Carolinas Healthcare System and Media Relations

Politics require everyone to do a little dancing especially when the media is involved.  So at the March 2014 CHS Board of Commissioners media breakout session the "Business Journal" representative wanted to take a "selfie" with the "Charlotte Observer" representative. Then one of the CHS Corporate Communications staff kindly volunteers to take the picture of the two news reporters as a nice gesture.  My thoughts about this mini-photo shoot were "cute but inappropriate."

I left the  "Business Journal" and the "Charlotte Observer" representatives in the media conference room.  The meeting was completely over.  The executives had exited the room.  I really did not see the need to linger any longer.  Now, my curiosity gets the best of me.  Why did the other news reporters hang around?

Also,  between June 2006 and  August 2006, I was able to find quite a few announcements that Carolinas Healthcare System began managing the Union Hospital District.  This Union, SC area includes Wallace Thomson Hospital, Ellen Sagar Nursing Home, and Union County Emergency Services.   Again, this is Union County, South Carolina, not North Carolina. References include 6/1/2006 article by Amanda Ridley, Staff Writer for the Herald-Journal Spartanburg, SC and  August 2006 Facebook posting by the Union County EMS website.

I also found references where the CEO of the Union County District was appointed to President of  CMC-University Hospital in Charlotte, NC in June 2010. (Modern Healthcare 6/18/2010 article by Vince Gallaro)

Within months after this "executive transfer," CHS seemed to discontinue its management of the Union Hospital District.  The Administrator/Executive Director of Ellen Sagar Nursing Home was also relocated into the Charlotte, NC area. This Administrator eventually was assigned to the Huntersville Oaks nursing home. I could not find any detailed media coverage of why CHS ended management within a four year period where the previous management company Quorum Health Resources (QHR) managed the district for twenty years.  There was plenty of media coverage for the CHS start of management, but CHS made a quiet exit.  No media coverage that I could find except that the Union Hospital District went back to self management.

It is interesting how much some Carolinas Healthcare System news gets media coverage, and other news is never mentioned.  Maybe much of what is reported is generated from press releases?