Bob Morrison, write that line with a straight face?

For it is, boys and girls, the understatement of the decade . . . the $700,000/year man being living, laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank proof of how easy it was to snow and ultimately rip-off the under-informed, and largely apathetic residents of one small town. 

Bob milked the fat backwoods cow for all it was worth.

We'll get to picking apart that article in a minute. (I do have to say, I'm disappointed that the Guide, like Asheboro Magazine, now appears to be playing the Courier's "upbeat-no-matter-what" game . . . Asheboro Magazine and the Courier going so far as to selectively distribute their products only to neighborhoods and people they deem "worthy" . . . it's elitist . . . and racist . . . of coruse, WHO CARES as long as we're thinking positively?).  But let's talk, for a minute, about why I stepped away from the legal files and emerged from my break to write it.

This post was actually born a few weeks ago, in the wake of Bob's announcement, when another friend told me about a conversation she had with ex-Hospice-of-Randolph Director, Billie Vuncannon, in a local market.  My relationship with Billie (to my great regret) has devolved over the years . . .  from the time she was a benevolent mentor to a starry-eyed-doctor-wannabe-not-quite-"right"-enough-to-get-a-job-at-the-hospital Hospice volunteer (back in the day when Hospice was still a kitchen-sized operation) . . . to the time that I loved & trusted her enough for her to be the first person (after my Mother) that I called on the day I got fired . . . to the time that I respected her enough to accept her wisdom and immediately forgive her for what-anyone-else-would-see-as-a-betrayal when she told me that Bob was going to be on her Board-of-Directors - because, "You have to keep your friends close and your enemies closer" (Morrison and his money-grubbing "team" spent years trying to get Hospice totally under Randolph's thumb - often trashing/undermining Billie in the process) . . . to the present day - where I now feel my life-long friend and compatriot got a little too friendly with our once mutual enemy for my comfort, and I no longer confide. 

But hey, that's all about life and charity in small town.  Billie had to survive.  She had a husband and children to consider, and at one point she was fighting a life-threatening illness.  She simply could not have endured what I have over the years. I do not blame her and feel no animosity.  It is what it is.

Anyway, in the store, after the announcement, Billie, chatting up my other pal (and appearing to be fishing), announced that "It's all over" . . . implying that there was nothing that could be done about Bob's evil deeds now that he is preparing to ride off into the sunset. 

"I wonder what Mary thinks?", she asked.

(Insert various friends offering sarcastic, unprintable answers.)

I'm sorry, Billie, that's just a silly question at this point, because Mary's been blogging since 2005 about what she thinks.  That, and YOU KNOW FULL WELL how she feels . . . how her heart was broken, and her dreams were crushed, and her soul cried for justice.  You KNOW how she BEGGED for help from colleagues who KNEW she'd been done wrong . .  . colleagues whose EVERY phone call and request-for-help she had answered . . . colleagues who nevertheless turned a deaf ear and a blind eye - all the while boasting about their "small town values" (in essence, bold-faced lying to the public how much they cared about clinical excellence and high standards of care).

And if you're not a perpetually-grinning-mill-town-suck-ups like the Courier's Ray Criscoe and Annette Jordan and Chip Womick . . . or faux "citizen journalists" like Edward-"I-played-the-game-well-enough-to-win-a-seat-on-the-Board-of-the-Cone-Healthcare-System"-Cone, or John-"I'm-jumping-the-N&R's-sinking-ship-before-Landmark-fires-me-too" Robinson . . . and you really want to spend a few moments in Mary's shoes, all you have to do is hit highlights/links on the Housecalls sidebar. 

Mary stopped pulling punches long ago.

(I will pause here to say . . . as I have said over on other blogs since the happy announcement . . . . that Edward Cone, "journalist", blogger, and scion-of-the-Cone-family got exactly what he wanted by doing newbie-blogger, Dr. Mary Johnson, uber-dirty when she brought him a sordid story that did not exactly reflect sunnily on the institution bearing his family name.)

Now all of this coincides with the opening of the new outpatient  Piedmont Surgical Center off Highway 42 . . . a facility across town from Randolph Hospital's main campus, owned by a coalition of local doctors & surgeons - with Randolph Hospital as a non-controlling partner. 

Happy faces were put by the hospital's brass at the opening, but it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the building of that center is something that Bob Morrison & Randolph Hospital did NOT want to happen.  It takes business - and lots & lots of money - away from the hospital's own surgical suites - to the tune of an estimated 2,000 procedures a year. 

(Now Randolph Hospital will only get a cut of the action - like some red-neck godfather.)

But given medical trends, it was going to happen one way or the other.  For once, in a career ripe with bullying everyone around him into doing his bidding - or else, Bob Morrison did not have a choice.

You see the world is much bigger and more diverse than Bob Morrison ever wanted it to be.  And he's getting out while the getting is good.

I personally think it was a mistake for the surgical center to "partner" with Randolph - as opposed to Cone or even Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem (Baptist swooping down to Asheboro and cleaning the place up is something I've literally dreamed about).  But such partnerships are subject to certificates-of-need and turf-wars-over-county-lines, and I'm suspecting that the docs involved in the project, if they really wanted to do it, didn't have a lot of choice either. 

They were stuck with the ugly/big step-sister whose thumb they're trying to step out from under. . . in an effort to keep patients in Asheboro.

Of course, not keeping those patients in Asheboro previously is, as they say, is a matter of public relations . . . a battle that despite Bob's best efforts to paint otherwise, he has decidedly LOST.

I say this not only as a patient who has endured the ongoing consequences of not-one-but-two botched surgeries at Randolph Hospital (both requiring surgical revision - one before Bob's tenure, one during) . . . or even as a badly-burned, once-hospital-owned Pediatrician who was threatened-on-a-pile-of-unsubstantiated-allegations, then fired-for-doing-her-job-the-way-it-was-supposed-to-be-done, and then sued-for-telling-the-truth . . . but also as a home-girl who is regularly contacted by locals who want me to blog their bad experiences at Randolph (for the most part, I've resolved to let others fight their own battles and stick to the case I know inside and out) . . . as a traveling-doctor who regularly encounters less-than-enchanted colleagues who've substituted in and/or just passed through Asheboro . . . and as a daughter who still has an elderly Mother living in Asheboro (a deacon at FBC who has made the rounds of all the hospitals and nursing homes in the area) - and a daughter who worries about her Mother's care when and if she gets seriously ill.

Do I really want my Mother in the hospital whose CEO "visited" my ex-lawyer in the middle-of-the-night (a heart-attack scare while the lawsuits were raging), and silently/menacingly stood over his bed?

Wanna talk about privacy violations, Bob?

This concern was accentuated over the past month, as I watched my my old-friend-from-AHS, Buzz Armfield-of-the-Armfields-who-donated-one-million-dollars-to-the-Cancer-Center, cope with the final illness and death of his Mother.  Audrey Armfield spent about a week at Randolph prior to being transferred to a nursing home - so Buzzy got to experience the hospital first hand for the first time in a long while.  Mercifully, neither Bob nor his left-hand-man, Steve Eblin, showed up in her hospital room uninvited (as administrators are prone to do) to thank the grey-sheep of the Armfield clan for his family's largess.  Based on impressions Buzz shared during the experience (he was actually very complimentary of the nursing and ancillary staff), not a lot has changed in the nearly fourteen years since I was unceremoniously shown the door.

In short, I hear LOTS of things from the small-town trenches, and I think I'm fairly in-tune with the word-on-the-street.  As a home-girl, I always was.  But Bob and his "team" of positive-thinking sycophants did not want to hear it.

The FACT is that the perception of the community concerning the quality of healthcare care available in Asheboro is most certainly very different than what the medical community, under Bob's head-in-the-clouds leadership, thinks it is . . . or what Bob/the newspaper/the economic development corporation wants it to be. 

The doctors really are in a self-induced fog compared to many communities in which I have lived and worked since being tossed out into Asheboro's gutters by the Bob and his upbeat team.

The physicians in Asheboro have run in a closed pack for so long that they have no clue what the-ordinary-people-with-good-insurance (who continue to flock to Greensboro and W-S and Raleigh-Durham and Pinehurst for their care) really think.  Moreover, they never really wanted to know as they marched behind the hospital's administrative Pied Pipers who were all about style & appearance over substance . . . thinking oh-so-positively . . . yet somehow always managing to pander to our mill town's lowest common denominators for money.

I mean, there is something just fundamentally morally/ethically WRONG with a hospital CEO telling the general populace that bringing alcohol to town will help recruit doctors and enhance the community's quality-of-life.  It was a time for a healthcare executive to sit down and shut up . . . not post a video on You Tube giving the impression that drenching a previously-dry town in booze - and making it easier for people to get their hands on alcohol - would not have dire medical/social consequences for some in our community.

Of course, Randolph Hospital would be there to pick of the pieces of those broken lives . . . and bill Medicaid/Medicare.

(I'm thinking that maybe if Bob had not treated so many of the doctors he recruited with utter contempt . . . like pawns on his chessboard . . . he wouldn't need booze to recruit so many new ones . . . and the ones who stayed would not be driven to drink.)

When I worked at Randolph Medical Associates, I heard it EVERY DAY.  A HUGE part of my problem with regards to inpatient Pediatrics was that parents did not want to go NEAR that hospital - even if I was there 24/7 to protect their child.  Many refused to set foot in the ED.  EVERY SINGLE DAMNED DAY.  Morrison and Eblin visibly cringed whenever the subject came up.  

Meanwhile, I was supposed to quietly cover the asses of the Mick Irwins of this world - clean up their messes - AND put up with the petty back-stabbing CRAP going on in the office - and hope I did not get caught in the malpractice crossfire. 

It's warmed my heart over the years to hear that the hospital brass lost ALL credibility with a lot of people when they fired the home-girl for intervening to STOP world-class-care-that-no-one-could-trust.  The people in this county have amazingly long memories . . . memories that withstand all of April Thornton's PR pizazz and the Courier's determined blind eye. 

It's amazed even me how long they are.

If (heavy sigh) I only had a nickel for every time I've heard, "I will never set foot in that hospital", I would have never had to have sue their controlled affiliate after it turned most of the dreams I ever had to ash.

And that brings me back to the Guide's "life of Bob Morrison" story - which we shall now dissect (again, I will link the story whenever the Guide has the guts to put it online).

According to the article, Bob grew up in a small town (New Albany, Indiana).  Bob loves small towns, you see.  And well he should.  The sleepy hollow of Asheboro, snuggled on the edge of the Uwharries, with its mill-town mindset, was perfect "pickins" for the man who wanted to rule a landscape with an iron hand and no oversight from above.  Once entrenched in his lair, no one would stop him.

In the article, Bob talks a lot about his work to change the staff's perception of itself:

"We had to believe we provide excellent quality and service . . . if you expect more that's what you'll get."

Not necessarily, Bob.  Thinking your poop doesn't stink does not make for the scent of roses coming out of the bathroom stall.  Creative visualization is nice, but the thing that Bob never seemed to get is that it's about so much more than just BELIEVING what you're doing is good. 

You actually have to BE good. 

And when the services you provide are not good - for whatever reason and no matter whose toes you step on, you have to be willing to look at what you did wrong and fix it.  The messenger who delivers the bad news should be SAFE.

As a freshly-minted Pediatrician, that 's what I expected and believed when I arrived in Asheboro.  I wanted to help change a medical landscape that had allowed a locally-beloved quack to surgically mutilate my throat (and forever alter my voice/heatlh) as a five-year-old.  Bob and his "team" promised real change for the children of Asheboro and Randolph County.

But they did not deliver.

Moving on along in the article, Bob tells the story that healthcare was not his original list of things-to-do.  As Bob tells it, he was just another mill worker who got fired before Christmas (shades of John Edwards feeling our pain . . . choke, sob) during the recession in the 70's.  Manufacturing jobs were a bust (sound familiar?), so fairly desperate, he applied for a job at St. Francis Hospital in Cincinnati in public relations (something he says he knew nothing about when he applied - see how creative visualization works?).  And this is where Bob discovered that he liked "strategy" and managing healthcare in small towns - (if you're reading between the lines) particularly in small town institutions that were run autocratically (as Catholic hospitals usually are) - i.e. by a small group of people in total control of everything and everyone.

And/so he went back to school and got his (evil) MBA.

I have to pause for a moment and tell readers about my brother's recent experience in a Catholic hospital.  Tommie, an airline pilot and Father of two, fell desperately-ill after flying one night.  He called me while on a layover in Cincinnati - and could barely speak he was in so much pain.  He had recently had an outpatient surgical procedure, and from what he told me between gasps for air, I was concerned about infectious complications, and a potential surgical emergency.  His crew called an ambulance and he was taken to the closet hospital, which happened to be a Catholic hospital in Kentucky (just over a bridge/the state line).  He got a cursory (I think grossly inadequate) evaluation in the ED, and was admitted on antibiotics.  Over the course of his admission, it quickly became clear to me that my (heavily doped-up-on-morphine) brother was suffering from MRSA, he was on the wrong antibiotics, and he was getting worse/septic.  But the nurses would not call the doctors for anything and only spoke to them on rounds in the morning.  For the rest of the day, doctors were treated like unapproachable gods - the nurses would not even put me through when I called the hospital to question his medical management (pseudo-septic Tommie literally handed the phone to a nurse and said, "This is my sister.  She's a doctor.  Explain what you're not doing to her.").  Messages were given to nursing administrators who never called back.  Meanwhile Tommie was alone and getting sicker . . . his only advocates were hundreds of miles away . . and he wasn't going anywhere because of a raging snowstorm.  It took two days for the doctors to come in out of the fog and get my brother on the proper antibiotics to treat MRSA.  He was hospitalized for two weeks.  We got him out of that &^%$#@! hospital as fast as the snow thawed - and had him re-admitted to a facility in North Carolina.  He could have died.

This is the kind of working environment in which Bob Morrison cut his teeth.  And he apparently liked it.

With his (evil) MBA in hand, Bob took a job with another Catholic system (Mercy) and wound up being the boss of a small hospital in Urbana, Ohio.  But the hospital was part of a much larger conglomerate, and the trend at the time (which is actually even more of a trend now) was for multi-hospital systems to centralize their management . . . and to eliminate the local figurehead executives & Boards which were often expensive dead weight in the organization.  Bob was out of a job again.

(I actually contacted Urbana years ago, to try and elicit the details of his departure.  But that file was locked up tight.)

That's when Bob found Asheboro.  At the time, Randolph Hospital was looking for someone to replace John Ellis, their longtime uber-autocratic hospital administrator.  It was 1993.  The hospital had just finished a multi-million-dollar facilities expansion.  But it had a horrible reputation, and was next-to-broke. 

They had built it, but people still weren't coming.

Bob got a new title: President and CEO.  Shored up by a Board-of-Directors composed of farily-desperate mill-town-kings-who-asked-no-questions, he was given a free hand.  He was a captain of local industry.  He was "in".  And if he played his cards right, he would never be fired again.

Now Bob likes to brag about the creation of Randolph Medical Associates, and this article is no exception.  The hospital needed in-coming patients to survive (duh), and the intent was to create a "designer" or "premiere" practice to bring in local physicians to feed the monster.  And/so the hospital's "wholly-owned controlled affiliate" was born.  Despite what Bob would like you to believe, it was not some genius idea exclusive/unique to Morrison or Eblin, but a developing trend in hospital management - one that was able to dance all around Federal STARK (anti-kickback) laws.

The Guide's article states that Morrison hired a full-time recruiter for physicians soon after arrival.  It also regurgitates the party line that the RMA model allowed physicians to come to the community, establish their practices as employees of a benevolent parent-company, and then break-off to hang-out their own shingles.

Penkava's story conveniently leaves out the part about Randolph Hospital not even considering physicians educated & trained out of the U.S. in its initial RMA recruitment efforts.  Nope. Morrison and his team wanted white-bread-doctors . . . in order to attract the better-paying insured patients who were flocking to other counties in droves. 

Foreign-medical-grads would only come much later . . . after Morrison's "team" developed a reputation for doing doctors way-beyond dirty.

Pursuing the concept of RMA as the "premiere" practice in Asheboro (never mind the grumbling/resentful/private/established doctors in the community whose efforts to run a business and make a living were not cushioned by taxpayer dollars) Morrison and his team also didn't want to actively market the "non-profit" practice to parents and children on the East side of town.  Those patients had the health department, and we couldn't interfere with that business.  That might interfere with the Department's funding.

(It's the same part of town where Dick Wells wants to dump a landfill now.  See how things in good ole Asheboro work?)

And it was Randolph Hospital's physician recruiter who (according to several recruiters I was working with after I got fired), would later black-ball me (and Dr. Anderson) for miles around Asheboro.  But when Jim Kinlaw (a partner at White Oak Family Practice and perpetual RH Board member) asked Morrison if this was true, and Morrison denied it, that denial alone made Mary (and Laurie Anderson and all those pesky physician recruiters trying to help us) a liar.

That's what passes for "oversight" in a small town.  But I'm skipping ahead of myself.

Yours truly was the first doctor recruited under the new practice model.  I was doing Locum Tenens work in New Orleans at the time . . . Jim Kinlaw knew I was freshly-minted and "out-there" . . . and contact was made through my Mother. 

Well-versed in Asheboro's awful reputation - particularly in Pediatrics (the town had a recent history of chewing up and spitting out Brenners-educated Pediatricians - who are decidedly NOT "a dime a dozen"), I was intrigued by the opportunity, yet initially somewhat reluctant to take the job (and warned by others against it).  But Morrison and Eblin offered a sweet deal at a practice site that offered full state & Federal loan repayment within two years.  I would be the "valued employee" (billed as no stress/no administrative hassle) of a "non-profit" . . . fulfilling my personal desire to serve all comers and make a real difference in my hometown.

To coin one of Bob's phrases, "It was home.  My family and my friends were there.  It was where I planned to stay."

I arrived in 1994, with much fanfare and an ad campaign in the Courier Tribune.  Mama still has the ads in a photobook.  She and Pops were so proud.

And for almost three years, providing back-up call for critical care Pediatrics 24-7 (actually very good training for my current job in the middle of far-Eastern nowhere) . . .  much of that time coping with with THE MOST INCOMPETENT PRACTICE MANAGEMENT THAT I HAVE, TO THIS DAY, EVER ENCOUNTERED . . . insisting upon the excellence that Bob swears he cared so much about . . . doing everything I knew how to do to wade through the crap - to make it all work - and to make things in Asheboro better for kids, I labored under the lie that there was light at the end of the tunnel, and that someday, somehow, when my loans were paid off, the practice I had built from nothing would be mine to transition - if that's what I wanted.

But the thing is, I really wanted to remain an employee.  I saw the writing-on-the-wall before many other private docs did, and I did not want the hassles of running a practice.  I expected to fairly reimbursed for my services, but exotic monster compensation plans based on "incentives' and "production" (what Bob wanted to impose after he hooked the first doctors in . . . to the extent of firing everybody at RMA all at once so he/Steve Eblin could "renegotiate" their contracts . . . another genius move that totally back-fired) did not interest me.  And my personal life simply was not for sale.

I had an excellent local reputation (for all of Bob's later attempts to destroy it), and great rapport with the Pediatric institutions/sub-specialists to which I referred patients when Randolph's services were not enough .. . . one of them my alma mater (Bowman Gray/Baptist Hospital/Brenners) . . . another the hospital where I was born (Cone).

For all that Bob says that he's proud of Randolph Hospital being "independent", back in late 1997, his practice Director was telling the Pediatricians that we needed to be sending our referrals preferentially to Cone (not always my first choice).  He causally told us that it was in our best interests to foster the "cooperative relationship" between the institutions (rumors persist to this day that there is some kind of "secret ownership" of Randolph by Cone). 

The Director was immediately informed (by Dr. Anderson and Dr. Johnson) that Randolph Hospital attempting to direct our Pediatric referrals as a condition of employment was illegal (those pesky STARK laws) and he needed to back WAY off.  We would send children where we - and their parents - thought they needed to go.

Of course, Cone Hospital owned the practice that employed the family practitioner I later rescued (at the nurses' request) that fateful night in 1998 . . . a doctor whose skills in Neonatology Bob's team grossly exaggerated and falsely advertised to an unsuspecting public.

On that particular night, the doctor, way-out-of-his-element, did not know what he was doing, and refused to ask for help that was available.  His arrogance and ignorance could have killed a newborn baby girl.  Quality and excellence did not factor into the equation AT ALL. 

And on that night, I did what I was supposed to do.

The next morning, pretty much at the end of my rope, I reported the case to Peer Review.

And if you ask ANYONE on any hospital or Medical Board, or the gurus at JCAHO (Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hosptial Organizations) or the bureaucrats at DHHS (Department of Health & Human Services), or even the hoity-toids in the towers at the American Board of Pediatrics now . . . I PLAYED BY THE RULES LONG BEFORE ANY OF THEM BOTHERED TO CARVE THE RULES IN STONE.

IN SHORT, WHAT I DID AT RANDOLPH HOSPITAL IN 1998 IS POLICY AND PROCEDURE IN 2011 IN ANY HOSPITAL IN THIS COUNTRY.

After I did what I was supposed to do, the FACT is that Bob Morrison, as the leader of a "non-profit" hospital . . . the man everyone else looked to for moral/ethical guidance . . . DID NOT. 

What happened that night had to be covered up.  It didn't look good.  Why, it was EMBARRASSING!  Dr. Johnson had to be silenced.

And/so, within two weeks of the incident . . . without ANYONE from the hospital's "Quality Assurance" or peer review Committees speaking to me about what happened . . . without practice management saying, "Hey Mary, we probably took things a little too far when we threatened you IN WRITING without just cause", I was fired.

I was unceremoniously given five days to wrap up my work and get out of RMA's office - yet at the same time held exclusively to my contract for the rest of a six-month "notice" . . . my silence ensured by the practice doling out a paycheck every two weeks (instead of paying me what I was contractually owed in a lump sum and setting me free).

I was given no input into a letter that was immediately sent out to my patients - a letter that intially gave many parents the impression I had abandoned their children.  And despite what the Randolph Hospital Board-of-Directors were telling angry parents in carefully-crafted letters (about my freedom to set up shop in the community), the FACTS were that I unable to protest to anyone (including and especially the Boards of Directors) other than Bob/his minions without being FIRED FOR CAUSE . . . I was unable to see "RMA" patients anywhere (including the hospital), or work on transitioning my practice without being FIRED FOR CAUSE . . . I was unable to work anywhere else without permission without being FIRED FOR CAUSE . . . and (denied a patient list) I was unable to tell parents/patients the real reason I was fired without being FIRED FOR CAUSE.

Just to make sure I couldn't practice at the hospital (because my hospital privileges were mine to keep or resign), Bob's practice Director immediately cancelled my malpractice insurance - even though I was still employed.  It was a move that would later backfire in a bad way.

In doing these things, Bob Morrison and his lawyers kept me in a tight little windowless box for six months.  Meanwhile, my patients (at least the ones who didn't flock back to White Oak or Greensboro) could be shifted to the rolls of other RMA doctors.  The fact IS that employment laws in North Carolina (a "right-to-work" state) equate doctors to janitors.  And again, anything I did to set up my own show during the notice period - or move on to work for a local competitor (or move on, period) - or in any way incite parent's outrage about what had really happened - would have been in direct contradiction to Randolph Medical Associate's "best interests" - "justification" to be FIRED FOR CAUSE.

Like everybody else except the over-paid, Teflon-coated demon-triplets (Morrison, Eblin, Bridges) who did this to me, I am human.  I had a mortgage and bills to pay.  And, in terms of "moving on", getting FIRED FOR CAUSE just doesn't look good on your CV ("curriculum vitae" . . . doctor-speak for "resume").

So tell me again, Larry Penkava, after your extensive research on the tall tale Bob Morrison was spoon-feeding you, that the goal of Randolph Medical Associates was to mentor and foster new physicians in the hope they would stay in the community.

Tell me again that Bob Morrison cared one bit about "quality of care".

It's not just a lie, it's a damned lie.

I was the first doctor hired at RMA, and the first one who should have been given the unencumbered (according to my National Health Service Corps agreement) opportunity to fly solo (or in may case, set up shop with Dr. Laurie Anderson - who also got loan repayment and also left Asheboro behind in the dust because she could not stand what was going on at RMA).

The FACT is that Bob wanted to keep the patient base I had built (of the three Pediatricians, the one most composed of the "white bread" patients he craved) for himself.  Likewise, the boys over at Jim Kinlaw's White Oak Family Practice liked getting my patients back on their roles - and didn't want Mary Johnson practicing Pediatrics anywhere but at RMA.

No one wanted the popular homegirl as a competitor in their market.

So much for the "mission" of the Federal program that repaid my student loans to recruit and RETAIN.

In the article, Bob boasts about his recipe for success:

"If I'm in business and (a competitor) is getting results that are equal or better, I would try to copy or beat it."

The thing is, Bob, never had to compete on an even playing field.  His modus operandi was to crush or absorb competitors in the community - using the bully pulpit of his non-profit.  His "industry" was shored up with taxpayer support - there was always a net.  In stark contrast, ordinary physicians, trying to make a living in "his" town were out of luck unless they played Bob's game.  And don't even get me started on the unnecessary duplication of services . . . by ALL accounts one of the biggest factors in increasing healthcare costs in this country.

In other words, every tiny town doesn't need a "world-class" Cancer Center.

(OBTW, the Cancer Center became a gleam in Bob's eye when he realized how generous the citizens of Asheboro were when it came to supporting organizations like Hospice and events like Relay-for-Life.  It wasn't altruism.  He saw dollar signs.)

Bob's "team" acted with pure malice in what they did to me and the way they did it . . . destroying any chance I had to transition into my own practice in Asheboro . . . or find employment with another practice in the surrounding area . . . or (in the alternative) land a Pediatric sub-specialty fellowship (the "neutral references" Bob's minions offered were worse-than-useless).

Try explaining getting fired for saving a baby's life in a fellowship interview.  Watch all the leads for local jobs suddenly go deader-than-dead (remember, this is way back before I discovered blogging).

And then talk to me about "getting over it" and "moving on".

Things were bad enough as I took to the road to pay my mortgage (bouncing all over the place - getting lousy reimbursement and staying in roach-motels that Bob & Peggy Morrison wouldn't be caught dead in).  But when I sued Bob's "controlled affiliate" . . . in an effort to get back what was mine . . . that's when the knives really came out.  My hospital privileges (a protected property right) were immediately rescended - based on a RESIGNATION I HAD WITHDRAWN - without notifying me that the action was being considered by the Medical Executive Committee.

I mean, these guys . . . who put on a great show of being benevolent community stalwarts acted like a bunch of Fascists!

And let me just say, there's really nothing like being SLAPP-sued for telling the government-you-served the TRUTH about what you endured at the hands of a corporate sadist . . . with his buddy-running-your-local-hometown-newspaper splashing the headline that you are a liar front-page-above-the-fold . . . for all of your friends and family to read.

Mom and Dad saved that clipping too.  They were horrified (I mean, can you try to put yourself in their shoes?).  But they were even prouder of their girl - who they knew was not going to take it lying down.

And that leads us to the reason I am in the blogosphere . . . the FACT that Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin repeatedly lied under Oath during the discovery phase of their own despicable "libel" lawsuit (a lawsuit they eventually ran from - their tucked tails neatly covered by the Courier Tribune) . . . withholding far-from-confidential fiscal information that was absolutely VITAL to determining the true damages I had suffered as a physician wrongfully crushed under their thumbs.

Lying under Oath about matters relevant to a damages claim is PERJURY.  Perjury is a FELONY.  It has no statute-of-limitations.  And I reported the CRIME to Garland Yates back in 2003.

But since that time, the Randolph County DA has refused to even meet with me - or refer the case to the N.C. and/or U.S. Attorney Generals for a proper investigation.  The small-town wagons have been tightly circled around Bob Morrison since day one. 

There's a REASON Randolph Hospital put a clause in its employment contracts requiring any legal action over disputes to be filed in Randolph County.

"There are things we can do to make our hospital better.  It's that attitude, willingness to take responsibility, is what I'm most proud of."

Yeah, right Bob.  Do you EVER plan to TAKE responsibility . . . to BE accountable . . . for the LIES you swore to God in a Court proceeding . .  . before you ride off into the sunset (if I have to guess, in order to pursue your next career opportunity as a blood-sucking healthcare consultant)?

And there you have it boys and girls, just one physician's take on the story behind the "hundreds of accomplishments" that Bob Morrison is now peddling as his legacy.  I can assure you there are more stories.  From more doctors. And nurses.

But I was pretty much the only one to really roll up my sleeves and openly fight back.  And just because the oily SOB is retiring doesn't mean I'm going away.

With regards to Randolph Hospital's future, I don't see it as remaining independent for very much longer.  The town is in economic freefall, demographics have changed considerably in the last 15 years, the paying-to-nonpaying patient ratios are eroding into scary numbers, and money is very tight (you can tell by looking at the infrastructure of things other than the Cancer Center).  Looking in my crystal ball, I see a bigger hospital - most likely Cone or Baptist - coming down and cleaning house . . .

. . . which is pretty much what Bob was running from when he came here.

You can be for damned sure that no one coming in is going to approve of paying Bob Morrison $500,000-700,000/year.

As for how I "feel" (Billie) about Bob riding off into the sunset while the newspapers slobber and the right people fawn, here goes . . .

I'm disgusted.  Very angry.  And more determined than ever to be vindicated . . . to see transparency and accountability become a reality in Asheboro.

And here's today's reality-sans-spin:  For all of the building-of-fancy-buildings and endless upbeat spinning, not a whole lot about Randolph's reputation has really improved since I first arrived on the scene in 1998 to help change it.

The things that happened on Bob Morrison's watch (new ED and ambulatory/outpatient services) were going to happen under anybody's competent leadership - indeed, these things had to happen for Randolph to survive.

Based on my experience with administrators and executives over almost 40 locums assignments on the road, just about anyone else would have been more benevolent doing it than our positive-thinking Bob.

Sadly, it doesn't really matter how hard the ordinary minions there work, the rot at the top is still bringing them down.  And I don't think that there's much to be done about that unless someone in the medical community finally grows a set, throws off the mill-town chains, and demands real change . . . and (most importantly) makes a BIG SHOW of it.

If anyone wants a SHOW, I've got one ready-made.

With the evidence (of bad faith & perjury) I presented to the Garland Yates back in 2003, as non-profit officers who acted amorally, unethically and ILLEGALLY,  Bob Morrison AND Steven Eblin could have been FIRED FOR CAUSE on the spot . .  that is, IF their Board of Directors actually had possessed any of those small-town values they boast about . . . and IF the medical staff had ever stopped being AFRAID of their shadows long enough to organize against a tyrant.

Indeed, these two corporate vampires could STILL be fired-for-cause now . . . it's certainly reason enough not to hand the CEO job to Steve Eblin (who was the true architect behind what was done to me).

But I labor under no illusion that anyone in this town is capable of doing the right thing unless someone is holding a gun to their head (we are speaking figuratively here, lest Bob & company try to float the notion that not-so-crazy Mary is capable of physical violence).

It's been a true conspiracy of dunces.

Many people on the outside looking in, have commented to me that it is SIMPLY UNFRICKINGBELIEVABLE that Randolph Hospital's Board of Directors has continued to ALLOW Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin to pretend that they did not lie and cheat and steal . . . to just ignore the accusations made on this blog . . . to let them stand and waft all over the Internet for years without doing something - anything to "fix it" and "make peace with Mary".

Because suing her kind of back-fired in a BIG way.  To coin a phrase, every hit on this blog is one more person . . . who will tell a few more people . . . who will all tell a few more people . . . and so on and so on.

Any way you look at it, they're BUSTED.

Moving on along, Morrison said in the article that he "looked for a time when it would be a clean place to start for my replacement.  There is none."

Again, in terms of what I hope to do soon in a Courtroom, that's another colossal understatement.  There is NOTHING "clean" about this situation.  Several in my circle of friend have wondered aloud what potential CEO in his right mind would take the job with this PR nightmare hanging over his head?

I operate in the light, so I'll share.  What happened to me could have been stopped with one phone call from the Feds when it started.  The crux of the case I hope to make is this:  Federal healthcare reform and tort-reform in North Carolina have come and gone.  My ordeal spans the tenures of Clinton (disbarred in Arkansas for perjury), Hunt, Sleazely (convicted felon), Edwards (if-there-is-a-God-soon-to-be-convicted-felon), Bush and Obama.  The only politco who ever did anything substantive to help in nearly fourteen years was Howard Coble, and it simply wasn't enough.  And in that time, despite begging every regulatory body under-the-sun for help, NOTHING has been done to plug the black-holes of medical and legal oversight I fell through.  As a medical whistle-blower, my civil and property rights were trampled, and the state & Federal governments simply could not be bothered (the logic seems to be that it was neither rape nor murder, so it's just not an important enough case to pursue).

While a good doctor was criminally-battered by the liars and thieves-posing-as-captains-of-industry-at-a-non-profit-hospital (all because she did not hang up the phone on a terrified nurse and go back to sleep - because she stepped up to keep a baby girl from dying in front of her eyes), the pencil-pushing, dive-under-their-desks bureaucrats at the US & NC Departments of Health and Human Services might as well have been the bigshots at Penn State when Sandusky was raping boys in the shower (insert hypocritical, self-righteous rant featured by well-named hyper-local blogger-turned-healthcare-system-board member).  Likewise, there must not be a lot of oxygen high in the ivory towers occupied by the Medical Board or American Board of Pediatrics.  And JCAHO wouldn't recognize a sentinel event if on jumped up and bit one of their useless reviewers in the tuckus.

Indeed, Obama just threw more money after bad at the National Health Services Corps.  Hope and change was a joke.

Since the state and Federal regulatory agencies - and medical oversight bodies - that were supposed to protect me (and by extension, my patients) never lifted so much as a finger to do so (despite all the blather about "transparency" and accountability and high standards of care . . . despite the position and policy statements they now present to the public as being God's holy word on the subject), I am working on crafting something that holds their feet to the fire.

And call me crazy (a lot of people have because they cannot otherwise make a coherent counter-argument), but I don't really think these regulatory agencies and oversight bodies are going to want to answer for Bob Morrison's crimes . . . or fight a case that showcases their methodical indifference and gross negligence . . . especially in an election year.

There is legal precedent in North Carolina.  It's a matter of melding with the right lawyer (someone recently told me that they are "a dime a dozen" these days . . . and I burst out laughing), so I am doing the rounds now.  I'm a patient woman.  Not in a hurry.  And even if the legal arena ultimately doesn't work out, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

The Internet is forever.  Cold dishes and all that.

But sooner or later, I think Bob Morrison will have some splainin to do.

Jim Kinlaw, someone I once held on a fairly high pedestal and now hold in utter contempt, once self-righteously pontificated to me that, "We do not live or practice in a vacuum" . . . implying that I should have done more to go along to get along with the powers-that-be at Randolph Hospital.  I should have looked the other way.  I should have kept quiet.

As Asheboro circles the drain, I could say the very same thing to him now.  We don't live in a vacuum, Jim.  There is right and there is wrong.  You and your man were DEAD WRONG.  This isn't going away.  I am not going away.

So, DOCTOR, as the air in you vaccum gets thinner and thinner, if you don't want this to ultimately blow up in your face, MAYBE, just MAYBE it's time you and the rest of that Board-of-Directors told Bob Morrison and Steve Eblin, "Wait one minute fellas.  Bob doesn't walk out the door just yet, and Steve doesn't get his chair.  YOU MADE THIS MESS.  BEFORE YOU LEAVE, YOU CLEAN IT UP!"

And just so you know, DOCTOR, every time I even try to entertain the idea of giving up and letting go . . . of cosigning what was done to me in Asheboro to the ashes . . . I immediately flash back to a memory.  It's one of my Pops, Jim.  You knew him.  Once up a time, like my Mother, like me, he was YOUR PATIENT.  And one day, in the spring of 2004 (the year before he died), my Father stood across Fayetteville street, and silently kept watch over his daughter, the Pediatrician.  In desperation, trying to get someone/anyone in your mill-town-brimming-with-small-town-values to CARE about the nasty things that were done to her, she had strapped a sign to her back and was protesting all by herself in front of your hospital's old "front door". 

The Courier Tribune (typically) didn't think it was news.  Neither did the N&R. 

That image of my Dad is BURNED into my soul, Jimbo.  Mostly because I KNOW many of the old-guard doctors and Board members of Randolph Hospital thought it was hysterical - just like SUING ME for "libel" was funny (well, at least until your bullies-in-suits had to eat it). 

I also think of my sainted Mother - who taught your kids - and Ray Criscoe's - at Loflin school.  Mama DID RIGHT by you - and by Ray - and your children. 

But you-all let Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin CRAP all over her daughter.  Now you're letting Bob walk away.

Giving up is just NOT an option.

So there you have it, Billie  That's what Mary thinks.  That's how Mary feels.  That's what she's working on.  It's so NOT over.

Bob Morrison can retire.  He can run.  But the hospital he leaves behind (after sucking it dry) cannot hide.

Audrey Armfield

My pal-from-high-school and online-knight-in-shining-armor, Buzz-Armfield-of-the-Asheboro-Armfields-who-gave-one-million-dollars-to-the-Randolph-Hospital-Cancer-Center lost his Mother on Sunday morning.  She had suffered a massive stroke two weeks prior.

I never met Mrs. Armfield, Sr.  But, based on her son's vivid descriptions (Buzz is nothing if not a gifted story-teller), I imagined her to be a feisty, independent, albeit old-school Southern dame.  Like many of Asheboro's "right people", she referred to me as "that woman" (Buzzy was apologetic), and it made me smile. 

I took no offense.  Many older folk in Asheboro are a product of the mill-town environment and their time.

Audrey Seltz Armfield's obituary can be found here.  A worn-out/world-weary (after two weeks of dealing with end-of-life issues - part of that time spent in an institution whose senior management he does not trust/has no use for) Buzz wryly commented that one could not read it Monday morning in Asheboro's Courier-Tribune. 

Indeed, the good citizens of Asheboro cannot read it at all online unless they PAY for the privilege.  It's just my opinion that, as a matter of public record and community service, some things at a newspaper are NOT "proprietary", and should not be hidden behind a paywall.  Bereaved families have enough to cope with and worry about without their local newspaper making it harder to get the word out.

More later, I think.  But not now.

The Murray Verdict

There is no question - NONE - that Conrad Murray was guilty of malpractice in the death of Michael Jackson.  Medically speaking, the things he admitted to doing were imcomprehensibly reckless and stupid - truly inexcusable.  He deserves to loose his medical license (what many of the fans-prancing-around-the-Courthouse-declaring-the-world-is-safer-because-it's-minus-another-bad-doctor don't seem to understand, is that he can probably, at some point in the not too distant future, get it back). 

But for a while, after more & more evidence surfaced showcasing Jackson's addictions (that made Elvis look like a rank amateur), I struggled with the notion that Murray was criminally negligent . . . given that Jackson's beyond-wacked-out world was not your world or mine.

The biggest problem I had with zeroing in on Murray as "the man who killed Michael Jackson" was that all of the other $oul-$ucking $ychophant$ in Jackson's life . . . including the other "doctor$" who $lowly carved his face into a macabre ma$k AND who turned the King-of-Pop into just another pathetic drug addict . . . including the never-ending parade of intimate parasite$ - and yes$ men & women - who looked the other way no matter what Jackson did (or who he did it with) . . . including the mercile$$ concert promoter$ . . . and including his own almost deliberately obliviou$ family (Mother/abu$ive Father/$hamele$$ly-attention-$eeking $ibling$) . . . will self-righteously walk away from this mess chanting that justice has been served.

All that being said, in the end, Murray was a doctor, not a scapegoat.  He was held to a higher standard (of care) because he should be. 

Murray had a duty - and the responsibility - to say to his "friend" and (at the time) only patient, "Not NO, Michael, but HELL NO".   He could have stood up to the promoters and demanded more/better medical AND psychiatric care for his patient - in appropriate facilities.  In the alternative, he could have walked away from the glitz-by-association and all  of that lovely money . . . and gone back to serve the many ordinary patients he left behind . . . patients he/his lawyers later used to try and defend the indefensible.

Conrad Murray fell into the trap of doing what the patient wanted - instead of what was best for the patient.  In theory, it's actually not a lot different from prescribing an antibiotic/other drug that you don't think the patient really needs - but that the patent's Mama (or Gandmama) wants or she'll cause a very ugly scene in your waiting room and slow down your patient flow - or write your boss, telling him/her you're a terrible doctor.

Been there, done that.  I've said yes (any doctor who says they haven't is lying).  I've also said no.  And saying no is much harder/more likely to HURT you. 

I've digressed.  I think the verdict was appropriate (involuntary manslaughter is actually a perfect description).  The jury got it right.  It was the doctor.  In the bedroom.  With a needle.  Not a great day for medicine.

But it's not a great day for "justice" either.  Real justice is an illusion.  Too many guilty parties - accomplices - are walking away from this one - and writing books..  There just isn't anything to cheer/dance/sing about.

And if Michael Jackson was in the Courtroom - if he was the man all his fans say he was - if going into the light really releases the demons and imparts wisdom/truth - I think he might have been rooting for the defense.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  I feel sorry for Conrad Murray.  He is in a hell of his own making.

But he had LOT$ of help getting there.