The University of Mississippi Medical Center has hired a former Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi executive as its new chief financial officer.
Jennifer Sinclair will oversee the finances and budget for the entire medical center, according to a release last month from UMMC. Her first day was April 24.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the medical school, described the position as “challenging” and introduced Sinclair to the Institutions of Higher Learning trustees at April’s health affairs meeting.
“I’m looking forward to it, really,” Sinclair said at the meeting. “My heart and passion and experience are on the provider side, so UMMC is obviously the largest in the state, so I’m excited to be a part of it.”
UMMC is the state’s largest public hospital. The medical center was appropriated more than $180 million this year from the Legislature and posted about $1.7 billion in revenues and expenses in fiscal year 2022.
Sinclair, who has more than 23 years of experience as a health care executive, comes to UMMC from Blue Cross where she was vice president. Previously, she was the vice president and regional CFO at Bon Secours Mercy Health, the largest health system in Ohio. She also worked at St. Dominic Memorial Hospital in Jackson for 17 years in several different capacities, including executive vice president of operations and senior vice president of finance.
She graduated from Mississippi State University and is from Morton.
Sinclair replaces Nelson Weichold, who’s been in the position just a few months shy of four years. Weichold has accepted a position with Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, his home state.
The reason for his departure has not been disclosed. UMMC could not be reached by press time.
“I want to thank Nelson for his steadfast and exemplary work as our CFO,” Woodward said in the release. “Under his leadership and through his strategic support, UMMC navigated through some unprecedented challenges and the trajectory of the Medical Center is better because of him.”
Weichold was at the helm of the hospital’s finances during the COVID-19 pandemic and a nearly year-long dispute between UMMC and Blue Cross, the state’s largest private insurer, that put UMMC out of network with the company for months.
“We’re not glad that Nelson is leaving,” Woodward said at the meeting. “But we are very glad that we were able to secure somebody like Jennifer and have her join our team.”
Executive session meeting minutes show that the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees “terminated” Felecia Nave as president of Alcorn State University — a modicum of information but more clarification than the board has provided in other instances of presidential turnover this year.
The board initially refused to say if it had fired Nave or let her resign, but per executive session meeting minutes released Thursday, the unanimous decision on April 20 was to terminate Nave “for the board’s convenience, effectively immediately.”
Just two days earlier,Nave — the first Black woman to lead Alcorn State, the oldest public historically Black university in Mississippi — interviewed as a semi-finalist for thechancellor positionat Louisiana State University, Shreveport.
Nave did not get the position.
Though it’s unclear what role that interview played in the board’s decision,Tom Duff, the outgoing IHL board president, said in a press release announcing her departure last month that “the Board wishes Dr. Nave well as she pursues new opportunities.”
The board appointed Ontario Wooden, whom Nave hired as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs in 2020, as interim president with a salary of $300,000. He reported directly to Nave, and the two overlappedin administration at North Carolina Central University.
Nave’s contract was set to end on June 30 of this year, per a version obtained by Mississippi Today in 2021. The contract lays out three paths the board could take to terminate her employment: “Financial exigencies as declared by the board,” “for good cause,” and “for the Board’s convenience, without any showing of good cause or other cause.”
It is not clear if the board could have terminatedNave for its convenience with good cause or without. If the board terminated Nave without cause, the contract shows that Nave is entitled to a payout of the remainder of her state-funded salary, which was $300,000. She has had 30 days from the date the board voted to terminate her to vacate on-campus housing.
Nave’s termination made her the fourth public university president to step down or leave since June 2022. In each instance, IHL has provided little information about the circumstances surrounding those decisions — details on why presidents leave usually comes from the individuals themselves.
Earlier this month, Rust College, a private college in Holly Springs, announced its president Ivy Taylor was leaving.
Jared Gilmore, an Alcorn State alumnus, said he was shocked by the board’s decision to terminate her. He is involved with a group called Alcornites for Change that had sought to hold Nave accountable for widespread issues on campus like declining enrollment, dozens of employee resignations and “deplorable” conditions in athletic facilities.
The board should answer if Nave’s handling of those problems played any role in its decision to terminate her, Gilmore said.
“The goal was never to just get her fired,” Gilmore said. “The goal was to have some accountability for the position because again there were so many things that were going on that were detrimental to the institution.”
Gilmore said Alcornites for Change had repeatedly sought meetings with the board and with IHL Commissioner Alfred Rankins, the president of Alcorn State before Nave, about their findings. But prior to firing Nave, IHL never returned their inquiries.
“It was a shocker to us because my thing was, we’ve been presenting the information, we have been rallying the stakeholders, and all of a sudden, boom, they make a decision,” he said. “We need to know where we go from here because we have some issues.”
IHL has yet to announce a timeline for a presidential search.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation on railroads or similar public places was constitutional, forging the “separate but equal” doctrine that remained in place until 1954.
In his dissent that would foreshadow the ruling six decades later in Brown v. Board of Education, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that “separate but equal” rail cars were aimed at discriminating against Black Americans.
“In the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens,” he wrote. “Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law … takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”
I misspoke at a recent media conference regarding the accusations against former Governor Phil Bryant in the $77 million welfare scandal. He has not been charged with any crime. My remark was inappropriate, and I sincerely apologize.
Mississippi Today has published at least 29 times over the course of its coverage of the welfare scandal, including multiple times in “The Backchannel” investigative series, that Gov. Bryant has not been charged with any crime. My mistake was unintentional and an inaccurate representation of the facts.
This statement will be shared across Mississippi Today’s platforms, including our website, social media, newsletter, mobile app and text service. I have requested that the video of my remark be retracted with this apology.
Longtime state Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of evading federal income taxes.
Sentencing is set for Aug. 21. Banks faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release according to court documents.
Court documents unsealed this month claimed Banks reported $38,237 in income on his 2018 federal tax returns even though he “knew that he had received more than $500,000 in additional income” that year — profit from selling real estate.
Banks’ attorney Rob McDuff said Wednesday, “Mr. Banks has cooperated with the U.S. attorney’s office and today had the opportunity to speak directly to the judge and admit that he made a mistake in failing to report on his tax return the proceeds from the sale of land that had belonged to his family for many years.”
Banks, an attorney and funeral home director, has served in the state House since 1993 and in 2012 ran unsuccessfully for the state Supreme Court.
Banks is unopposed for reelection to his House seat this year.
While the Mississippi Constitution prohibits anyone convicted of most state or federal felonies from serving in the Legislature, section 44 of the constitution exempts federal tax crimes as a disqualifying offense.
“This section shall not disqualify a person from holding office if he has been pardoned for the offense or if the offense of which the person was convicted was manslaughter, any violation of the United States Internal Revenue Code or any violation of the tax laws of this state unless such offense also involved misuse or abuse of his office or money coming into his hands by virtue of his office,” the Mississippi Constitution says.
VERONA — Party leaders and campaign staffers scrambled this week after incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves over the weekend appeared to suggest that only one conservative is competing in the hotly contested GOP primary for lieutenant governor.
Reeves told Mississippi Today at a Saturday event in Lee County that he will not endorse either leading candidate — incumbent Delbert Hosemann or challenger Chris McDaniel — in the lieutenant governor’s race, but opined that a spirited campaign would be healthy for the state Republican Party.
“We’ve got a conservative candidate running, and they’re going to talk about the issues,” Reeves said. “And we’ll see how that comes out.”
When pressed to clarify if he thought one of the contenders in the election was not a bonafide conservative, Reeves demurred and offered a vague description that one of the candidates has pushed for certain issues over the past decade, though he declined to specify the issue or which candidate he was referring to.
“What that means is we have two candidates that are running,” Reeves said. “We all know the issues that one of the candidates has focused on over the last 10 years. And so, again, I’m focused on my own campaign.”
The comments stirred several top Republicans to speculate if Reeves was tacitly lending support to McDaniel over the incumbent Hosemann in the state’s most watched primary, which could likely decide the ultimate winner of one of the most powerful seats in state government. How Reeves, the first-term governor and de facto state Republican Party leader, views and talks about the down-ballot race could have an impact on GOP voters.
In two separate statements to Mississippi Today on Monday, Elliott Husbands, Reeves’ campaign manager, attempted to clarify Reeves’ remarks but did little to shed light on what the governor actually meant in his remarks to the press.
Husbands said in a Monday morning statement that the governor’s comments about only “a conservative” running in the race were meant to describe McDaniel, further implying the governor believed the Jones County lawmaker to be the only conservative in the race.
But Husbands walked that initial statement back, and said later on Monday evening that Reeves’ remarks about “the issues that one of the candidates has focused on over the last 10 years” were instead meant to describe McDaniel, though he still did not specify which issues the governor was referring to.
After Mississippi Today began to ask the McDaniel and Hosemann campaigns to respond to the governor’s comments early this week, Mississippi GOP Chairman Frank Bordeaux privately stepped in to mend any bruised feelings between the two statewide officials.
Bordeaux told Mississippi Today in an interview on Wednesday that he reached out directly to both Reeves and Hosemann regarding the matter.
“My job as chairman of the party is to make sure that there is unity in our party,” Bordeaux said.
Reeves, according to a statement from Hosemann, also made a personal phone call to Hosemann on Monday night to assure the lieutenant governor that he was not making an endorsement in the race.
Hosemann’s statement to Mississippi Today also pointed out that several pieces of legislation Reeves touted on social media as accomplishments this year are also items that Hosemann advocated for such as infrastructure investments, salary increases for public K-12 educators and financial assistance for Mississippi hospitals.
“The two items the governor did not include were reducing the number of state employees by 2,300 and paying off a half a billion dollars in debt while not borrowing money in the last two years,” Hosemann said. “All of these originated in the Legislature with our leadership and the leadership of the speaker.
“We are grateful for the governor’s endorsement of the direction we have led the state in over the past four years. Conservative leadership producing results.”
After Mississippi Today’s reported on Reeves’ remarks, McDaniel, in a statement accused Hosemann, the current leader of the state Senate, of blocking some of Reeves’ policy proposals over the last four years.
“As Mississippi’s next lieutenant governor, I look forward to working alongside Governor Reeves to pass conservative policy, fight for our values, and ensure Mississippi leads our country back to prosperity and conservative values,” McDaniel said.
The state senator found himself at odds with the GOP establishment when he challenged longtime U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in 2014, and when he challenged Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2018.
McDaniel was even a political foe of Reeves during his two terms as lieutenant governor, at the time often claiming, as he does now with Hosemann, that Reeves was not conservative enough when he ran the state Senate.
“Since ’14, he’s done everything in his power … to make sure my legislation doesn’t see the light of day,” McDaniel said of Reeves in 2014. “If I introduce a bill in a post-’14 environment, the establishment has given the order that if my name is the primary author, to have that bill killed.”
Now, McDaniel and Reeves have mended their relationship, with the longtime legislator even endorsing Reeves’ bid for governor in 2019.
If he is elected to a second term as governor, Reeves will have to work hand in glove with the elected lieutenant governor, who serves as the leader of the state Senate, to get any major policy achievements across the finish line.
But despite the governor and legislative leaders all belonging to the same political party, Reeves at times has had a frosty relationship with the speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor, who sometimes wield more political power than the governor himself.
The Republican primary will take place on Aug. 8 between McDaniel, Hosemann, Tiffany Longino and Shane Quick. If no single candidate wins an outright majority of the votes, a runoff election will take place on Aug. 29.
Editor’s note on 5/17/23: This story has been updated updated to include a statement from Sen. Chris McDaniel, which his campaign emailed hours after the story published. His campaign had not responded to a request for comment before the story published.
With Tyler softballing down in Hattiesburg this week, long-time Mississippi sports writer Billy Watkins joins Rick to discuss about 100 years combined of writing Magnolia State sports. Favorite players, favorite games, favorite interviews are just a few parts of a wide-ranging discussion.
Scott Berry, who has won and won with utmost class at Southern Miss, has announced his retirement at season’s end.
Back when 60-year-old Scott Berry was a younger coach at Southern Miss — and long before the grass baseball field was replaced with artificial turf — he would spend long hours making sure the field was immaculate. Every blade of grass, every speck of dirt had to be just right.
His daughter, Kathryn Grace, in college now, was a tiny girl. “Daddy,” Kathryn Grace asked her father one day on the field at Pete Taylor Park, “is this your garden?”
It surely has been. The winningest coach in Southern Miss history, Berry has grown ball players and he has grown winners. He did it all with class. When I wrote last week of Berry’s consistent winning ways at Southern Miss, I had no idea he would a week later announce his retirement, which will come at season’s end. I did know that he wasn’t going to coach for much longer because he has said so several times in recent years.
Rick Cleveland
Why now? I can guess. Number one, like any coach who has ever done it, he wants to go out a winner. Who wouldn’t? His current Golden Eagles hold a 13-game winning streak, the nation’s longest, heading into the last weekend of the regular season. They are 35-15, 20 games over .500, and have a good chance for a seventh consecutive 40-victory season. No other Division I school in the nation has more than five straight 40-win seasons currently. Ole Miss, Florida State and Southern Miss came into this season as the only D-I schools with 21 consecutive 30-win seasons. USM now has 22. Both the Ole Miss and FSU streaks will end at 21.
Number two and perhaps more importantly, Berry would never retire if he didn’t believe he was leaving his garden in capable hands. Berry strongly believes the right man is already in the program. USM’s official news release of Berry’s impending retirement says that search for Berry’s replacement is underway. Forget that. Associate head coach Christian Ostrander, who has been a whiz with the Golden Eagle pitching staff, will be the new Southern Miss baseball coach. You can book that.
When Corky Palmer retired in 2009, the transition to Berry was seamless. The same should be true going from Berry to Ostrander.
But that’s a story for another day. Today is about Berry, who has earned the lasting respect of his coaching peers. One is Mike Bianco, coach of defending national champion Ole Miss, who decisively swept Berry and Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg Super Regional last spring en route to Omaha. Bianco’s first year as head coach at Ole Miss coincided with Berry coming to Southern Miss as Palmer’s lead assistant. They have competed against one another on an annual basis since then — and on even terms before last year’s Super Regional. In a phone call Tuesday night, Bianco said news of Berry’s retirement caught him by surprise.
“But I’m happy for him, happy for his family,” Bianco said. “When you’re in this profession, you miss a lot stuff with your family. You don’t have a lot of spare time. I read Scott’s statement, and I am sure all that figured in.”
Asked about his relationship with Berry, Bianco responded, ”We’re not best friends or anything like that. We don’t go hunting and fishing together. But we’re baseball coaching friends for sure. When I think about the people I really respect in this game and the people in the game I call friends, Scott is definitely one of them at the top of the list.
“You’ve watched it, you know,” Bianco continued. “Corky did a great job down there. He really did. But Scott has taken it to a whole other level when you talk about the consistency of the program and what they’ve accomplished in terms of their facility and fan support. They’ve become a national program and that’s tough to do at a so-called mid-major, but Scott’s done it and it’s also how they’ve done it. They play the right way. His teams play hard, they really compete, and they are great kids. That’s a credit to him.”
Berry, as he has said so often in the past, has much the same respect for Bianco.
When Corky Palmer announced his retirement 14 years ago, his Southern Miss team suddenly got white-hot, earned an NCAA berth, won an NCAA Regional at Georgia Tech and then a Super Regional at Florida. Palmer’s career ended in Omaha.
Could something similar happen this season for Scott Berry?
The cuts are expected to save between $125 million and $150 million a year, according to NOLA.com. It is the largest such reduction in the hospital system’s history – the 770 employees represent about 2% of Ochsner’s workforce.
The health system’s CEO Pete November said in a message to employees that despite reducing spending, renegotiating contracts with supply and service companies, decreasing reliance on agency workers and launching initiatives to increase clinic visits, more needed to be done to address financial challenges.
The positions impacted by the layoffs are “primarily non-direct patient care roles” and management. No physicians are impacted, November said, and any impacted employees with active clinical credentials will be offered other direct patient care roles in the system.
“We are not alone in this: healthcare providers across the country have experienced increased labor costs, a shortage of patient care clinicians, high inflation and the end of pandemic relief funding from the federal government,” he wrote.
Tim Moore, president and CEO Mississippi Hospital Association, echoed November when talking about the state of Mississippi hospitals.
“On a national scale 2022 was the worst financial year in history for hospitals. More hospitals report negative margins than ever before, and Mississippi is no exception,” said Moore. “This unfortunately will mean in many cases dramatic changes to staffing and services offered in communities.”
Moore continued to say that Mississippi needs Medicaid expansion.
“We have access to resources that will help businesses, Mississippians, our hospitals and other providers as well. We as a state should simply extend access to care to the low wage earners that cannot afford to pay traditional insurance premiums,” he said. “This is one huge piece of the healthcare stabilization puzzle.”
Hospitals around the country suffered losses in 2022, and first-quarter cuts among health care companies were up 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to Fierce Healthcare.
