In an email received by me, and broadcast to others around the valley, including board members, Tracy Brown, Consultant to the nursing facility, says she has concluded her time with the Kern Valley Heatlhcare District.
(UPDATE: I put out several calls and was able to get a confirmation from KVHD Chairwoman of the Board, Kathryn Knight, that indeed Tracy Brown left the hospital.
Knight said she received a phone call from the new CEO, Tim McGlew, yesterday, Friday, 7/24/09, indicating that Tracy Brown had departed the skilled nursing facility along with her employees.
"She walked out and took all of her people with her," Knight said she was told.
However, Knight said, that the new administrators were getting ready to begin running the skilled nursing facility, as Brown had already given her resignation to the board.
Brown had initially said that she was going to stay until the end of August.
In her email, Brown suggests the new administration begin to prepare for the state and federal survey, and that she has left everything in the nursing center in order.
Knight had no further information or comment to give at this time.
More updates coming soon as we are waiting on responses.)
Brown, who had been consulting with the facility under Sycamore Management, May 2007 until May 2008, when she was brought in by the district as her own separate contractor, called Quality Healthcare Asset Management for the last year.
In her email, Brown states she has not abandoned the facility, as she accuses new CEO, Tim McGlew of telling the staff.
Another email is included from Human resources asking Brown to "mail the mailbox key as soon as possible."
Currently, I only have this series of emails from Tracy Brown and will have to follow up with others named in the correspondence to respond.
Sycamore was brought in during May of 2007, when the KVHD nursing facility was in jeopardy of being closed due to mismanagement.
The contract with Sycamore was signed by former CEO, Pam Ott, and then KVHD Board Chairman, Brad Armstrong, with Sycamore owner, Don Ermel Doyle.
Doyle, said in 2007, after I asked him how he was contacted by the hospital, and he told me he had seen the "immediate jeopardy" with intent to close notice in the Bakersfield Californian, and decided to attend a meeting.
He said after the meeting he gave Ott his card, and a few weeks later the contract was signed.
After government agencies flooded the SNF, and a civil lawsuit was threatening Pam Ott, who had resigned but stayed on for another thirty, dirty, days, the new management company stepped aboard. (See Ott's management Company; QAB interview with Ott)
In one year costs from the contract with Sycamore soared to almost two million dollars.
Brown, who was brought in by Sycamore initially, eventually was given the reins to the SNF where she has been consulting as a Nursing Home Administrator since May of 2008 on her own, under her own company title, Quality Healthcare Asset Management, LLC.
The nursing home administrator recently gave her notice to terminate her contract with the hospital and she said she would be staying on for 90 days, which would have ended in August.
According to the email I received, she has seemingly decided to leave immediately.
"Considering when I arrived, and since my tenure the facility was on IJ (2xs), Focus status, inadequate staffing and training, on-going scrutiny from the community, low census, de-certification and admission freeze; we have done quite well, in the past 2 1/2 years (May 2007-current). You will now need to prepare for your next survey process and on-going issues that arise. Again, please feel free to contact us on a contractual basis, should the need arise, for a periodic review. Please have my final invoice paid in a timely manner, or legal recourse will be pursued, considering all prior issues. Please note this is the last of my association with KVHD- July 24, 2009."
The new CEO, Tim McGlew, has experience both in long term care and hospital administration. He was expected to take over the duties of the skilled nursing side once Brown left.
We will follow up and find out about the transition as soon as people are available for comment.
This is just one side of the picture at the moment as we have not had a chance to talk to anyone at the district as of yet.
What we know right now, is that Tracy Brown, in an email, states that she has left KVHD as of July 24, 2009.
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