Creditors have lost confidence in bankrupt Forum Health’s management, a spokesperons for creditors said in today’s Tribune Chronicle. Some of us lost confidence in the management long ago.
What is especially revealing are statements that creditors want someone with health care experience to run the hospital system, which includes Hillside Hospital and Trumbull Memorial in Warren and Northside Medical Center in Youngstown. That action, of course, would rule out current CEO Walter “Buzz” Pishkur, whose experience is with water companies. Trumbull County residents should welcome such a move.
After all, Northside has been a money pit for years, soaking up resources from Trumbull Memorial. While nobody wants to see Northside workers lose their jobs if it should close, it would be worse for Northside to take down Trumbull Memorial with it. Forum has had years to find a way to deal with Northside and has consistently failed — despite paying millions to consultants.
Doctors at Trumbull have seen the writing on the wall and called on the Forum Board to dissolve the Trumbull Memorial-Northside merger that created Forum Health. Unfortunately, those votes of the medical staff have gone nowhere, and with vary rare exceptions, individual doctors have been reluctant to take their case public.
In all of this, it would be interesting to hear how from Forum board members from Trumbull County explain how continuing the merger is good for Turmbull Memorial. But the remain silent as well.
Forum has made a boatload of mistakes in the past few years. Maybe it is time for the creditors to come up with a restructuring plan and for the court to put experienced leadership in place.
In The Neutral Zone 