By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
and JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
betty@wdnweb.com
jonathan@wdnweb.com
Daily News Staff
Community Health Systems of Franklin, Tenn., has withdrawn its offer for a 30-year lease for Beaufort Regional Health Systems.
As a result of that announcement, which came Tuesday afternoon, the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners will continue to consider a lease/purchase offer from Greenville-based University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina and a joint-venture offer from LHP Hospital Group of Plano, Texas, according to a statement released Tuesday by Commissioner Hood Richardson.
Richardson is one of the five members of the BRHS board who voted to recommend the county approve the lease with CHS.
“In my opinion, the majority of the elected Beaufort County Board of Commissioners continues to remain committed to securing the best business arrangement that will produce the highest quality health care for the people of Beaufort County,” Richardson said in a news release announcing the CHS withdrawal.
“Beaufort County’s options for future hospital management include an offer from LHP, Inc. Their proposal allows the community to continue to have a voice in hospital operations. We will also continue the study of an offer from University Health Systems (UHS) and, finally, the possibility of continuing to operate the Hospital ourselves,” Richardson said in the release. 
“Other viable proposals existed early on in the Hospital Authority Board’s RFP process that may now demand further review of not only the elected Board of County Commissioners, but also the appointed Hospital Authority Board,” he said.
That same news release quoted Jerry Langley, chairman of the county commissioners, as saying the board will continue its study of the remaining offers.
“We have good proposals still on the table and we want to protect the value of this most important county asset,” he said in the release.
The county commissioners’ meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. today at Beaufort County Community College will be held, and a meeting of the BRHS board is expected to be called soon, Richardson said during a news conference held at the county administrative offices Tuesday afternoon.
Richardson said it will now be up to the BRHS board to submit a new recommendation for the future of health care in Beaufort County, based on the CHS withdrawal.
“The situation is fluid at this point,” he said. “We are in a new situation.”
Richardson said he was the first to be notified of the withdrawal of the offer from CHS by telephone, and he called the news conference because “it was necessary to let the public know as soon as possible.”
CHS announced the withdrawal of its lease offer in a letter dated Jan. 11 and sent to Beaufort County Manager Paul Spruill and BRHS board Chairwoman Alice Mills Sadler. The letter was from Kenneth D. Hawkins, senior vice president of acquisitions and development for CHS.
“(I)n the past few days, it has become increasingly apparent to us that your community may not yet be ready to move forward with this extremely important decision. The close 5-4 vote in favor of our proposal by the BRHS Hospital Authority Board last week was followed by strong reaction and differing opinions across the community. This issue appears to have become a divisive force among local residents, the medical community and hospital employees,” the letter reads.
Hawkins’ letter also sites the 10-day injunction issued Monday by Superior Court Judge Walter H. Godwin Jr. as contributing to the CHS decision to withdraw its offer.
“In October, 2010 we withdrew our proposal and planned to redirect our resources to other, more immediate opportunities, but at the urging of members of the County Commissioners and citizens from the community, we re-entered the discussions. However, given the recent turn of events, we believe your community needs more time to consider a decision of this magnitude, and we further believe it is in the best interest of both our organizations to move forward with other opportunities,” he wrote. “We have decided to permanently withdraw our proposal and will formally notify the BRHS Hospital Authority Board of our decision today.”
Some supporters of the lease/purchase offer by UHS told the Daily News they are pleased with the decision by CHS to withdraw its offer.
“I’m elated that they’re wise enough to see that they are not the best fit for us and that we are not the best fit for them,” said Edwin M. “Sandy” Hardy, a member of the BRHS board and a vocal advocate for the offer from UHS. “I would hope now that everybody would see the light and do the right thing.”
The county commissioners had come under increasing pressure from UHS supporters in recent days to reject the BRHS board’s recommendation. The commissioners reported being bombarded by telephone calls and e-mails on the issue — most from people opposed to the CHS offer — and most recently had received several petitions signed by some 655 people supporting an affiliation with UHS.
The news of the CHS withdrawal was hailed by health-care research analyst Ryan A. Pfeffer with the Service Employees International Union. Pfeffer has observed hospital merger decisions nationwide and witnessed much of the debate in Beaufort County.
“This is a testament to the people in this community who wanted to protect the health care in this community for the next 30 years,” he said in an interview Tuesday with the Daily News.
Meanwhile, BRHS board members are considering their next move, given Tuesday’s developments, according to Pam Shadle, director of marketing and public relations for BRHS.
“The board will be considering the latest developments and will be responding accordingly,” she said.
In an interview, Sadler said the BRHS board was awaiting word from its attorney as to how it should go forward.
“As soon as we get word from him, we’ll know what our next step will be,” she said.
Asked for her reaction to the CHS withdrawal, Sadler said, “Right now, I’m disappointed because I know that was the best option for our county in terms of health care.”
Asked whether she believed the CHS withdrawal would slow the selection process, she said, “It definitely will. Every day prolongs the process; every day we bicker about it prolongs the process.”
As recently as Monday afternoon, Sadler, who voted to recommend the CHS offer, maintained that the board’s decision was the correct one and discounted the public reaction to the BRHS board vote.
“It’s like a flashback to the ’60s. You would think that we’re trying to integrate schools again,” she said in an interview after the injunction was filed. “What you have right now is just some powerful people in the community who did not get their way. I did not make a vote based on whether the powerful would get their way or not. I made a vote based on whether the people of this county would get quality health care.”
“That’s the only thing that matters to me is that we have quality health care,” she said. “This decision is right. I stand behind it. It wasn’t made with any kind of bias toward anyone in mind. UHS was probably the local natural consideration, but when you got down to it, they were not the best choice, they were not the right choice.”
“The process was followed to the letter, in my opinion,” she said. “I do know that our board talked at length about public opinion, and we decided that we would put that aside and that we would make our decision based on what was put before us.”