Sheriff Jeff Lyde resigns from Clay County hospital board

HENRIETTA, Texas (KAUZ) - Clay county commissioners met to remove the chair of the Clay County Memorial Hospital board. That position was held by Jeff Lyde who is also the Clay County Sheriff. It ended up being a short meeting due to news they got right before. The hospital board was prepared to go through a fill trial to get Sheriff Lyde off the board however the meeting ran short after he resigned.

“I think everybody really wants what’s best for the hospital and the emergency room and all that. We just disagree about how to get there,” Mike Campbell, Clay County Judge, said.

Those disagreements would lead to a board meeting set to remove Jeff Lyde from the hospital board chairman position.

The CCMH is one of five county-owned hospitals in Texas which gives the commissioner’s court the unique ability to appoint and remove hospital board members. Judge Campbell says rural hospitals all across America are having issues and doesn’t want CCMH to fall into that category.

“Even in Texas were losing hospitals were very dedicated to making sure that doesn’t happen in Clay County it’s very important to us to have a good hospital we’ve got wonderful staff over there, great doctors that serve,” Judge Campbell said.

He says the board is currently taking action to prevent that from happening by fixing some problems they’ve been having.

In the process of trying to save the hospital, Judge Campbell says the board could not come to agreements on emergency room changes that chairman Sheriff Lyde had in mind.

“The new contract for the emergency room was going to be basically three times what the old one was so they felt that it was perhaps not the best use of our resources and it felt like he drove that pretty heavily and it felt like it would be in the best interest of the hospital board if he would be taken off,” Judge Campbell said.

At the meeting, Jeff Lyde read a letter of resignation in which he briefly spoke about his time on the hospital board. Mentioning he feels he could have done a better job by educating himself on hospital functions.

“Every direction we tried to lead the hospital in was done with the best intentions to resuscitate this hospital to providing a future quality Medicare for clay county for years to come,” Sheriff Lyde said.

Judge Campbell says moving forward the board has many ideas in mind when it comes to planning for upgrades to the hospital.

“It is going to be a challenge because you know with Medicare payments being what they are it’s just a very difficult time for rural health care so we’re going to work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Judge Campbell said.

If you’d like to view his full statement, click here. A public meeting will be held Tuesday to discuss plans to fill the chairman position.