The CEO of Asheboro’s only hospital sent a memo to its roughly 800 employees on Thursday, giving them a heads-up that payroll wouldn’t arrive at the same time as it usually does on Friday.
The note put already unnerved Randolph Health employees on edge.
“We are freaking out,” one told The Assembly that night.
Randolph Health and its parent company, American Healthcare Systems, are facing a tsunami of debt from unpaid bills and taxes. A number of hospital employees recently told The Assembly about alarming supply shortages and delayed maintenance over the last few months. In August, the hospital defaulted on its contract with the employees’ health insurer, and delayed several weeks of deposits on retirement contributions.
American Healthcare Systems missed payroll at its two hospitals in Illinois in recent months and issued employees paper checks to delay deposit, local news outlets there reported. Emergency department teams sent away ambulances heading to Gateway Regional Medical Center in July–including a patient in active cardiac arrest–because they weren’t sure if unpaid employees would show up for work.
The other Illinois hospital, Vista Medical Center, attempted a similar ambulance diversion on October 9, according to the Lake and McHenry County Scanner, but the state denied it. Then on Friday, all of that hospital’s anesthesia providers cut off services due to nonpayment.
Randolph CEO Kevin Spiegel wrote in the Thursday staff memo that the anticipated delayed deposit was due to changing bank accounts.
Several staffers The Assembly spoke to Friday said their manager told them to expect payment by 1 p.m. When their checks still hadn’t arrived, some walked off the job.
“It’s like a pissed off hornet’s nest in there,” said one employee who left.
Just before 3 p.m., a representative of the hospital’s human resources department emailed staff to say that the funding had been sent out to the banks prior to 2 p.m.
After 5 p.m., five employees told The Assembly that they still hadn’t been paid. One employee shared a screenshot of their bank account. Another employee said they got their deposit after 5:30 p.m., but others still hadn’t received theirs.
In a text, American Healthcare Systems’ owner Mike Sarian said that every employee was paid by direct deposit. “There is no issue period,” he said.
