Personnel gets personal

As the community's hospital, Kootenai Health does a good job of tending to the region's health care needs. But in this era of rapid, dramatic change across the health care landscape, Kootenai Health also finds itself under the public microscope like never before.

The recent election of two hospital board trustees was just one illustration. For years, nobody outside the community's inner circle of medical interests paid any attention to trustee elections. In 2010 there was no election, because the three candidates were unopposed. In 2008, the election attracted a total of 816 voters.

But this spring, trustee candidates campaigned door to door, they spent money and they worked feverishly for a job that pays nothing. And what happened? In all, 14,276 votes were cast in Kootenai County for hospital trustee candidates. Suddenly, who manages the hospital's managers mattered.

Why is the level of scrutiny changing? One, Obamacare has many people looking at their health care options - including health care providers - on a deeper level than ever before. Further, a political group targeted Kootenai Health's board for a number of reasons, including the hospital's taxing authority and its role in delivering the dictates of Obamacare.

Because Kootenai Health is suddenly a big blip on the public's radar screen, at a time when competition in the medical profession is skyrocketing and change is moving at lightning speed, criticism is now its constant bedfellow. Allegations of wrongdoing or mystifying personnel moves with medical specialists easily lead to even greater scrutiny and perhaps skepticism among the public. But should they? Scrutiny, yes; skepticism, not necessarily.

Anyone can accuse anyone at Kootenai Health of anything, with or without basis in fact. And Kootenai Health, as a community-owned entity, can say little or nothing in its defense if it's a personnel matter. In the case of a lawsuit that goes to court, KH's side of the story can be told. But in almost every other instance, legally, it simply must take a beating and try to keep its head above the fray.

Kootenai Health doesn't need the community newspaper for support or defense. What we've observed and lament, though, is that personnel rumors and innuendo can damage a public entity's reputation, and the entity has little or no recourse to give its side of the story.

With that in mind, we encourage citizens with concerns about hospital personnel decisions to take those up directly with hospital staff or the affected individuals themselves. The opinion pages of this newspaper aren't the place to fire off personnel allegations, because nobody can fire back.