Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
A Times Editorial
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 24, 1999
Attorneys for the city of St. Petersburg asked almost three months ago for a copy of the 1997 joint operating agreement under which Bayfront Medical Center entered into the regional BayCare alliance. So far, Bayfront has refused to turn over the document. Based on recent precedent, Bayfront's tactics are legally dubious. Politically, the hospital's tactics are nothing short of self-defeating. BayCare President Frank Murphy and other alliance executives need to quit hiding behind their lawyers and take reasonable steps to repair the special relationship Bayfront has long enjoyed with the citizens of St. Petersburg and the surrounding community.
The joint operating agreement became an issue after the revelation earlier this year that Bayfront had restricted its abortion policies in accordance with the directives of its Catholic-owned partners in the hospital alliance. City officials have a legitimate concern that the revised abortion policies or other religious dictates violate the hospital's lease with the city, which requires Bayfront to provide care "without regard to sex, race, color or creed." To answer that question definitively, they have not just the right but the responsibility to ask to examine the operating agreement.
Hospital attorneys say the joint operating agreement is not a public document. The courts recently have ruled otherwise in similar cases involving formerly public hospitals that continue to receive special municipal benefits. In any case, this is no time for niggling over legalities. Like too many other hospitals, Bayfront is losing millions of dollars a year, and the sad recent history of Tampa General Hospital shows how such financial crises can be exacerbated by the unnecessary secrecy and defensiveness of executives in charge of hospitals dependent on public support.
BayCare officials have good reason for resisting the meddling of those St. Petersburg City Council members who have demanded proprietary information that is irrelevant to the city's legitimate concerns over Bayfront's operations. However, the joint operating agreement goes to the heart of Bayfront's contract -- moral as well as legal -- with the people of St. Petersburg. Alliance executives say the agreement would reveal no further influence of Catholic doctrine on Bayfront medical policies. But by persisting with testy legalisms in an effort to avoid making the agreement public, BayCare officials only add to the perception that they have more to hide than the abortion policy they were so loath to disclose.