Choctaw Memorial Hospital

Approximately 50 employees of Choctaw Memorial Hospital were joined by several doctors, nurses and members of the hospital's governing board Thursday for a meeting with city and county officials who own the facility.

The meeting was believed to be closed to the public, for the purpose of allowing representatives from the Choctaw County Board of County Commissioners and City of Hugo officials to discuss recent concerns being aired by numerous hospital employees.

According to persons attending the meeting, who spoke to the Hugo Daily News on the condition of anonymity, numerous hospital employees aired grievances, which were aimed primarily at the hospital's management.

The only people who can do anything about it, is the Medical Board of Directors.

If the Board doesn't step in and do something, the hospital will be shut down in no time.

The employees showed up at the meeting are concerned for their jobs, because they were there. Chances are, there will be quite a few, who are fired because they were there, but the administrative board will say they were fired for other reasons.

Lets see if the Board will step in and make the wrongs right.

Nothing will be done. The bitch who is administrator will not leave until the hospital is closed.

I hope and pray that this will not happen, the community needs the hospital.

I hope the board takes the employees complaints into consideration and does something about it. I have been a patient there more times than I can count. All of the staff there is excellent, but I have to say I have seen the hospital has gone to hell in a hand basket in the last 2 years.

The hospital needs someone from the area who knows and understands the community, someone who is willing to work with the doctors and employees.

We know that. The question is, will the board doing anything about it?

Chances are, I will probably lose my job since I am a concerned employee and willing to respond to the posts.

There is more than one person who needs to be gotten rid of.

We truly need someone in there who is willing to work with the employess and that cares about the patients and community.

We need a CEO who is willing to work with others, not someone who is there to make a name for themselves, and run our hospital in the ground.

The last thing the community needs is for the doors to shut at Choctaw Memorial Hospital, and that is what will happen if the adminstrative staff stays.

By the way, I am an employee of CMH.

Nikki B, you are not the only person who is in danger of losing their job. The only good thing I can say about it is, when she is gone, you can petition the board, and will more than likely get your job back, along with several other ex-employees.

I heard there was an emergenvcy board meeting called Friday. Has anyone else heard anything about it?

Wow, sure is a good thing we passed that sales tax for the hospital! Just think how bad of shape it'd be in without it. Maybe they might have had to close her down! Oh, wait.... they're STILL talking about closing it down. Silly me.

They need to start with the CEO and HR Director. There was an EEOC complaint against "the hospital," one year ago. To date, CMH terminated at least 6 employees named in said report. They were terminated per telephone call by HR director. The employees were terminated within 6 months of the report. The employees were merely witneses. But they got the ax.

Until recently, I did not know I was named in the report, as a witness. The person who made the report, only requested change. Change would have been an easy remedy. Instead of change, retaliation followed per the CEO and HR Director.
As far as I know, EEOC is investigating the hospital. NOT THE NURSES OR DOCTORS, THE HOSPITAL.

Our hospital is not owned by a corporation.
I doubt we have the finances, to pay a hefty
lawsuit.

First of all, Love ya Nikki,your balls are bigger than most of ours, including mine. Everybody is so worried about our jobs and you are brave enough to put your name out there.
Next, we as the nursing staff, by that I mean nurses, aides, lab, xray, and everyone else that is directly involved in patient care, we are going to have to stick together and take a stand. We are the only employees that are getting the short end of the stick. We have to fight together to get our hospital back!!!!
Lastly, to the people of Choctaw County and surrounding area. We may not be the best hospital around but thats because we are a small rural hospital we are limited. But most of us try our best and work our asses off doing it. We do have heart, at least I speak for myself and those I directly work with. The people have been in the dark about the work conditions and problems that have been going on for the last 2 years. So I will help enlighten you. First off the administration hates the nursing staff, some people even have commented that they are smarter then the nurses. They short staff us only giving the bear minimal staff or even less than that. This double or triples the work load, and you as patients suffer. When the nurses are so busy doing housekeeping, pharmacy and medical records jobs it gives us less time to do our jobs, taking care of you!
They also are now not allowing us to use our PTO time when we are called off for low censes. OK we work 3 12 hours shifts. If we dont get those hours it hurts our check book. Imagine your pay check being cut in half, payday after payday, you start wondering if you are gonna be able to feed your kids and pay that electric bill that keeps getting higher.
They had tried to force us to direct deposit our pay check until they found out it was illegal to do that. And when some staff called the Oklahoma Labor Board the administration pulled the recorded phone conversations and fired one person.
Supposedly the taxes that was passed was to go to help maintain and renovate the hospital. But the word is that they will be remodeling the front business office first. In the ER we do not have any air conditioning only small portable units, in which we were told that they "were a luxury" for us. We need more rooms so that we can treat more people with less of a wait time. The floors throughout the whole hospital are nasty and and some of our equipment is so outdated they need to be put in a museum.
These are only a short list of things that are affecting the nursing staff. So if you come to our hospital please overlook us if we are occasional rude or slow. We are the short staffed, under paid, overworked, and apparently stupid nursing staff.

I wonder how Walmart would be if only 4 people worked there, 2 to check, 2 to stock?

oh yeah nothing was heard from the meeting on Friday. They have an offical board meeting this Thursday

CMHRN wrote:

oh yeah nothing was heard from the meeting on Friday. They have an offical board meeting this Thursday

Can the public attend?

The board meetings are "suppose" to be open to the public. They had been closed until it was brought up last week. From what I understand to staff was encouraged to attend. But the way I see it, this is a county hospital and anyone who is a citizen of Choctaw County shall be allowed to attend. This is their hospital and their care that is at stake. It is gonna be bad when this hospital closes its doors because the "administration" runs it into the ground or runs all of the nurses off. Then if you are having a heart attack better hope you make it to another hospital. At least at CMH we may not be able to do cardiac surgery but we can give you medications that can slow the process down and get you somewhere quickly so that it can be stopped.

I encourage all persons who use and love our hospital and don't want to have to go another town for medical treatment, to speak up and help us get rid of the administration before they get rid of us!!!

Also, can you give me the name of a board member.

Please give a time and place for the meeting. There are some former employees, who would love to attend. Give the details and they will
likely attend.

Are the docs complaining about admin., as well??

Dr Rowland, Dr Pardue, Dr Murty, and Dr Irvin all attended the meeting that was talked about in the paper. They have spoke out in our defence. Which is greatly appreciated. All I know about the meeting is that it is on Thursday. I will have to find out more specifics. Unless someone else that knows will post on here.

I wish we could strike or something, i wish Oklahoma was had a nursing union that would support us.