The financially troubled Nashville (Tenn.) General Hospital has offered CEO Joseph Webb a new three-year contract, according to The Tennessean.
Mr. Webb has been working on a six-month extension of his original contract, which had been slated to expire Jan. 4, but the hospital's governing board voted to extend the contract until June 30 with the option of renewal for another year.
Now, hospital officials, namely four Hospital Authority Board members, have offered Mr. Webb a three-year extension with no terms. The board members felt that "he had waited too long for job security," The Tennessean reported. While the motion to extend the contract passed in a 5-to-1 vote, some board members said they felt the decision was rushed.
"To make a decision without all the data, because the facts are our friends, is a bad process," Joel Sullivan said before the vote, according to The Tennessean.
Mr. Webb became CEO of the hospital in 2015. Late last year, the hospital underwent an audit of its finances, which showed that the management did not have proper oversight of transactions or activity of hospital accounts. Nashville's previous mayor was considering plans to halt inpatient care at the hospital by June 30.
However, community members wanted the safety-net hospital to remain open. Nashville's Metropolitan Council voted in February to offer the hospital $17.1 million in subsidies, nearly $4 million more than the mayor's initial proposal. In March, Nashville General requested $46.6 million from Tennessee for operations in the upcoming fiscal year. The city's new mayor supports the funding request.