by Suzan Erem

The Mount Nittany Medical Center board of trustees held a meeting May 13 expected to eliminate, once and for all, direct community involvement in the management of the hospital.

The board will call for a vote to eliminate members from the bylaws and articles of incorporation, according to a special notice mailed in late April to members of the hospital corporation.

But the board needs the members to vote themselves out of existence. Members who attend will constitute a quorum, according to the notice obtained by Voices.

“There’s been a long history of community involvement with members of the corporation voting for the board,” said former hospital trustee Susan F. Smith. “This is a drastic change and I think people ought to be aware of it.”

Smith was one of a group of residents who led a community mobilization in the late 1970s and early 1980s to demand changes at the hospital. She and three others were voted in as trustees to address community concerns.

Barb Seibel was another resident voted in.

“The intent, it seemed to me, was to bring the hospital and the care it provided into the current decade, because it really wasn’t,” said Seibel. “One of the plusses of having a community membership—they were a literate membership—was forcing their hand to be more proactive with the current public health sense of the profession.”

She said issues at the time included staffing issues, quality of care, and confidentiality. The hospital’s relationship with Penn State and Hershey Medical Center was also in flux, as it is today.

“The hospital had a long tradition of community membership when it was in Bellefonte, and those people were very irate when the hospital was moved to the Penn State campus essentially,” Seibel said. “That was beginning of the end of community control.”

The hospital, founded in 1902 as Bellefonte Hospital, changed its name in 2003 from Centre Community Hospital to Mount Nittany Medical Center, reflecting a changing vision for the hospital which includes research and teaching in addition to community care.

Smith expressed regret at the proposed changes.

“There were members of the corporation who voted for the board of directors and I think it’s a shame to lose that tradition,” she said.

The proposed amendments to the bylaws eliminate all mention of members and public meetings, fully the first page and three-quarters of the current bylaws. The articles are replaced with this statement:

“This Corporation shall have no members, as such, but in lieu thereof, shall have a Board of Trustees, in which Board there shall be vested all the power and authority to supervise, control, direct and manage the property, affairs and activities of this Corporation.”

Mount Nittany Medical Center was contacted about this story but did not submit comments by press time.