Message from CEO Patti Ellish

These are all words that I associate with St. Tammany Parish Hospital. In our 60 years serving the parish and greater community, these words describe the core of the hospital and live strong in our daily quest for excellence.

Several recent media stories that you may have seen jump to many conclusions that lack basis in fact. It is important to me, the management team and the board that you receive accurate information and remain proud to be a part of the St. Tammany Parish Hospital family.

Specifically:

• Our hospital properly retained legal services from the St. Tammany Parish District Attorney’s office, and D.A. Walter Reed has acted as special counsel to the district for more than 15 years. D.A. Walter Reed was compensated by retainer for legal services, conducting hospital business, including his attendance at our board meetings. He resigned from service in June 2014.
• Our hospital is not tax supported. We are a not-for-profit community hospital that does not receive millages, property taxes or any other taxes to support operations. Like the majority of hospitals throughout the country, we accept Medicare, Medicaid, private insurances and other payors.
• Internal emails were improperly shared with news media. These emails captured a conversation between St. Tammany Parish Hospital staff members that was inappropriate. We are taking action to correct and prevent this sort of behavior in the future.

Aside from those points, we also feel there may be some misunderstanding about why we have not released extensive detail from a former employee’s personnel file. Each and every employee deserves the right to privacy regarding their personnel records, compensation, performance and employment history.

For this reason, we have held a former employee’s records private from the media and have declined comment on questions regarding this personnel information. Despite our resolve and efforts to resist, the hospital will release facts as it pertains to state law. We are also in the process of making a plea with the Attorney General’s office to restrict further release of personnel records, if requested. Our intention is to protect all employees’ personnel information as private.

Please visit stph.org/learnmore for more information.  

Most sincerely,

Patti M. Ellish, FACHE
President and CEO