Despite indication from its commission chair in June that a third-party investigation into accusations of a hostile work environment at Eureka Springs Hospital would no longer take place because of cost concerns, Mayor Butch Berry told city council members Monday that the investigation indeed did happen.
The topic came up when city council member Susane Gruning brought up past personnel issues during the Sept. 8 council meeting, drawing the ire of Berry.
During a discussion on the hospital — primarily centered around finances — Gruning said she and other council members were still concerned about former employees who made allegations of a hostile work environment under chief financial officer Cynthia Asbury and human resources director Jodi Edmondson, who served as the hospital’s interim CEO for several months before the hiring of CEO Tiffany Means.
“We’re really concerned about our, the personnel that are no longer there that have been up here crying, upset,” Gruning said.
That led to Berry interjecting.
“Ms. Gruning, that’s kind of,” Berry said before Gruning interrupted, saying “Please let me finish.”
“Well, let’s stick to the subject,” Berry replied. “That’s actually in the past and nothing that the council can do about personnel.”
Gruning said she was concerned that the council never heard an update about a third-party independent review of personnel and the hospital working environment that Martin said would take place.
“I feel like we say things and then there’s no follow-up,” Gruning said. “Council member (David) Avanzino had pressed for action, noting the severity of the situation, that maybe there be a third-party staffing review. It was acknowledged by chair (Sandy) Martin that they were going to do an independent investigation. We never heard about it, so we don’t know what happened.
“We don’t need to know what happened with personnel; that is between the hospital and the personnel. But if there was an independent review completed.”
That exchange between Martin and Avanzino happened at the April 28 council meeting when the hospital commission chair said that plans were still in place to bring in an independent group to take a look at the various personnel accusations that have been made.
“Despite everything else that’s happening with the hospital, I always go back to we have a plethora of current and former employees that have literally screamed hostile work environment,” Avanzino said to Martin at the April council meeting. “And we have done nothing for them except keep that hostile environment in place. And I don’t understand that at all. If we were in the corporate field here, those people would be suspended pending an investigation or terminated. And I can’t wrap my head around why that’s not happening.”
“Well, two things,” Martin responded. “One, I don’t believe we have that hostile environment now. And employees are not leaving in floods. Secondly, we are going to do an independent investigation. We’re looking for an independent firm that will come in and deal with those employees and interview all those employees and give us a report.”
“Now, is this a law firm, or is it a human resources firm?” Avanzino asked. “Because, what we need is a human resources firm, not an attorney.”
Martin replied: “It’s going to be a human resources firm and it’s going to be somebody that is not associated with the hospital.”
Martin told the council she hoped to have an update on identifying a firm within a couple of weeks from the April 28 meeting.
However, a June 24 text message Martin wrote to the Times-Echo regarding an update on the independent investigation into employee allegations indicated it wasn’t going to take place due to cost.
“We have not hired one because bids have come in between $16-22,000 for the same scope of work our attorney already did last year,” Martin said of hiring a third party outside firm as council was told. “[Gabriel Mallard] will be giving his report probably in August when Tiffany is on board.”
Mallard, a Little Rock attorney, was brought in by the hospital commission in late 2024 after controversies surrounding the facility first came to light. In a Nov. 18 commission meeting, then-chair Kent Turner said Mallard would begin looking at “all aspects of the hospital.”
“As a result of many of the things that have been going on with the hospital, I have been in contact with our independent attorney in Little Rock, who we have on staff,” Turner told commissioners in November. “They are an attorney, a law firm, that deals in medical matters.”
Mallard is an attorney with the firm Mallard Gardner, whose website says the firm “serves as both healthcare counsel and general counsel for several hospitals throughout the state of Arkansas.”
“In that role, we advise clients in matters ranging from governmental compliance to litigation to mergers and acquisitions,” the firm’s website states. “Other matters upon which we advise include physician relations and medical staff bylaws, contract negotiations, and audit responses. We also serve as counsel to physicians, clinics, hospices, nursing homes, non-profit entities, and governmental hospitals.”
Turner said in November he was looking forward to hearing the attorney’s findings.
“It’s my hope, and I think the hope of all of us, that this attorney will come back with some hard facts as to what’s going wrong, what’s going right, what we need to change, what we don’t need to change,” he said, later adding, “… I am very interested in getting moving on this independent investigation that we’re going to have at the hospital just to see if we can figure out exactly what’s going on.”
However, at the commission’s next meeting held Dec. 2 Turner indicated that the scope of Mallard’s “investigation” into the hospital would be to help in complying with the requirements of being designated as a Rural Emergency Hospital.
“We are pleased that you have engaged Mallard Gardner, PLLC for the limited engagement of conducting a review and analysis of Eureka Springs Hospital Commissions’ compliance with the state and federal requirements for the operation of a Rural Emergency Hospital,” reads the agreement the commission signed with Mallard. “Specifically, Hospital is retaining the Firm for the purpose of assisting in drafting a correction action plan (“CAP”) for addressing deficiencies cited by the Arkansas Department of Health.
“This analysis and CAP will be limited to Hospital’s operations and will not be related to Hospital’s status and obligations as a city-operated facility. During this review, it is understood that the Firm may present interim findings to the (hospital commission) during public meetings. The CAP will be available for public review.”
At the commission’s April 10 workshop, Martin told commissioners that with a response to a state survey complete, the commission was ready to proceed with an “independent investigation” into the hostile work environment accusations.
“[The state survey investigation] is complete,” Martin told commissioners and staff present at the April 10 workshop. “The other one was an independent investigation on the employee allegations that we said we would do after we had everything concluded and cleared from the state. That happened at the end of March. So, we’re now ready to do that.”
Martin said Mallard — who assisted the commission with the response to the state survey — had recommendations on resources to assist with the new investigation.
“We don’t think after talking to the mayor, and talking to Gabe, and a couple of you guys, we probably shouldn’t have anybody that is associated with the hospital do this if we want it to truly be independent,” Martin told commissioners. “So, Gabe is going to kind of research some. He’s worked with many before that have a done a variety of hospitals throughout the state, so he’s going to recommend some [firms] to us.
“I asked him to do that by our next [commission] meeting on [April] 21st, and so he’s going to do that. We will then issue a public statement in a public press release that we’re doing it, and then when that is concluded, we will probably at one of our commission meetings have Gabe present his top line and have the other independent firm present theirs.”
Commissioner vicechair Brian Beyler responded: “That’s a great idea.”
Later, Beyler asked: “That would be done at the public meeting, right? This presentation by the independent [firm]?”
“Absolutely,” Martin answered.
Martin told commissioners that she would provide a “playlist” to whoever investigates the allegations from YouTube videos of commission and city council meetings that included public comments by many former and current hospital employees, and members of the public, alleging wrongdoing and a hostile work environment.
“I don’t know how far they’re going to go back,” Martin said of the timeline of the investigations. “I think we should suggest they go back several years.”
Beyler agreed. “Yeah, I think we’re back to ’23, ’22 even on some of these accusations,” he said.
“Some of this stuff … was like a year and a half ago,” commissioner David Carlisle said.
Martin said the commission would recommend that investigations go back to 2022.
“I think that’s far enough back,” Beyler said.
Martin said at the April workshop that Brie Gibson, the Arkansas Municipal League attorney who is representing commissioners in separate wrongful termination lawsuits filed by former CEO Angie Shaw and former nursing director Jessica Petrino, drafted a public statement regarding the independent investigation that Martin would share with the commission.
“I’ll send it around to all of you, just keep it until it’s time that we can announce and plug in the firm’s name, but just so you have it,” she said. “You’ll know what we’re going to do.”
Based on emails obtained by the Times-Echo from Gibson through an open-records request, the suggestion of an independent investigation and the public statement was discussed with Martin in March.
“As discussed, I recommend that the Commission hire an outside agency/person to conduct a thorough investigation into all the employment allegations against any and all hospital staff,” a March 17 email from Gibson to Martin read. “I would issue a statement to the press only after the third party has been engaged.”
In the email, Gibson included her “thoughts” on the public statement, saying she was also forwarding it to Berry.
“The City of Eureka Springs and its Hospital Commission take all allegations brought to our attention very seriously,” the suggested public statement drafted by Gibson reads, according to the March 17 email to Martin. “In light of recent allegations, we plan to engage an independent, qualified third party to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into these matters. At this time, we are unable to comment further, as we are committed to ensuring the investigation proceeds without any undue influence. Once the investigation is concluded, we will review the findings and take action as appropriate and necessary.
“We thank the community for their patience and trust as we work diligently to address these concerns with the fairness and rigor they deserve.”
Gibson’s email to Martin with the drafted public statement came the same day Martin forwarded an email to Gibson including a letter from Heather Wilson, a member of the city advertising and promotion commission, who has been outspoken regarding the hospital controversies.
Wilson’s email contained a handful of allegations, including information regarding a former hospital employee who was arrested in 2023 by the FBI and later received a 10-year prison sentence for involvement in sex trafficking of a minor. The email says the former employee has a lengthy background of court cases and questions how the employee made it past hospital background checks.
Wilson’s email, which said the former employee is Asbury’s sister, was sent to all city council members, hospital commissioners, Berry and local media.
After forwarding the email to Gibson, Martin sent another email to Gibson, Mallard and Kasey Nokes of the Municipal League asking: “Can I publicly say we have turned this over to our attorneys?”
“Are you available for a call in about an hour?” Gibson replied.
Martin responded that she was available for a call, and later that day Gibson responded with the email that included the drafted public statement.
At the Sept. 8 council meeting, in response to questions from Gruning about the status of an independent review of personnel accusations, Berry indicated that it had taken place, seemingly referring to Mallard’s contract with assisting the commission in drafting a response to the state over deficiencies.
“We just want to know that the independent review was done,” Gruning said at the Sept. 8 meeting. “… Sandy Martin responded that we’re going to do an independent investigation, we’re looking for an independent firm that will deal with some of the employees and interview those employees and give us a report just to see if the hospital is having issues with certain people, if there was a hostile workplace.”
Berry replied that a “third party” did look at the personnel issues, refuting what Martin told the Times-Echo in June.
“… It pretty well got dropped because there wasn’t anything there to investigate…,” the mayor said.
“So, there was a third party that came in?” Gruning asked again.
“He’s an attorney, and he looked into it, and that’s where it got stopped at,” Berry responded. “I didn’t know I was supposed to report this back to the council, because again, personnel is not a matter of the council.”
Gruning replied: “We’re not asking about the personnel. We’re asking if the investigation was done. So, what you just said was great to hear.”
“Well, it was done,” Berry said. “And again, I didn’t report back to council because it’s a hospital concern. But, in order for your information, yes it was done.”
Gruning said the reason she brought up the issue was because Martin, in April, indicated to council that she would give an update “within a couple of weeks.”
“That update didn’t happen,” Gruning said.
