America, Fuck yeah! Mississippi Edition

Hospital told employees for years pension was funded when it wasn’t

Singing River Health System sent statements in 2009, 2010 and 2011 to each employee showing how much the system paid into their individual retirement, with colorful pie charts that showed millions invested overall in the pension plan.

It turns out the health system contributed no money to the pension plan after 2009, SRHS executives now acknowledge.

One December 2011 statement Pascagoula attorney Dustin Thomas reviewed, for example, said the employee paid more than $2,500 into the retirement plan, and SRHS put in more than $5,500. The pie chart lists the health system’s overall investment in retirement for the year at $7.6 million.

SRHS employees are waiting to learn what they can expect in retirement pay now that the health system has conceded the plan is only 48 percent funded, with a shortfall of roughly $150 million.

Biloxi attorney Jim Reeves sat in his conference room recently with one of the statements a client brought him.

“I don’t think it can be interpreted any other way but to lead them to believe that they in fact were getting the retirement benefits that they were promised,” Reeves said. “This makes the situation doubly tragic because we have people who — if they were told this thing was in trouble in ‘09 or ‘10 when it got in trouble — could have made different arrangements. Many of them stayed at the hospital because of the good retirement plan. Those are years and potential investment monies that are gone and you can’t get back.”

There’s a real Enron vibe to this. As you might remember, executives in that company told employees almost right up until the very end that buying company stock was a wise move.

To add to the Enron-esque feel, the architects of this particular problem are trying to run away from it too:

Former CEO Chris Anderson left just before SRHS’ financial problems began to surface in March. Anderson, now CEO at Baptist Hospital in Jackson, has not responded to repeated calls from the newspaper.

A representative for Baptist sent the following response when the Sun Herald requested interviews with Anderson or his board of trustees:

“Due to the fact of what is happening at Singing River has nothing to do with Baptist Health Systems, I decline your request. If Chris decides he wants to speak with you, he will call you. But, as I mentioned, for right now, he doesn’t wish to be interviewed.”

Gee, I wonder why that could be?

And of course, like Enron, the people who bear the most pain are those who worked hard for the hospital for so long:

Attorney Dustin Thomas said the SRHS employees he’s talked to are “broken-hearted.”

Thomas thought about those employees when Holland spoke recently to the Pascagoula Rotary Club. Why wasn’t he talking to the employees instead? he wondered.

“I get messages every day, every night,” Thomas said. “I’ve noticed something as I’ve talked with employees.

“They truly believed in this hospital system they work for. They truly believe. And they made an investment of their time — their time away from family — did shift work, worked very hard for a hospital system that made a promise to them. And I think they’re just shell-shocked now that apparently that promise meant nothing to the hospital system.”

But nope, no regulation needed here, everything is just hunky dory, yes siree.