N.C. leaders press to have Cherry open
By Steve Herring
Published in News on June 3, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
N.C. House Majority Whip John Bell of Goldsboro, center, said during a Thursday morning press conference that it is time to hold the Department of Health and Human Services accountable for the nearly four-year delay in opening the new Cherry Hospital. At left is Senate Deputy President Pro Tempore Louis Pate of Mount Olive and at right, Rep. Jimmy Dixon of Mount Olive.
"We stand here today as concerned legislators wanting answers from those responsible for the mismanagement of this project and answers for the taxpayers who deserve answers here in North Carolina. I will be sending the Department of State Construction Office, the Department of Health and Human Services a legislative request asking for a full detailed explanation on the project's status, timelines for openings and the reasons for the almost four-year delay."
Bell said his office had previously asked for the opening dates.
"We have received dates that have since passed," he said. "I know last week, three representatives reached out and received three different answers starting with May 13, to Sept. 1 to Oct. 1. So there have really been no concrete answers."
Bell was asked if those were dates that the hospital would actually open to patients or dates when the state would accept the facility.
That is not clear from the answers, he said.
DHHS officials have said that once the facility is accepted by the state the hospital staff will implement a detailed 12-week plan to train and educate 1,000 employees.
"We want an accurate timeline -- when are the doors going to open, when is the first patient going to come in?" Bell said. "One of the things Sen. Pate mentioned was the huge need for this. I believe Cherry Hospital now serves around 197 beds. We can expand that to around 317 beds just by opening this facility.
"It is a major need. You are looking at hundreds of jobs that will be associated with this. It is a major economic impact, not just for Wayne County, but for all of eastern North Carolina."
Bell said once the information is gathered he would meet with his colleagues to determine the "appropriate action moving forward."
"Whether that is going to an oversight committee to see what went wrong and those types of things, I think the door is wide open," he said. "Until I have the information, I won't know how to move forward with it."
Dixon said he hopes one result from the issue is more productivity for the citizens of North Carolina in the future.
"I am concerned about the delay, but I am more concerned about learning from this experience and learning how we can avoid these kind of things in the future," he said,
Dixon said he is sure there are "various explanations" for the delay, but at best, it is easy to see that "we have not been well served for whatever reason."
"I think a companion question to that would be why has it taken so long for this type of group to get together," he said. "I think that goes hand in hand. I think it is sort of the nature of the beast. This project came about earlier than John and I were up here, and in good faith, from my point of view, when we made requests we wanted to give (DHHS) every opportunity and so expecting an answer tomorrow, and tomorrow has run out. This group wants answers now.
"We accept our responsibility in maybe not being more attentive a little bit earlier on. Maybe we should have cracked the whip a little bit earlier, but we are cracking it in a manner today that we hope will be heard."
Pate said legislators need to address what is going on in the eastern part of the state.
"A lot of times we feel like we are getting the short end of the stick," Pate said. "Here we are with a major psychiatric hospital that is four years behind schedule, and it is the only one in the eastern part of the state.
"We need to serve the citizens of our state, and we are missing out on a great opportunity here, in my opinion. For some reason this hospital has not come along in the way that it should. I think the state has had some experiences along those lines already trying to get another psychiatric hospital open. We need to get some answers."
Pate said he had praised DHHS on Wednesday for getting the Medicaid waiver ready to go in the allotted time.
"They did a wonderful job in doing that, but they are not keeping up with the building projects that are going on, and we would like to have some answers," he said. "In addition to the human and mental anguish going on with the patients not being able to suitably placed, we are also missing out on economic activity that this hospital would bring to the eastern part of the state.
"They have to hire additional staff and train them. Well, it makes no sense to hire them now and give them training right now until the facility is ready for them and the patients. So we are missing out on a host of different things because of this hospital being held up the way it is. That enters into the equation as well."
"What I am so concerned about is justice and public safety," Daughtry said. "The chief justice has mentioned that so many people are in prison who have mental illnesses, and that we have to find a way to treat them because that is almost half the (jail) population. And here is a hospital that can do so much good if it would finally open."
Bell said when he is home that he drives by Cherry Hospital twice a day on the way to and from work.
"There are not a lot of signs of life at all," Bell said. "It was interesting when I drove by the other week, and when I drove through the facility, one or two people saw me, they turned around and went the other way. Seems like nobody really wants to answer any questions.
"I know members of the local media have actually reached out and tried to get answers and it 'is in the near future.' As it is today, the last I heard was possibly opening by Oct. 1. That is still not concrete. We have to see what we are dealing with. The key for me, and I am sure the other representatives, is to learn from this experience, but we also have to get the doors open. We have a mental health population that is in dire need."
Bell said he had not spoken with any patients, but he that county hospital officials have told him the patients are being "dumped off" in the emergency room or the jail.
"Last week, I met with our local hospital, and this is a major crisis, not just in our area, but all throughout the state," Bell said. "There is a need, especially in eastern North Carolina. So we need to get the doors open, we need to figure out what needs to be done to get the doors open and move forward with that one."
DHHS officials have said the delay has not added to the cost.
However, Bell said he has heard the cost for the new hospital is anything from $93 million to $130 million. Bell said he has asked for the exact numbers.
Dixon said that the hospital is not in his district, and that he had gotten involved several weeks ago when a person he knows mentioned it.
Dixon said the man told him when he bought property near the hospital more than two years ago that landscaping was being done.
Landscaping is normally one of the last things to be done, Dixon said.
"It is my understanding that the contractor for this project is also the contractor for the Broughton (psychiatric hospital) project," Dixon said. "One of the questions that I will have going forward as we let these kinds of bids, is to understand whether or not the contractors have the capability of performing at the timeline levels that we have. So one of the things that I will be interested in finding out is if there were instances where the contractor was over extended between these two projects.
"It has been indicated to me that soon after the Broughton project was let that there was an overwhelming decrease in the presence of the contractor and his people at the Goldsboro site. So that will be one the interesting things that I will be interested in following up on. What we are hopeful of is by this level of (legislative) participation and engaging that we can add some horsepower to the public opinion related to the citizens of North Carolina receiving some accountability, not to point fingers or issue to blame, but to try to better business going forward."