PERRYVILLE — For most of his life, Joe Hutchison has been known as “Dr. Joe†around these parts. Hutchison was a dentist in Perry County, about 90 minutes south of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, for 50 years.
Last year, he retired from his practice. This year, he decided to try his hand at public service.
In April, Hutchison was elected to the Board of Trustees for Perry County Memorial Hospital. Like many rural hospitals in Missouri, it’s a public facility, originally funded by county taxpayers. Hutchison ran, he says, to put the “public†back into the hospital system.
There had been questions in the community about a hospital administrator who was put on leave, as well as the hospital’s planned merger with the Mercy health system. After Hutchison was elected, he started asking for documents — from minutes of meetings to financial records and contracts. Even as a member of the board of trustees, he was denied access to information he says he needed to make decisions.
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He filed a Sunshine Law request to get the documents. Administrators told him they weren’t subject to the state’s open records law.
“I was frustrated and getting nowhere,†Hutchison told me.
So Hutchison turned to the courts. Earlier this month, he sued the hospital system he serves, trying to get a judge to declare that the county’s hospital is indeed a public body.
Hutchison has Missouri case law on his side.
In the 1990s, Perry County Memorial Hospital did what a lot of city- and county-owned hospitals in Missouri have done. The Board of Trustees created a separate nonprofit organization to run the daily operations of the hospital, with its own board of directors. That body, many of the systems that adopted this structure have asserted, is not subject to the state’s open records law.
The Missouri Court of Appeals disagrees with that assertion. In 1998, in a case involving a Kansas City hospital, the court ruled that a public body can’t create a separate entity that enters into contracts and then hide those contracts from public view.
“Contracts entered into by governmental entities are precisely the type of records the Sunshine Law seeks to provide to the public,†the court wrote.
That ruling came out of the Western District of the Missouri Court of Appeals. Now, it seems, the Eastern District might have an opportunity to weigh in on the same question.
For rural areas, this battle raises important questions, says JP Clubb, who is Hutchison’s lawyer. Many rural hospitals have struggled financially in recent years. And in the age of hospital consolidation, where public hospitals are contracting with private entities, it can be even harder for local residents to know what’s going on with the health system they have funded.
The problem isn’t unique to Perry County.
In the central part of the state, Boone County’s public hospital has a similar structure. Earlier this month, the Columbia Missourian reported that its attempt to obtain financial records to explain the hospital’s $112 million loss was denied.
In both Boone County and Perry County, the public hospital systems assert their records aren’t public.
“PCHS is a private nonprofit run by a volunteer board of directors,†Ben Askew, the attorney for the Perry County Health System, wrote in an email responding to questions about the lawsuit. “PCHS stands by its 25-year history, bylaws and understanding that it is not a governmental body and the requested records are not public.â€
Hutchison’s constant requests for information have created friction on the board, with clashes in public meetings among board members, hospital administrators and residents. The merger with Mercy — which has already gone through — might be a good thing, Hutchison says. But it’s ridiculous, he argues, to ask public board members to vote on such decisions when they can’t even see the records that provide context.
“They’re asking us to sign off on this and they won’t even show us the financials or the audit. I have 50 questions to figure out what to ask once I see the books, and they don’t want me to have access to the books,†Hutchison says. “It’s a nightmare.â€