Mad River hospital loses 3 physicians
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Three physicians departed from Mad River Community Hospital in Arcata around the end of 2019 after their contracts were ended early or not renewed.
The doctors — Kim Erwin, Andrew Hooper and Marcelle Mahan — had banded together and asked for increased staffing at the hospital.
The frustration, Ervin told the Times- Standard in January of this year, began with a round of abrupt layoffs in 2018 that left the women’s health clinic chronically understaffed, causing patient care to suffer.
“Unless you give us the staff that we need in our facility, I’m going to go,” Ervin said she told administrators. “I thought, you know, warning. So I get a letter back saying, ‘OK, so you’re giving us your 60day notice.’ ”
Ervin said patients were leaving her letters on her door telling her they weren’t getting their calls returned by the clinic, which hadn’t happened before.
“So it got to the point where all of us — even providers — sometimes would check people in,” Ervin said. “Come back, act as a medical assistant, see the patient.”
Vicky Sleight, the spokesperson for Mad River at the time, said the hospital doesn’t publicly comment on contractual statuses with individual doctors.
“All contracts include an expiration date and an early termination clause should either party wish to cancel the contract prior to the expiration date,” Sleight wrote in an email. “Physicians are in high demand, especially in Humboldt County, and the hospital does not fault any physician for terminating a contract before its expiration date.”
The three doctors moved to new positions in Humboldt County: Mahan transitioned to St. Joseph Hospital and Ervin and Hooper went to work with Open Door Community Health Centers.