By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
betty@wdnweb.com
Staff Writer
One of the newest members of the Beaufort Regional Health System Board of Commissioners has been appointed to a committee that will negotiate the future of the health system with its suitors, it was announced Tuesday.
Suzanne Gray was named to the negotiating committee by BRHS board Chairwoman Alice Mills Sadler, according to Pam Shadle, director of marketing and public relations for BRHS.
Gray joins members of the BRHS board’s executive committee — Mills Sadler, Vice Chairwoman Brenda Peacock and Secretary Hood Richardson — on the negotiating committee. She was one of two members appointed to the BRHS board in September.
The negotiating committee is scheduled to begin discussions with the four potential partners — Greenville-based University Health Systems of Eastern North Carolina, Community Health Systems of Franklin, Tenn., LHP Hospital Group of Plano, Texas, and Brim Healthcare of Brentwood, Tenn. — this week, according to Shadle.
The negotiations are expected to take place behind closed doors, she said.
University Health Systems offered a 20-year lease/purchase arrangement. It offered a prepaid lease payment of $18.1 million and promised a minimum of $21 million in capital expenditures over the first five years of the lease. The UHS offer also said that at the end of the lease, UHS would be entitled to full and complete ownership of all leased assets.
Community Health Systems, which returned to the negotiations last week, offered a 30-year lease plus two 10-year renewals at fair market value for a prepaid lease payment of $30 million. The offer included a $25 million capital expenditure commitment during the first five years of the lease.
Brim Healthcare offered a management services arrangement for three years plus one two-year renewal. The chief operating and chief financial officers of the local health system would be Brim employees and the health system would be directed by the local governing board as currently seated. The offer proposed a starting point for discussions of its management fee at 1 percent to 3 percent of net patient revenue, according to the offer.
LHP Hospital Group presented two options — a 30-year lease plus two 10-year renewals at fair market value and a joint venture with LHP investing $24 million in cash and having an 80 percent interest in a new joint venture with BRHS.