Schneider Regional Medical Center’s medical staff met Thursday night with the Virgin Islands Government Hospitals and Health Facilities Corporation board of directors in the wake of a formal vote of no confidence, marking the first face-to-face discussion since physicians publicly rebuked the board over its handling of the territory’s hospital consolidation.
A recent no-confidence resolution from Schneider Hospital medical staff came after the board removed the hospital’s chief executive, Tina Comissiong, and elevated Luis Hospital CEO Darlene Baptiste to a role overseeing both hospitals as part of a structural consolidation.
Schneider staff said that consolidation began without consultation and without a detailed plan for the transition. Staff communicated their concerns in a closed-door meeting with the board Wednesday night, after which board secretary Christopher Finch reported that they had a “robust discussion” and gathered opinions while providing “information about additional steps for the integration and plans going forward.”
Jerry Smith, who chairs the V.I. Government Hospitals and Health Facilities Corporation board, told the Source Thursday that it was helpful to hear the physicians’ position.
“I do have a sense that they have an idea of the road map,” Smith said after Wednesday night’s meeting. “I also have a sense that they don’t agree with it, but they know what it is.”
With the consolidation, Smith said the GHHFC is “becoming a corporation that has central leadership for its institutions.”
“It’s going to be HR, it’s going to be finance, it’s going to be supply chain management, it’s going to be facilities — that’s all we’re doing, really,” he said. Historically, “the corporation was created to manage the hospitals, but then what happened was the hospitals were just cut loose to run themselves. And it’s not necessarily that the individuals were doing a bad job; they were just doing different jobs. So then it makes it difficult to maximize what you can achieve in a rural environment like we’re in.”
Smith added that most of the hospitals’ issues are financial.
“If you have money … you don’t have problems with buying supplies,” he said. “However, when you don’t have much money, you need to be doing a very good job of inventory management. You have to manage your supplies well. You have to have the policies that state how supplies are to be used. When you have an abundance of everything, you could kind of just haphazardly do what you want, but when you have minimal amounts of things, you have to manage them extremely well. And I see great examples of excellent work being done in different spots of each hospital, but there’s some learning that can take place.”
But physician leaders say their concerns go beyond disagreement with the board’s direction.
Dr. George Rosenberg, former SRMC chief medical officer, and Dr. Lori Thompson, president of the SRMC Medical Staff, said the vote was not about consolidation itself, but about process.
“We have, in theory, absolutely no problem with the hospitals merging,” Thompson said. “In many ways, it could be beneficial — purchasing power, shared IT resources, and the skill sets we already help each other with. What we are not comfortable with is the way that it happened.”
According to Rosenberg, the Medical Executive Committee received an email on a Thursday night requesting an emergency meeting the following morning, where they were informed of Baptiste’s appointment as territorial CEO and the naming of a territorial chief operations officer. Later that same day, Comissiong was released.
The medical staff requested a meeting with the board prior to its Feb. 13 meeting, Rosenberg said, but received no substantive response. At that Feb. 13 meeting, physicians voted by what they described as a significant majority to approve the resolution of no confidence, citing lack of transparency, stakeholder engagement, and planning.
“None of us as physicians, and none of the board members, in their individual capacities or as a group, has the skill, knowledge, or education to evaluate whether a merger is beneficial — and, if it is, how to proceed,” Rosenberg said. “You need an experienced consulting firm that specializes in hospital mergers. That was not done.”
He acknowledged that Ernst & Young was engaged, but said its role was limited to financial matters and did not include operational interviews with medical staff or senior leadership.
“There was no transition. There was no handoff,” Rosenberg said. “It was done in an extremely haphazard fashion.”
Physicians have also questioned the creation and filling of new leadership positions without public posting or what they describe as a traditional vetting process. Rosenberg said morale at SRMC “has never been lower.”
“This isn’t about the current leadership,” he said. “It’s about the process the board initiated — and our complete loss of confidence in their ability to manage and lead the hospital through something this complex.”
The medical staff is now drafting proposed changes they consider mandatory and plan to present them internally before determining next steps. While the board maintains that consolidation will strengthen centralized leadership and financial controls, SRMC physicians say their objection remains focused on how the restructuring was launched — and whether it was done with the preparation and engagement such a transition demands.
Meanwhile, the GHHFC issued a formal Request for Proposals titled “GHHFC System Strategic Planning, Integration and Turnaround Implementation Services” (RFP TB-2026-001), updated Feb. 17. The RFP seeks qualified firms to provide system strategic planning, integration, and turnaround implementation services for the corporation in both the St. Croix and St. Thomas–St. John districts. Proposals are due March 11.
