State Auditor Brian Col\u00f3n said he has given hospital operator Rehoboth McKineley Christian Health Care Services and CEO David Conejo a week to deliver additional financial documents to independent auditors. Col\u00f3n said a special audit has been stymied by limited access to financial records, as confidence fades in management in the hospital funded in part by property taxes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gone from a deeply concerning issue to a crisis that isn\u2019t being overstated when we say that it\u2019s a matter of life and death,\u201d said Col\u00f3n, who led a conference call Tuesday involving Conejo, officials from McKinley County and the hospital board of trustees.<\/p>\n
Col\u00f3n said his office is prepared to subpoena hospital records if met with resistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should never get to this point,\u201d he said. \u201cBut first I have to educate them on the fact that they have to submit to the audit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Physicians and nurses at the hospital held a curbside protest last week and said staff were being overwhelmed after recent worker reductions, coronavirus infections among nurses, and a surge in patients suffering from COVID-19. They urged the CEO to resign.<\/p>\n
The dismissal of about 17 contract nurses in March as the pandemic bore down on New Mexico has raised questions about management of the 60-bed county-owned hospital that is operated by an independent nonprofit company under a lease agreement.<\/p>\n
Conejo said Wednesday the hospital is prepared to turn over more records including financial worksheets to independent auditors later this week. He defended his leadership during the health crisis he described as a \u201cperfect storm.\u201d He also said the hospital\u2019s surgical staff and board of trustees agreed to the initial decision to reduce staff in March, and an incident command team of medical professionals guided later strategic decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Auditor Brian Col\u00f3n said he has given hospital operator Rehoboth McKineley Christian Health Care Services and CEO David Conejo a week to deliver additional financial documents to independent auditors. Col\u00f3n said a special audit has been stymied by limited access to financial records, as confidence fades in management in the hospital funded in part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-88521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88521"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=88521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}