HCHC presents letter of intent to Supervisors concerning EMS

MT. PLEASANT - The Henry County Supervisors and Henry County Health Center (HCHC) are continuing to inch forward with a potential transfer of emergency medical services (EMS).

Following a 17-1-1 vote by the Henry County Emergency Medical Services Committee to recommend the county take over the service, Henry County Health Center chief executive officer Robb Gardner presented the supervisors a drafted letter of intent on Tuesday morning.

The letter proposes a method of partnership between the county and HCHC that would allow for the transition of EMS from the hospital to the county.

Gardner highlighted the letter is a non-binding and 'sets forth an agreement for both parties to work together to mutually develop principal terms,” for the transition process.

'It's one that's just saying, ‘hey, let's do this.' How do we mutually work together if there are terms. The rest of it is pretty generic in nature,” Gardner said.

Gardner said the hospital kept the letter 'very high level” to avoid getting 'into the weeds of terms,” which would allow both HCHC and the supervisors to work together to create an arrangement that works for both entities.

'That was the intent, to mutually develop. If we were able to get there, how do we develop those terms? That's why it's presented in the format that it is,” Gardner said.

The supervisors raised only one question about a clause discussing public communications included in the letter.

Supervisor board member Gregg Moeller read aloud the section of the letter, which states 'except as and to the extent required by law, without the prior written consent of the other Party, the Parties will not, and each will cause their representatives not to make, directly or indirectly, any public comment, statement or communication with respect to a possible transaction among the Parties or any of the terms conditions or other aspects of the Proposed Transaction.”

'When we're dealing with a public entity, all of the information is available to the public,” Moeller said about why the clause concerns him.

Gardner said the hospital has some exceptions to open records laws to protect the hospital in terms of strategic and proprietary information.

'The reason is that we have competing hospitals in the area that if we're going to go down different services that we may do outside of EMS and you guys ask questions … ‘well what's going on with this nursing home, what's going on with that?' Well if we release, it could put us at a competitive disadvantage,” Gardner explained.

Gardner suggested county attorney Daris Stater correspond with the hospital's attorney to discuss what is necessary to be included.

Stater explained 'from the county's perspective” the public communications portion of the letter is 'unnecessary.”

'We all know that our supervisors' activities are governed by the Iowa Code, specifically … the open communication and records, period. So they can't enter any agreement that interferes or limits that in any way,” Stater said.

Stater added he would correspond with the hospital's attorney about the public communications portion of the letter. The supervisors then agreed that once the attorneys discussed the details of that clause further, the letter would be again added to a supervisors' meeting agenda. Currently, there are tentative plans for it to be discussed again on Thursday, Feb. 6.