State lawmakers take pass on proposed leadership changes at UMC

By Conor Shine

Saturday, April 13, 2013 | 2 a.m.

A split between Clark County commissioners contributed to the demise of proposed legislation Friday that some argued was critical to the long-term sustainability of University Medical Center.

Assembly Bill 484 would have created an independent board of medical and business experts to oversee the hospital. The county commission currently oversees UMC but supported the governance change in a split vote in January.

Earlier this week, the three commissioners who voted in opposition — Chris Giunchigliani, Tom Collins and Lawrence Weekly — expressed their disapproval of the bill during testimony before an Assembly committee.

“If I felt in my heart that this enabling legislation being proposed to you is genuine, (I would support it),” Weekly told the committee. “I don’t believe it in any capacity. I’m praying that you all don’t buy into it.”

The public split of the board seemed enough to stall the bill’s momentum, and it died after failing to pass out of committee before Friday’s deadline.

Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick said part of the reason the bill failed was legislators were reluctant to get involved in an issue that could be solved at the county level.

“Anytime that any county comes before us and they have a split vote, we try to send things back to them so they can work on them,” she said. “It's really their issue that they need to resolve amongst themselves.”

Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said he’s disappointed the bill didn’t advance and that other commissioners spoke out against a change supported by county and hospital management.

“I obviously believe in free speech, but when we take a vote, usually the commissioners all respect the position of the board and we move forward on that,” he said.

With the failure of the bill, Sisolak said officials were left with few options for dealing with UMC.

“We have two choices. We need to raise revenues or cut expenses,” he said. “The governance situation that would have given us more flexibility to put options on the table has been eliminated.”

Creating an independent board would lead to better management and more innovative ideas in how to turn around the troubled public hospital, Sisolak said.

“When you have a private-sector hospital, they have experts running it,” Sisolak said. “Unfortunately, (commissioners) don’t have the qualifications necessary to make the decisions that are going to impact the long-term viability and sustainability of UMC.”

Sun staff writer Andrew Doughman contributed to this report.