Courtesy photo.
Dr. Ian Day, chief of the medical staff at Bert Fish Medical Center is urging the public to attend tonight's 5 o'clock meeting of the Southeast Volusia Hospital Authority at the New Smyrna Beach Regional Library to understand the stakes are high and that the merger with Florida Hospital is in the best interests of the greater New Smyrna Beach community served by Bert Fish. Please click the attachment to read Day's personal plea of support for the recent merger.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Retiring Volusia County Councilman Jack Hayman said tonight's 5 p.m. meeting of the Southeast Volusia Hospital Authority at the New Smyrna Beach Library to redo in the "sunshine" its discussions over the future of Bert Fish Medical Center is something that not only is important in his lifetime.
"This is something not only important for us now, but long after I am gone," Hayman told NSBNEWS.net.
The hospital authority will meet in open session under provisions of the Florida open government statutes, contrary to 21 previous meetings over 16 months where discussion and strategy were held in private to come up with the the merger agreement with Florida Hospital. All of the documents related to those private meetings were on display at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and remain on the hospital's website.
The purpose of tonight's meeting is to "cure" or rectify the legal advise the board previously received that led to a lawsuit by the Bert Fish Foundation.
The foundation, which built the hospital and gave it to the hospital board in 1966, with its indigent care supported by taxpayers in Southeast Volusia as well as a portion of Port Orange, maintains that since the series of meetings were held outside of the sunshine, tonight's meeting is a far-fetched remedy to right a wrong.
The foundation is being represented by Jon Kaney, former legal counsel for the Daytona Beach News-Journal and husband of the newspaper's former publisher, Georgia Kaney.
The News-Journal in a story published in this morning's print edition summarized Jon Kaney's stance on tonight's do-over process, stating in part: "a self-prescribed cure of so many meetings over this length of time would be unprecedented."
Should the board come to the same conclusion tonight about its merger, then a new meeting would be held to entertain a merger either with Florida Hospital or other potential suitors, including Halifax Medical Center.