An anonymous Ashvegas commenter takes a swipe at the leadership of Mission Hospitals in this note. I don’t have independent verification of the writer’s claims, and I don’t know exactly what “horrors” the writer is speaking of.
I’m calling attention to the note, though, because I consider this blog a vital public forum, and I hope it might spark a constructive discussion. I hope Mission Hospitals’ leadership will write in to respond:
Take one day and call in random directors for interviews. You will find a group of intelligent, and caring individuals who are finally left with no recourse except to talk openly to those willing to listen concerning the horrors that they are forced to perpetrate in the names of Joe Damore and Brian Aston.
The directors and managers are very afraid of losing their jobs but are at the point where the alternative is nauseating! We are forced to waste our time on the “Joe note of the day” or the “Joe project of the week” in lieu of taking care of our duties to our departmental employees and patients. We are threatened in writing about losing our jobs if we speak in any negative terms about the current administration. We are unable to replace any staff without approval from Brian Aston himself! It takes an excruciating amount of paperwork just to replace someone who has left because they can no longer work these hard shifts with less and less help!
Again ask the directors and you will be shown an overwhelming amount of documented evidence to back this statement up. Several directors have already been written up under these trumped up, and completely fabricated “corrective action” documents. You will find many, even vice presidents who were not willing to roll over and stick it to the employees, and were subjected to these types of actions.
I implore the board to take the time to come in and talk to the clinical directors and be certain to include ancillary services such as respiratory, lab, physical therapy, radiology, pharmacy, and sleep lab. I think that at the end of the day you will be praying for a good lawyer to get Mission out of the mess that Joe Damore, Brian Aston, Maria Roloff, Kristi Sink, and Frank Ford have gotten this hospital into.
27 Comments
That person is a coward if they refuse to put their name attached to a comment like that. I smell libel.
If an appropriate personnel check had been done on Mr. Aston they would have easily found that his performance was greatly lacking and the employees despised him at St. Francis Hospital in Greenville, SC.
I would like to say the only thing worse than Uncle Joe is the HR staff at Mission. They don’t work for the employee but for the Managers. I tried taking my problem to HR and in the end got me fired. I tried to appeal and the HEAD HR person said" no you can’t" . I spouted off the HR Policy and she said. " sorry i already said you can’t". Who do you turn to when your manager wants you gone, you can’t transfer and HR is in the managers pocket? You have to turn to the unempolyment officer and hope they can help you.
For those who have not yet read the posting just entered on 8/17 "More on Mission’s Integration of Doctors", I suggest you do so to understand how long this has been going on. Please then scroll back to the top of this article and read all 65 entries that were posted in response to the November article. It is done by clicking on the word "here" in the line "The thread is here."
After having done so, the obvious (at least to me) questions are (1) Why wasn’t action taken by the Board to investigate the basis of claims now proven to be true? (2) Where was the AC-T, and why have they ignored this story? Is it because of pressure from Missions or one of the very prominent board members who knew about JD’s history? (3) Where is the l;eadership in Asheville that, having read the insinuations, did not ask for an investigation? (4) Why are Damore/Aston still allowed in the building?
Time for board action. The Board blew it in November. How long are you going to sit on it this time?
Great job by the site provider of tying this all together!
Interestingly, the very thing that Mission says they fear, they are almost encouraging: Labor Unions.
Because "things" really do roll downhill, the everyday, non-managment employees will feel increasingly put upon. Employees will leave, morale will fall, and the same level of work will be required of fewer and fewer people, all while we are watching in increasing number of VP’s get hired on to further intimidate the Directors that are already spread too thin. The cycle will continue as the Directors feel pressure from above, pass it down to their managers, who spread it among their staff.
In the meantime, wages are frozen as we are told that these are tough economic times.
So… Union representation may be what comes next, in order to increase wages AND give the employees some way to voice their concerns.
Even if it turns out that this won’t be the case, if you think you have a nursing shortage now, just wait a while.
Dear Board Members: Swallow your pride and admit your mistake, but don’t feel too bad about it. Joe is very charismatic, likeable, and convincing, and he’s fooled a lot of people over the years. Just please right the wrong. You have the power to DO something. A lot of us are counting on you. You owe it to Mission, the employees, and the community.
My previous post attempted to enlighten people as to the Mission Monopoly and JD’s agenda. To say JD is dishonest is the understatement of the year. We live in hope that his public lies and private threats will catch up to him sooner or later. Using Brian Aston to delilver Joe’s ultimatums is an undisguided attempt to misdirect the criticism directed at Joe. However, they are cut from the same cloth. Their intimidation tactics have subdued not just the major physician practices but the local government, newspaper, television, and business community. Take a long hard look at the Board of Directors. These are the "leaders of our community" and the ones looking the other way and condoning Mission’s bullying. Our own Attorney General’s office refuses to even enforce the guidelines of the COPA (that allowed the merger) much less protect the citizens of our community. Bring on Carolina’s Medical! Apparently, competition is our only hope for salvation.
It is an unfortunate truth that Mission has lost and is continuing to lose ground as a respected and respectful medical facility. Once Damore found his feet and felt himself secure, meetings no longer centered around improving patient care and cooperating with the medical staff. Money and how to make more of it became the sole topic of conversation. Even nonprofit institutions must make money in order to maintain payroll and stay current with technology but these expenditures should made with the express goal of improving patient care. The mantra has become not just do more with less but let’em wait, cut a corner, don’t spend money, find a way to make more money.
The administration’s relationship with technologists, nurses, and others who do the actual work of taking care of patients has deteriorated at an appalling rate. The general attitude of the executive group of the hospital toward private practice physicians is openly hostile. There is an expressed goal of removing private practice physicians from Mission Hospitals and having all physicians who practice there as EMPLOYEES of Mission. Worry less about your government establishing an affordable insurance plan and worry more about your physician having his practice defined and dictated by a Mission Hospital executive.
Damore and friends have done great damage to Mission Hospital and will finally drive the hospital’s level of care and reputation to its pre-Burgin level.
Dismayed.
This is in response the "the outside observer"
You have obviously NOT seen the most recent employee satisfaction results!
Ask to see those and then write in about the "merits" of this current "leadership" regime!
Thank you Ashevegas for allowing this most critical dialog to be made public, and allowing it to continue. You are providing what may turn out to be one of the most important information sources this City may have ever seen.
To those who are defending the hospital’s staff, I agree. To those who are attempting to defend the administration’s actions, you have no knowledge of what has been going on inside the hospital, of Damore’s history, of the top medical staff members who have already left and gone to work elsewhere, or of the heavyhadedness wit which Mission has treated the local physicians. When it all comes out (as it is beginning to), you will realize how close the city came to losing on of the finest hospitals in the region, made so in spite of (not because of) the current administration’s actions. I suggest anyone who is defending the administration sit back and watch (unless of course you are part of that administration attempting to deflect what is coming).
Yes, Mission just won an award, but that has nothing to do with the issues at hand, nor does what Obama is proposing regardless of your (anyone’s) position. What we are dealing with is a crisis that is now exploding on the community and region. It’s all out here. Let’s hope the board has the wherewithall to deal with it. As stated before and by others, their ignoring the warning signs contributed to what has evolved. Let’s hope they are already taking steps to deal with the problem. After all, this is a community hospital and the Board is liable for what goes on there. I presume by now they are becoming aware of what transpired in Michigan. ‘Nuf said.
Interesting aside: I was just listening to NPR’s "All Things Considered." A Harvard Medical School Prof / New Yorker Staff Writer just said that if every city in America ran it’s hospitals like Asheville, we wouldn’t be in the middle of a health care crisis.
I have seen this coming and it is all true. The management of Mission is there to make money and not to provide patient care. They have bullied really wonderful doctors and Nurses and one of the best in the country is now leaving. If we do not stand up and do something here, we will not have a decent hospital left. The board members should really look hard in the mirror here. It is time to clean house at Mission with the top management.That is the only thing that will fix this mess!
"And thus I clothe my naked villany"
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…..
the fish is rotting from the head down—all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy.
Ashamed:
The fault for the problems at Mission lies only with the hospital board and the present administration. Physicians have been marginalized from decision-making at Mission by Joe Damore and his administrators. Multiple physicians have been threatened by the administration if they speak with board members. I know this from firsthand experience.
If the Mission board had done their homework and spoken to physicians at Sparrow (JD’s former stomping ground), they would have learned that Joe was viewed as disrespectful and manipulative. Multiple sources from Sparrow describe him as ‘not to be trusted.’ I encourage you to contact individuals at Sparrow to verify this. JD was more interested in controlling healthcare than the quality of the healthcare that was delivered. That seems to have become the case here in Asheville.
Asheville grew into a center of medical excellence under Bob Burgin’s leadership. We were been able to attract the best and the brightest medical minds from the elite programs in the United States. If Joe Damore continues as the leader of Mission Hospital, that will no longer be the case. His administration has made it clear they want to hire the cheapest rather than the best. Ask the trauma surgeons.
I’m told that JD’s recent contract renewal did not go to the MH board as it had for previous CEOs. Supposedly it somehow was implemented by Human Resources without the board’s approval. I don’t know if this is true (or even if it’s possible) but if so, this is a clear lack of transparency in a not-for-profit hospital organization. It also verifies the ‘manipulative’ descriptor given by the Sparrow folks.
At present, the MH board has asked to speak with members of the medical staff. It will be very interesting to see if they act on the information they gather or if this is just posturing. You can be sure JD is doing his best to spin this as ‘those greedy doctors’ are upset because they don’t want to be integrated into the hospital.
What JD doesn’t get is that those ‘greedy doctors’ have been instrumental partners in building MH into a superior medical center. Most local physicians take the MERIT principles seriously. But JD has lost the trust of local physicians and the surrounding medical centers. His lack of interest in excellence or respect for physicians will allow CMC to easily infiltrate this region and delegate Mission into a second tier medical facility.
As an outside observer but one who is very familiar with healthcare haveing worked in the field for 32 years, I find it apalling that an organization of missions stature would stoop to have the public believing a few posts on a blog that have no proven facts. Last I remember in this country your innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. Secondly, if senior managment at mission is so bad, then why do they have a high employee satisfaction scores, high qualiy scores and are making money in a very difficult economy? Some one must be doing sometihing right. I know ,I know the folks writing there opinions on this blog and thats what they are opinions will say that its due to them not senior managment. I say thats ridiculous someone has to lead, chart a course for others to follow. Again from an outsider looking in as a recent healtcare organization who has partnered with mission, we partnered with mission due to some of these same people being accused of running the place badly. In our dealings with these people they are hard wokring, dedicated and knowledgeable individuals. But I will say that some mangement definetly needs changed, they need to fear for their jobs because they are lazy and incompetent or should have retired along time ago. All this smells of a good ol boy network rather than whats truly best for mission, and I hope the board doesnt fall for a few disgruntled physicians and managers that just dont like CHANGE. Well with the obama plan they had better get used to it and find someone else to blame like themselves.
". . .I hope Mission Hospitals’ leadership will write in to respond . . ."
Surely no responsible person at Mission would respond to unsubstantiated, possibly slanderous, anonymous accusations in the comments section of a blog, even one as well-regarded as this one.
This is a troubling post by a journalist.
Prior to the Damore era, Mission’s composition was one of gentlemen and women working together in a caring and civilized environment, united in providing the community the best possible care. Unfortunately, these very caring people unknowingly became fertile prey for others to manipulate, intimidate, humiliate, demote, demoralize, CONTROL, fire and experience the destruction of self esteem. Tactics never used before at Mission became common practice. The reason is has taken the Board so long to discover what has taken place is they too are victims of manipulation at its highest form. Information given to them was only what Damore chose to give and was not always truthful. Since he has a PhD in spin, it is very easy to be deceived by his distorted information. Anyone else giving information to the Board would be fired was a directive from Damore and used frequently. It now appears all cards are on the table. Ugly as they may be, it is time to support the Board and all remaining dedicated Mission personnel who deserve only the best and thanks from the community. We cannot be in denial. Damore MUST go along with his hatchet men so we can pick up the pieces, dust ourselves off and start all over again. Asheville does not want or need their venon any longer.
I want to thank you for providing this anonymous forum to the people of Asheville. The hospital supposedly has an anonymous way to write in and share your concerns, but we have found that it is tightly controlled by JD and his VP party. So they only investigate the ones that suit their purposes. They throw away the ones written begging for investigation of behaviors by people such as JD, Brian Aston, Kristi Sink, and Maria Roloff! Then they use the petty ones to threaten the people who are actually doing the work at the hospital. The VP’s and HR department, under the highly questionable leadership of Maria Roloff, tell the directors and managers that they must hand out corrective actions "up to and including terminations" to employees for behaviors that clearly do not warrant the level of corrective action that they are forcing! There are numerous situations where directors and managers have been forced to fire people for "unmeritorious" behavior yet we knew it was really a ploy to get rid of someone that did not "agree" with the status quo of the regime or worse yet just an excuse to prove that they were large and in charge! They are discriminating against employees and allowing physicians and other VP’s to verbally abuse and make discriminatory comments about people. This is all documented in the anonymous program that they call Dr. Sig. Unless they have destroyed the evidence all of this can be substantiated by the board if they just take the time to investigate.
You should also know that your salary figures for the CFO and the COO are a little off…..maybe look at the time frame of when they were hired compared to the date this tax document was filed. Also, have you heard anything back from the board????
We should all be ashamed at the situation we find ourselves in right now. We are all to blame for the fall out that is about to take place. That includes everyone, board members, physicians, and employees in management positions.
There needs to be an immediate moratorium on all senior level decisions! Especially as it relates to the firing/hiring of any manager level positions or above. We can not get out of this by losing the few honest, strong, and loyal management that we have left. And we certainly do not need anymore lackeys in place to protect, or be used as a scapegoat, for this administration!
The blame for this travesty runs deep. Certain board members knew of Damore’s record in Michigan, then allowed him to come here and do exactly what he had done there. It’s all going to come out, and it’s going to be ugly. The sad thing is unless action is taken quickly to change the administration, the hospital’s ratings will be at risk, they will lose more key personnel, and AVL will be left with an institution it will take years to rebuild. Up until the last month, the board has totally abrogated its responsibility. They are now stuck with a contract they will have to break to get rid of JD, renewed with the knowledge that the ship was in dire danger because of the administration’s actions referenced above. Unless actions are taken quickly, this will all get out and further denegrate both his and the directors’ images. …and the citizens will (justifiably) start asking questions that certain very prominent board members will be unable to answer to anyone’s (including their own) satisfaction.
If their identity could be protected the author may be persuaded to come forward for an in depth interview to include the aforementioned documentation. However due to the threats, harassment, and intimidation tactics by Mission one cannot speak freely without this guarantee of anonymity. You note the comment that the Citizen Times would not say anything negative about Mission! That is true of many companies in our community. Everyone should remember that the previous board of director was an incredibly powerful person in his own right around town!
The Citizen Times won’t say anything negative about Mission. Ever.
It’s very true that Joe Damore is almost universally despised by the physicians and staff at Mission. He has now been there long enough to feel that he is omnipotent, but that is not the case given the strong undercurrents about him. I’m glad to see that someone had the courage to reveal the tip of the iceberg as far as the hospital’s administration is concerned. I know for a fact that some board members are well aware of this. Let’s hope the have the courage to get him to change his ways, or get rid of him.
Joe Damore is a consuming cancer on the face of health care in the Asheville area.
How do you know when to publish unverified claims in your blog and when to undertake a journalistic investigation for your newspaper? Sounds like this situation would make a good story for a reporter on either of the newspapers, if he or she had good sources and could get them to talk. The Citizen-Times won’t use anonymous sources except in rare cases. What is Mountain Express’s policy on anonymous sources, if they can be independently verified and justified to protect the source?
Finally, someone has spoken the truth concerning the mess at Mission. I too pray that the Board will look into the mess that the current administration has created. GET RID OF Damore AND HIS TEAM! before they run all the good,kind and decent leaders OFF not to mention our Physicians.