Matt Ready - Hospital Commissioner- Jefferson Healthcare- Port Townsend- interview on TCTV - video Dailymotion

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Watch Matt Ready - Hospital Commissioner- Jefferson Healthcare- Port Townsend- interview on TCTV - Public Interest Issues Show on Dailymotion

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00:00We're here interviewing Matt Reddy and I really appreciate all the great things you've done

00:07to give a voice to the public. You've been an advocate for the public for years and years and

00:15years and I wanted to come over here and interview you about being a hospital commissioner and the

00:23job you used to have and just to get a little feel about you. So tell me about the foundation of

00:33your work with Jefferson Healthcare. Sure, well I've been associated with Jefferson Healthcare for

00:40I guess 25 years now, 15 years as an employee and now 11 years as a commissioner.

00:48I was in the IT department for years and then I was in the performance improvement department

00:57for another like eight years and I ran for hospital commissioner because basically as a part of my

01:05activism I consider myself an artist, philosopher, activist and you know

01:12politics is just another form of activism. You run for office to try to hopefully change things,

01:20make things better and yeah so that's basically how it got started and my journey as a commissioner

01:27has been quite an adventure. And I remember like 15 years ago, 10 years ago when you

01:36were talking about the fact that there's no cameras in the commissioner's meetings and I remember when

01:44I used to be a producer at PTTV, we filmed those meetings. You want to give me a little bit about

01:51that circumstance? Well when I first got on the commission they were not recording meetings,

01:58they weren't audio or video recording the meetings and I immediately noticed that they were not being,

02:05I was not impressed with their consistency from meeting to meeting. So it seemed like a healthy

02:14thing to do would be to audio record the meetings so that we had a perfect record of what was said

02:19and then we wouldn't have to rehash things that we'd already decided. So I told the commission I was

02:26going to start audio recording the meeting meetings and this turned into a massive conflict that lasted over

02:34eight years. Because they, when I first recorded the meetings they tried to stop me,

02:41they tried to, they claimed a lawyer for the hospital said I couldn't do it unless the commission

02:48voted to give me permission to do it or the commission voted to do it.

02:51But I think it's a really nice thing for the public because people can't attend the meetings and when

03:00they're not around to do that it gives us the view of what's going on. You know, we're participating in

03:08the public events. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's essential. I think every governing body, every elected body,

03:15should have their meetings audio recorded at a minimum and transcribed so that we can see what

03:20is actually, so that we can hear what's actually being said. And I've had to turn tons of meeting

03:28recordings into transcripts over the years. I've actually published, self-published like three or

03:34four books that are filled with transcripts and emails covering the two major scandals that I've been

03:41involved with with the hospital. The first one being this fight over the right to record a meeting

03:45and this latest one over the Peninsula Health Alliance saga where the CEO submitted a proposal to

03:55Olympic Medical Center without legal board permission to do so. And I had to report this both to

04:07the regulatory authorities and to the county sheriff to be investigated because it, it's, it was possible

04:15this was actually so egregious that it was criminal, possibly official misconduct, possibly conspiracy to commit

04:25fraud. And the sheriff did a, you know, investigation of, of that and found there were, there was certainly

04:35wrongdoing. And the sheriff, you know, said it wasn't sure if it was possibly, you know, went over to criminal

04:43wrongdoing, but he definitely recognized the civil wrongdoing. And so that's been a, a whole new thing. That's a.

04:50So, uh, give me an explanation of what you did when you filed the grievance with the sheriff.

04:56Okay. Well, it was literally in the middle of a board meeting. I was prepared with a draft of the,

05:05the criminal complaint. Um, and it was during the board meeting that I decided I was going to

05:11verbally reveal that this secret negotiation was going on between Jefferson and Olympic Medical

05:17Center. And when I first tried to say this during the meeting, they cut me off and they wouldn't allow

05:23me to finish speaking, which is it. And you tried twice. I tried three times. Three times.

05:29And they cut you off every time you tried. Yep. They muted me twice. Yeah. And so once I saw they were

05:35going to do that, I just, I finished the complaint and submitted it to the sheriff right there during

05:40the meeting and then, um, then the meeting concluded and, uh, and then I was waiting. So, uh, you know,

05:48about two weeks before I even heard anything back from the sheriff to say whether he would investigate

05:53it at all. And it, he did, he assigned it to a detective. Um, he apparently had looked at it enough

05:58to see that there was definitely something that needed to be looked at. Um, and then it was another

06:04several weeks until we got a report. Um, this entire time was very awkward. I didn't know,

06:10you know, it's a very awkward thing to report a criminal complaint and have it sort of floating

06:14out there and not know if it's really going to turn into something, but the sheriff did an amazing

06:20investigation. The detective did, it was great work, really thorough. And I provided then when I got

06:26the report back showing clear evidence of, or, or clear conclusions that there were violations that

06:34were concerning. Um, I forwarded that on to the Washington state auditor, to the attorney general.

06:40And, um, as an example of that meeting, uh, that meeting, there were a lot of Jefferson

06:47healthcare employees attending. It was a very widely attended meeting. And it was very, uh,

06:55obvious when they stopped you, you know, you got up to say your points and they said, oh, you're

07:02at a line or they said different things and they specifically stopped you at that meeting.

07:08Yeah. And I think it's interesting to show that, uh, those are public meetings. They're not held in

07:16secrecy and that the state requires those meetings to be public meetings. Yeah. Yeah. These are public

07:24meetings. And, and one of the times they, they muted me and cut me off. I was speaking during public

07:29comment as a public citizen. And you were sitting out there as a public citizen. Yeah. Making a comment

07:34and they stopped you. Yeah. Yeah. Very, uh, I mean, that also, that's a, that's a free speech,

07:42first amendment, you know, issue, uh, what they did there. So just, uh, just piling on, uh, bad behavior

07:49with, with bad behavior. Um, and that's why I want to thank you, you know, you, uh, nobody helps you

07:57with this kind of thing. You see something and then you let the public know, you know,

08:05you take your job as a hospital commissioner seriously, and you are there to help the public.

08:12And that's just a remarkable thing because you care, you care about Jefferson healthcare. You care

08:19about the hospital and you care about the public and the patients. And, and that's just really nice.

08:25I, as a TV show host, I wanted to thank you for that because it hasn't gone unrecognized. I'm very

08:32sorry that I haven't interviewed you before, but I have watched your history for the last 10 years.

08:39And every time I think, oh my God, I'm so glad that he is saying something.

08:45I didn't do anything to document my opinion, but I am really appreciative of you.

08:53Well, thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, you know, you just,

08:58everyone just needs to do their job when they have a position, just like I'm so grateful that the sheriff

09:02and the, the, um, detective and even the, the deputy county prosecutor, they did their jobs,

09:08you know, just into doing the investigation. And as a hospital commissioner, you know,

09:13you have a job to do. Uh, I mean, healthcare is a beautiful thing. You just want to make people

09:17healthy. So you just need to lead with integrity and honesty. And so, I mean, if I'm, when I'm put

09:24in a position where I'm like something dishonest is going on, something really wrong is happening.

09:29I mean, what are you going to do? You either go along with it or you expose it and you want to be

09:34comfortable with yourself and with what you're doing. So you just try to do the right thing,

09:38try to not act out of emotion or anger and just what is the correct thing to do in this role.

09:45Um, and you have done that throughout your history as a hospital commissioner.

09:50Oh, thank you.

09:51And I think a lot of people, uh, admire that they may not say anything, but they quietly admire it.

09:59Yeah. Um, now I want to get into the, the, uh, issues of when you ran for port commissioner,

10:06uh, hospital commissioner, hospital commissioner, I'm sorry, hospital commissioner. When you ran for

10:13hospital commissioner, what were the kinds of things that you had to think about when you did that?

10:18You know, you were coming from Jefferson County, uh, hospital employee. Yeah. And then as

10:27another option of it being a hospital commissioner, what kind of difference did that make?

10:35Well, I mean, one, if I won the election, I knew I'd have to resign my position at Jefferson

10:40healthcare. So I would, I would lose my job and my main source of income. Um, and also just

10:48trying to learn exactly what you could do as a, as a hospital commissioner, what powers you had,

10:52how you could influence things, what, you know, exactly what the role entailed. Um, but I attended

10:59the meetings for about a year before I ran for commissioner to really get a feel for what the

11:03commission did. And, uh, like I said, I was doing it to try to push for universal healthcare, um,

11:10because I was, I just thought there was a way that elected hospital commissioners could really play a

11:14role in advocating for that. Um, so I was focused a lot on thinking about how to do that. Could I

11:21organize commissioners? Um, what kind of access would we have to elected legislators?

11:28Hi. Now I was wondering about the benefit and what you have accomplished as a hospital commissioner.

11:36Yeah. Well, I mean, one, uh, more accountability and transparency. Uh, I mean, since I pushed for

11:45recording the meetings, we now have the archive of the last 11 years of what the commission's been

11:51talking about. So there's been more, um, integrity in that realm. Um, and, uh, you know, I'm, uh, you know,

12:01that's like one of my main goals. I want to keep the institution strong. It's one of the most

12:05important institutions in our community. Um, not just for healthcare, but for the jobs and the,

12:11the amazing people that work there. Um, so I want to keep the institution strong and I want to sort

12:17of reestablish the honesty and integrity at the governance level, which is a little bit of an

12:23issue. And then, you know, my overall goal is I want everyone to have access to healthcare. I want

12:30everyone to be able to get the healthcare they need. And there's things we can do at the hospital

12:35level to keep our services as accessible and as affordable as possible and have a great charity

12:41care policy. And then there's things we can do as commissioners to keep advocating for better

12:47healthcare reform. I mean, our, our healthcare system is a, is a mess and it's, um, it needs more

12:54integrity and it needs, uh, some more elegant legislation to make it work. Um, and are you

13:01looking forward to September when the new, uh, facilities come in and the hospital expands?

13:08It is, it is very exciting. The new expansion, it's going to, you know, have more specialty services

13:14available for people locally. And it's a big step. You know, we went into a lot of debt in order to build

13:21it. Um, so, I mean, but yeah, it's very exciting and, uh, hopefully it's a really, I think it'll be a

13:28really positive thing for the community. It's just important that the hospital has good leadership

13:33and good governance at the top to keep it strong, um, for years to come. And I look forward to

13:38interviewing you again in September. Yeah. If that's okay. That would be wonderful. Thank you

13:42very much. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for being on my show. Thank you so much. And my show is Public

13:47Interest Issues Show. Great. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

Matt Ready - Hospital Commissioner- Jefferson Healthcare- Port Townsend- interview on TCTV

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