Cherry officials move to rein in sponsored trips

RALEIGH -- Some employees from Cherry Hospital are in Minneapolis today for a conference of psychiatric nurses, but they may be the last to make such a trip for the foreseeable future.

Jim Osberg, director of the state system of mental hospitals, has ordered that private charities affiliated with those institutions suspend all spending that benefits employees rather than patients.

The decision followed an Oct. 5 article in The News & Observer that detailed more than 100 trips taken by Cherry employees to medical conferences, including at least 47 trips to other states or overseas.

Some employee travel costs, as well as expenses for an annual symposium that the Goldsboro mental hospital holds at a Wrightsville Beach resort, were paid by The Cherry Foundation. The Web site for the tax-exempt foundation says contributions "are utilized directly for the therapeutic care of the patient."

The nonprofit paid for the employee events using more than $88,000 in grants from pharmaceutical companies that make psychiatric drugs commonly prescribed by the hospital's doctors.

In an Oct. 6 memorandum, Osberg said that money from pharmaceutical companies and other state vendors could no longer be used to pay for employee activities.

"Effective immediately and until further notice, monies from foundations associated with a state facility may not be used to fund activities for facility employees, including continuing education or continuing medical education travel, registration fees, per diems, or other related activities," Osberg wrote in the letter, which was released publicly Tuesday.

Tom Lawrence, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, said the Cherry employees had received clearance from Osberg and Deputy DHHS Secretary Daniel Stewart earlier this week to make the trip to Minneapolis, since some expenses had already been paid and could not be refunded.

The Cherry Foundation spent $2,208 to reserve airline tickets for four hospital employees -- nursing services director Billy Tart, nurse supervisor Tim Riley, nurse Vonda Earp and Judy Howell, an administrative assistant who coordinates Cherry's medical education program.

Lawrence said he could not comment on whether Dr. Kimberly Johnson, Cherry's clinical director, went on the trip. Johnson and Howell attended a dozen conferences in the past three years, visiting such cities as New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Also, $1,855 in registration fees for the Minneapolis trip was paid through the hospital's Preceptor Fund, a state account that receives about $125,000 a year from six medical schools in the Caribbean who send students for rotations at Cherry.

Osberg previously froze spending from the Preceptor account after The N&O detailed a Cherry nurse's $5,000 trip to South Africa to learn about AIDS.

Lawrence said he didn't have figures for added expenses, such as for hotel rooms in Minneapolis or meals. He also said he did not know which accounts would be used to pay those costs.

The reason so many employees needed to go, he said, was to staff a recruiting booth Cherry would have at the conference.

That may be a hard sell.

Federal officials withdrew Medicare and Medicaid funding from Cherry last month after the death of a patient who choked on his medication, hit his head and was then left sitting in a chair for 22 hours. It was the latest in a string of instances of patient neglect and abuse at the hospital, which is now awaiting word on whether it will also lose its accreditation.

Howell, Johnson, Riley, Tart and Earp were also scheduled to go on another recruiting trip at a conference in San Diego later this month. Lawrence said that trip had been canceled.

The conference in Minneapolis runs through Saturday. In addition to educational sessions, its agenda features tours of the nearby Mall of America and a Friday evening awards banquet.

Cherry Hospital and its staff did not win any honors this year.

michael.biesecker@ newsobserver.com or 919-829-4698