If you are a on the board of directors, a foundation member, a trustee, etc. you should not do business with Silver Cross Hospital. At best it creates an appearance of a conflict of interest. We need independent trustees not trustees that do business with the hospital or worst yet a group of trustees that formed First Community Bank http://www.fcbankgroup.com/The-Bank/Our-Story.htm (Paul Pawlak, Steve Morrissette, Mark Stofan) and those same trustees work together on a Silver Cross Board. Silver Cross must now publicly disclose all competitive bids given before contracts were awarded, especially bids for banking, medical supplies, engineering, retailers, and contractors. Think about it, are you going to tell your buddy that you did not vote for his company's business? The trustees must be completely independent community members. These should be people who have no business relationship with Silver Cross Hospital's Entities. People who's only goal is healthcare for the community, they should not be concerned about voting against friends or possible concerns about gaining or losing business. Certainly a publisher who is/was a part of a nonprofit foundation should never post an opinion column without full disclosure of such a relationship with the entity in question. In fact anyone who writes an opinion published in a newspaper should fully disclose their relationship with Silver Cross, they must certainly disclose if they are a foundation member or business partner. To write an article attempting to persuade without such disclosures is disingenuous. It gives the appearance of a concerned citizen writing an article when in fact it is a business associate. How many of such articles have we seen? There have been plenty. If you are a board member that does business with Silver Cross Hospital are you going to vote down a new hospital? If I had such dual roles I would be concerned about losing business if I voted against any such bad plan. I want the board members and people who did not know the facts before to stand up and take action, to say a mistake was made and stop trying to close the Joliet East Side Hospital.
The community needs to think hard about what constitutes a "conflict of interest" Have our community leaders breached that trust?
The Herald News continues to print Press Releases from SCH as actual news stories, Why?
All business relationships with foundation members, board members, business associates should be investigated to determine if a conflict of interest exists.
Should our healthcare funds or any Silver Cross Entity be used to pay a lobby firm such as Res Publica Group more than 1/4 million dollars? Interesting to see that the CEO of Silver Cross Hospital Paul Pawlak's daughter gets a plum job in such a coveted organization. Quid Pro Quo? http://www.respublicagroup.com/who_main.shtml
