New chairman for NUMC?

                                                                                         

Nassau University Medial Center (from wikipedia)

Sometimes the lack of response is a response.

One source is putting out the name of a lawyer, from the Five Towns, who is involved in nursing home turnarounds, as Nassau County Executive Laura Curran's next choice for chairman of the Nassau University Medical Center.

Curran's people have not responded to inquiries about him; whether she will nominate him to the position vacated Friday by her last nominee, Robert Detor.

Negative answers are easy: "No, I never heard of him," or "No, who told you that?"  Positive answers are more problematic: If they are planning an announcement and don't want to give it away early, silence is often the response.

But, sometimes a non-response is simply a non-response. 

We'll see.

If Curran has already selected a successor, then Detor had warned her early of his resignation.

Detor, a longtime health care professional, sent a resignation letter to Curran on Wednesday, effective Friday, after facing a rebellious board that governs NuHealth, the public benefit corporation that runs the East Meadow hospital and related facilities.

In a letter to Curran, Detor essentially said the board would not do what he wanted them to do about an "event" he did not describe. He wrote that he presented "issues of serious concern" to the board but the board "chose to defer what in my opinion is considered to be a significant act of poor judgment and inappropriate behavior."  He said he could not accept that.

His letter followed a May 13 board meeting where the board went behind closed doors for more than two hours to discuss "personnel." Reportedly there was no talk at the meeting about an Alvarez and Marsal consultant's report, released in October, about hospital finances that Detor mentions in his letter to Curran -- and indeed, legally there could not be since the publicly stated reason for holding an executive session was "personnel" not finances.

The talk among some members of the Civil Service Employees Association, who work many of the jobs at NuHealth, was that Detor and Curran-backed members of the board wanted to replace Anthony Boutin, NUMC's first black CEO and a medical doctor, with white COO John Donnelly, a former deputy for former Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi.  It seemed a strange move following a year of national protests about racism and alleged white supremacy.

Regional director Jerry Laricchuita spoke in support of Boutin to the board before it went behind closed doors. Laricchuita said Thursday, "Boutin is a good guy. He's not a politician...He understands that entire hospital. And he is a doctor."

The board took no action when it emerged from executive session in May.