Massena hospital on track to be privatized by Jan. 1; officials say services won't change

By Andy Gardner

MASSENA. Massena Memorial Hospital is expected to be privatized by Jan. 1. MMH CEO David Bender at the December MMH board meeting said they’ve received a certificate of need to establish the new non-profit MMH, which will be operated by St. Lawrence Health System. The new entity will be called Massena Hospital.

“We look to have our final day of operations (as a public hospital) on 12/31/2019,” he told the board. “We are on track for a Jan. 1, 2020 start up” under St. Lawrence Health.

Massena Memorial Hospital Foundation Executive Director Julia Rose said they will continue to operate and raise money for the hospital.

“The foundation’s intention is to support a facility in the Town of Massena,” she said.

MMH Board Chair Loretta Perez said she expects patients won’t notice any difference when they come to what will soon be Massena Hospital.

“We’ve always had fabulous employees. They’ve gone above and beyond their call of duty to serve this community,” Perez said. “We don’t expect any changes from the care our staff gives to the patients.”

This closes a tumultuous yearlong process that lead up to the final privatization. At the December 2018 MMH board meeting, tension between then-chair Scott Wilson and Town Supervisor Steve O’Shaughnessy spilled into public. At that meeting, Wilson said the supervisor wasn’t going to appoint him to a new term when his expired at the end of that year. At the same meeting, the MMH board after an executive session voted to pursue affiliation with Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center/Crouse Hospital.

The board named then-MMH trustee Sue Bellor as their new chair, and O’Shaughnessy fired her after less than a week in the leadership position. The termination happened just days after she criticized him in public. Bellor spoke out and said she saw a potential conflict of interest in appointing Dr. Michael Maresca, Canton-Potsdam Hospital’s imaging services chair, to the MMH board.

After Bellor, the MMH board appointed Carol Fenton as chair. O’Shaughnessy soon fired her. These moves were roundly criticized by members of the public and MMH workers, who showed up to Town Council and MMH Board of Managers meetings by the dozens to call out O’Shaughnessy, demand answers and express concerns about the hospital’s future.

During that same time period, several longtime MMH board members either resigned or opted not to be re-appointed.

O’Shaughnessy filled the vacancies with new members who named Perez their chair, and the reconfigured board worked out the deal to allow SLHS to take over MMH. One of those appointees was Michael Cook, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe’s director of health services.

The deal will bring a $20 million grant from the state to help pay off long-term MMH debts, which they are getting only as a condition of SLHS takeover. SLHS also has pledged to spend up to $8 million of their own money on MMH, contingent upon the acquisition.

The St. Lawrence Health takeover was put to a public referendum in November, and voters overwhelmingly approved it. At the same time, voters ousted town councilor Melanie Cunningham, a Democrat, who served throughout the 2019 controversy. Voters elected Republicans Bellor, the former MMH board chair, and Robert Elsner, a retired MMH administrator. Democrat Councilor Tom Miller, whose term expires at the end of this year, decided to not run again.

The privatization comes on the heels of mounting monthly and yearly losses at MMH. In November of this year, MMH reported a $408,997 net loss. And they are down $8.2 million for the year.

MMH CFO Pat Facteau said a large chunk of that, $100,000, was due to required computer software upgrades that weren’t anticipated in their 2019 budget.

He said they also had some expenses from having to hire temporary anesthesiologists.

He noted that revenue was up in November for their inpatients because they are using St. Lawrence Health System physicians in their emergency room.

And their number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees is down from last year - 347 in November 2019 compared to 367 the same month last year, Facteau said.