As a troubled safety net system of clinics on the Oregon coast struggles to stay open, its former chief medical officer is urging community members to pay attention and get involved to support its continued existence in Bandon.
The message offered by Dr. Henry “Hank” Holmes might seem odd, since he recently won a $418,750 settlement from Coast Community Health Center in an unlawful termination case.
His remarks come even as another safety net nonprofit, Adapt Integrated Health Care of Roseburg, is trying to step in to keep the Bandon-based clinic system going after financial troubles brought it to the brink of closure.
Coast was founded in 2009 by 65 volunteers who wanted to ensure locals could access primary care. But even if the clinic’s new ownership is located out of town, according to Holmes, what happened with Coast shows the need for an active and engaged board — and for a highly engaged community — as well as vigilance by government agencies to ensure health services continue.
“One of the wonderful things about this clinic is that it really was the community’s clinic,” Holmes told The Lund Report. “The town lost its [clinic] because of a lack of oversight.”
He supports Adapt taking over, adding that “My underlying hope is that the community will really embrace this [clinic] the resource it is and, in a sense, turn some of the angst into ‘let's help these guys get going ... Let's embrace them in the community.’”
Coast CEO Kendra Newbold did not respond to a request for comment. She and other members of the Coast health center’s leadership have repeatedly declined to discuss Coast’s situation.
Adapt leaders, through a spokesperson, confirmed that the potential takeover announced months ago is still in process. The nonprofit expects a decision by the federal government later in the summer.
“We anticipate that review will be complete between mid-July to mid-August,” the Adapt spokesperson, Samar Farooqui, said in an email. “We are optimistic about the outcome of that review but we will not know the outcome until it is complete.”
Clinic agreed to hefty settlement
Holmes sued Coast last May, saying he was fired on a pretext immediately after raising concerns about the quality of patient care and potential illegalities.
Coast settled the case on the brink of trial, but Holmes declined to sign the sort of gag order that defendants typically make a part of legal settlements.
That’s why he and his attorney, Grant Engrav — who specializes in physician whistleblower cases — are able to confirm the size of the settlement. A payment of more than $400,000 in an unlawful termination case is unusually high, especially considering Holmes had sought a sum that wasn’t much larger than that — $750,000 in damages.
It was not the only such complaint made about Coast. In March 2023, three top administrators resigned and one of them later filed suit saying they’d been forced out by a “coup.”
Meanwhile, Holmes had been complaining that the new management team had placed pressure on providers to become more productive and engage in profit-oriented care — contrary to the founding principles of Coast.
At the time of Holmes’ suit, so many providers had resigned from the center that the number of full-time-equivalent positions held by certified providers dropped from nearly 10 to less than 2, according to the suit.
The lack of providers made it harder for the clinic to provide needed services and generate the revenue necessary to keep the clinic afloat.
Termination was bogus, records show
Coast Community Health Center operates clinics in Bandon in Coos County as well as in Port Orford in Curry County. It also operates a pharmacy in Bandon and several school-based health centers. Formerly known as Bandon Community Health Center, it is part of a network of federally funded nonprofit health centers that provide primary care to underserved communities and populations, regardless of ability to pay. Holmes had provided care there for a decade.
According to the suit, Holmes complained to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration in September of 2023, after which a staff member for the agency organized a meeting at the nonprofit health center on Sept. 27, 2023. Despite a top manager’s unsuccessful effort to remove him from the meeting, Holmes complained of rule violations, mismanagement and “efforts to withhold and hide information” from the federal government, according to the suit.
He continued to share information with the federal agency and the management of Coast, including concerns that the board was not being informed of the problems. He alerted management to those efforts.
On Oct. 16, 2023, Holmes met with the center’s then-interim CEO, Eddie Larsen, to discuss his concerns. Two hours later, Holmes received notice that he had been placed on leave for what amounted to a false pretext, according to the suit. He was terminated three days later.
Court records substantiate that the complaint filed against Holmes was trumped up. The clinical operations director who filed it, Rebecca Meszaros, said in a sworn deposition that she was forced to file a complaint based on generalized “venting” over something that she did not consider a firing offense. Specifically, Holmes had come in looking for a steroid drug to help a patient with severe arthritis pain, and subsequently failed to update a chart in keeping with the clinic’s protocol.
Meszaros said upper management was “looking for a way to remove” Holmes, who had sought changes to protect providers’ ability to provide services in ways that “did not issue profit as far as the management team was concerned.”
And the provider then in charge of Coast’s care as chief medical officer, Stephanie Empson, in another deposition defended Holmes, saying “As a provider Dr. Holmes is amazing ... he did an amazing job and his patients love him without a shadow of a doubt”
In terms of his termination, she said, “I do know why it’s happening, but it shouldn’t be.”
Larsen, for his part, confirmed in a deposition that he felt the clinic’s financial problems stemmed from a lack of “productivity” on the part of providers.
‘Systemic failure’
At one time, according to Holmes, Coast was providing state-of-the-art integrated care to a mix of people with diverse incomes. The nonprofit employed more than 60 people.
As of a couple of months ago, the numbers were less than half of that, he said.
Holmes was representing a large group of providers at the clinic, he said.
But the members of the Coast board never engaged or investigated the concerns the providers were raising, despite Holmes sharing them widely.
The board, he said, “flat failed” to do its job.
Nor did people at the state and federal health care agencies that worked with Coast, including the Health Services Resource Administration, Holmes said.
He said the agencies and the community should learn from what happened, calling it a “systemic failure.”
