A day after hospital managers warned that Broward Health’s medical centers faced the potential shutdown of basic services, the system’s new chief executive promised Thursday to resolve a physicians’ contract backlog that was driving the crisis.
Pauline Grant, who had run the system’s 409-bed Broward Health North Medical Center, inherited a potential physician shortage, with managers at two hospitals reporting that they were close to losing the ability to provide care for trauma or stroke victims. Louis Yogel, chief of staff of Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, the system’s largest hospital, said: “Patient care at Broward Health is hanging by a thread.”
Grant said she is committed to getting the contract problem resolved, without any of the worst-case scenarios outlined at the board meeting.
Broward Health’s new interim CEO Pauline Grant, new interim CEO of Broward Health Broward Health, Courtesy (Broward Health, Courtesy / Sun Sentinel)
After the meeting Wednesday, the board demoted the district’s interim chief executive officer, Kevin Fusco, back to his old job as chief operating officer and placed general counsel Lynn Barrett, whose office is responsible for processing the contracts, on a 30-day review.
On her first full day on the job, Grant met with the system’s senior managers Thursday morning and told them her priorities: Continue to focus on patient care and resolve the contract problem.
She said she didn’t know how many physicians’ contracts were still incomplete but was working on finding out. Before coming to Broward Health, she worked as director of public health nutrition services for the Jamaican government in Kingston, as public health nutritionist for Broward County, as health care administrator for the Seminole Tribe and site manager for the Broward County Adult Primary Care Clinic.
At Broward Health, she served as manager for 14 community health centers, vice president of community health services and chief executive of the Broward Health North Medical Center, a job she has held for 13 years.
dfleshler@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4535
