Pressure is beginning to mount from the Greene County community on leaders of Boyd Memorial Hospital to answer for what’s been classified as a toxic working environment and a large group of long-time employees quitting or being terminated.
Over the weekend, a post by Morgan Behnen a former EMT turned RN and nursing supervisor was shared over 60 times and had over 300 readers that included her resignation letter from Boyd Hospital to Boyd’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees Kirby Ballard. Behnen said in her letter that she believed current CEO Stace Holland is “destroying” the hospital by firing or “running off” long-time employees.
Holland was hired by Boyd’s managing board after the termination of long-time CEO Debbie Campbell in May 2024. WLDS reported at the time that Holland was terminated from his previous employer in February 2024 by the Board of Trustees of Houston, Missouri based Texas County Memorial Hospital, according to Becker Hospital Review. Holland is said to have been terminated the Missouri-based hospital’s Chief Financial Officer prior to a scheduled special meeting by the hospital’s board.
In a phone interview with WLDS on Monday, Holland says that there was no termination but a mutual severance with his previous employer: “I know there has been a lot of people making up stuff. Texas County and I, the Chief Financial Officer and I did not see eye to eye. We had a special board meeting to discuss that. At that board meeting, it was obvious that the board was going to follow the direction of the CFO, of which was a different direction that I wanted to take it, so we negotiated a separation.” Holland says that the “termination” idea likely came from a phone conversation from a source telling Becker Hospital Review what happened second-handed.
An online blog entitled “Save Boyd Hospital!” directly targets Holland and is filled with nearly 200 comments. Other detailed accounts of Holland’s actions have been released by former employees of the hospital or its clinics. Carrollton Alderwoman Bernie Faul has also issued a call to action by community members asking that they reach out to Boyd Hospital board members to meet without Holland to make decisions and hear about the alleged problems. Faul and others have said the hospital is a critical need to the greater Greene County community.
Holland says he’s unsure why there are complaints: “I’m not sure where these complaints are coming from. I was looking at the statistical trends and the finances from the hospital, and noticed that every department that we have in the hospital is busier, seeing more patients, generating more revenue than it has in any year previous – especially comparing that to 2024. The hospital has had a hard time paying its bills over the last few years. Right now, our revenue shows that we are collecting about $400,000 a month more than we were each month this time last year. I’m really kinda…I don’t understand what the community is upset about. I think I keep hearing them say they are going to lose their hospital, but as far as the community utilizing the hospital more than it has in the past, and our revenues show that.”
Holland says the recent turnover of employees at the hospital doesn’t buck any nationwide trends, despite the hospital’s smaller size: “I haven’t gotten anything [as far as complaints] from any employees here, expect I’ve had 2 nurses resign. It’s not uncommon to have some turnover in hospitals, so 2 nurses out of our staff in several months is not outside of the national norm. One thing that I looked at when I first started was that turnover rate and compare it to the national trends. I didn’t see as a percentage that we have any greater turnover, nor do we have any less turnover. We have less turnover here in the professional positions, but some of the entry-level positions and some of the non-professional – meaning you don’t have to have a license or a college degree – those percentages were a little high. It looked like we had more in dietary, and housekeeping, and maintenance than I’ve experienced elsewhere. But still, on a national average, we were running that same percent I think. I don’t have that number in front of me but I think it was around 20% – but mainly [the turnover] was in the non-professional areas.”
The hospital is currently allocated $500,000 annually by the Greene County Board to operate the county’s ambulance service. Holland says that the ambulance service is one of the growing services at Boyd: “Our ambulance are up 32% over this time last year. Patients that refuse to be transported by our ambulance is down 7%. The patients that refuse to come to the hospital and request to go to other hospitals is down by 57%, meaning that patients being brought to our emergency room for treatment is up by 58%. It looks like the community has trust in our ambulance and our emergency room.”
Anonymous sources have told WLDS that complaints have been filed with the Illinois Human Rights Commission. We have submitted requests to the commission to view the case files on those complaints if they exist. Holland says he is not aware of the complaints.
This is a developing story.