If you blow off a finger with a firecracker celebrating the new year, it’s unclear which doctors might help you in any of Summa Health System’s five emergency rooms.
Summa this week said negotiations with a group of emergency medicine physicians who staff emergency rooms at Akron City Hospital and Summa facilities in Barberton, Green, Medina and Wadsworth failed days before their contract expires Dec. 31.
With less than 48 hours until the New Year’s Eve ball drops, Summa on Thursday had yet to secure a contract with a new group of emergency specialists to staff its ERs.
Summa officials said Thursday that negotiations have been going on several weeks and declined to comment further.
But employees and others close to Summa’s emergency rooms were buzzing with rumors and worry over what this could mean for patients and for some doctors who have worked at the health system’s emergency departments for decades.
Summa’s ERs treated more than 166,000 patients last year, according to the health system’s website.
Summa employees learned of the situation Wednesday when Dr. Thomas A. Malone, president and CEO of Summa, sent out a memo informing them of an “upcoming change to staffing in our emergency department.”
Summa has for decades contracted with the same independent physician corporation — Summa Emergency Associates (SEA) — to provide doctors to staff its emergency department at Akron City Hospital. In recent years, it expanded the contract with SEA to cover all of its emergency departments. SEA, despite its name, has no affiliation with Summa beyond the contract.
Malone said in his memo that Summa initially hoped to negotiate a new contract with SEA, but that the physician group’s leadership responded “with unreasonable and uncompromising demands.”
Summa and its patients, Malone concluded, would be better off with a new provider of emergency services.
“We currently are finalizing details regarding the transition of care to a new partner on Jan. 1,” Malone wrote.
“Our goal is to ensure the transition will be seamless to our patients and there will be no impact to service at our emergency departments.”
Dr. Jeff Wright, who leads SEA, said Thursday evening that he still hoped to work out a deal with Summa.
“We would gladly sit down with Summa and try to get a long-term contract,” he said.
He worried, however, that a separate five-page memo laying out SEA’s side of the negotiation could make a deal impossible.
Wright neither wrote nor approved the memo, he said. It was penned by someone trying to help SEA’s cause, Wright said. He did not identify the author.
Among other things, the memo said SEA repeatedly requested to meet with Malone to work out a contract, but had only one face-to-face meeting this Monday. The following day, the memo said, Malone terminated the relationship with SEA.
It also said one of the Summa physicians assigned to renegotiate the contract with SEA is married to the CEO of a physician contract group that competes with SEA.
“I think most of us would say this is at a minimum poor judgment and an obvious conflict of interest,” the memo said.
The memo concluded by telling readers to notify Malone that “you have no confidence in his plans to terminate the relationship with SEA.”
Both memos — Malone’s and that supporting SEA — could be posturing during the run-up to the end of SEA’s contract.
Doctors who work for Summa must be approved by a credentialing committee, a process of background checks that often takes four to six weeks. As of Thursday afternoon, the chair of Summa’s credentialing committee, Dr. Bob Schaal, said he knew of no files waiting to be processed.
If Summa brings in new doctors, people familiar with Summa’s ER operations say that getting quality medical care shouldn’t be a problem.
The biggest issue, they said, is potential patient wait times because new doctors would not only need to learn how Summa’s ERs function, but they’d also have to conquer the computer systems.
Beacon Journal staff writer Jim Mackinnon contributed to this report.
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.