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HomeHealthHealth Authority Board approves new CEO job description

Health Authority Board approves new CEO job description

As Dr. Amanda Bighorse prepares for her departure, a response to an open records request reveals the departure of two former providers may have cost the clinic millions in potential billing

The Osage Nation Health Authority Board met in a closed emergency session on Feb. 7 and voted to approve a job description for a chief executive officer at the WahZhaZhe Health Clinic.

The board postponed reviewing and approving a job description for the clinic’s chief medical officer, a post from which Dr. Amanda Bighorse announced last week she would resign. 

Bighorse’s predecessor at the clinic, Dr. Ron Shaw, performed both the CEO and CMO jobs.

Bighorse took over as CMO on July 1 last year, and she has since come under fire from some patients, medical providers, nurses and technicians for her management skills.

At least three medical providers – one doctor and two nurse practitioners – have left since Bighorse took over and none had kind words for her when interviewed by the Osage News in preparation for an upcoming article. 

Two of the providers, Dr. Trudy Milner and nurse practitioner Kim Holt, were the clinic’s most productive. Holt alone was responsible for billing more than $4 million to Medicare, Medicaid insurance in fiscal 2020 and Milner billed nearly $2 million, according to data the clinic released Feb. 4 in response to an open records request. Overall, the clinic billed about $6.9 million to Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance in fiscal 2020. Both Milner and Holt moved on; Milner is now working for Ascension St. John in Tulsa and Holt for the White Eagle Clinic near Ponca City.

Before the Feb. 7 meeting began, Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear told the health board that he is getting quizzed about the clinic including at the funeral that morning of former Chief Charles Tillman.

“A lot of people are talking about it and wanting to know what we’re doing,” he said. “I’m saying, well, the board’s meeting this afternoon. That seemed to satisfy everybody.”

The approved job description for the chief executive officer now goes to the human resources division for a market study to determine how much the Nation should pay a new CEO. 

Author

  • Louise Red Corn

    Title: Freelance Author
    Twitter: @louiseredcorn
    Languages: English, Italian, rusty but revivable Russian

    Louise Red Corn has been a news reporter for 34 years and a photographer for even longer. She grew up in Northern California, the youngest child of two lawyers, her father a Pearl Harbor survivor who later became a state judge and her mother a San Francisco native who taught law at the University of California at Davis.

    After graduating from the U.C. Berkley with a degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures with no small amount of coursework in Microbiology, she moved to Rome, Italy, where she worked as a photographer and wordsmith for the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, specializing in the French-speaking countries of Africa.

    When the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl parked over Rome in 1986, she escaped to New York City to work for the international editions of Time Magazine. She left Time for Knight-Ridder newspapers in Biloxi, Miss., Detroit and Lexington, Ky., During nearly 20 years with Knight-Ridder, she was a stringer (freelancer) for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Parade Magazine.

    In 2004, she married Raymond Red Corn and moved to Oklahoma, where she worked for the Tulsa World before she bought the weekly newspaper in Barnsdall and turned a tired newspaper into the award-winning Bigheart Times, which she sold in 2018. She hired on at the Osage News in early 2022.

    Throughout her career she has won dozens of state, national and international journalism awards.

    Red Corn is comfortable reporting on nearly any topic, the more complex the better, but her first love is covering courts and legal issues. Her proudest accomplishment was helping to exonerate a Tennessee man facing the death penalty after he was wrongfully charged with capital murder in Kentucky, a state he had never visited.

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Louise Red Corn
Louise Red Cornhttps://osagenews.org
Title: Freelance Author
Twitter: @louiseredcorn
Languages: English, Italian, rusty but revivable Russian

Louise Red Corn has been a news reporter for 34 years and a photographer for even longer. She grew up in Northern California, the youngest child of two lawyers, her father a Pearl Harbor survivor who later became a state judge and her mother a San Francisco native who taught law at the University of California at Davis.

After graduating from the U.C. Berkley with a degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures with no small amount of coursework in Microbiology, she moved to Rome, Italy, where she worked as a photographer and wordsmith for the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, specializing in the French-speaking countries of Africa.

When the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl parked over Rome in 1986, she escaped to New York City to work for the international editions of Time Magazine. She left Time for Knight-Ridder newspapers in Biloxi, Miss., Detroit and Lexington, Ky., During nearly 20 years with Knight-Ridder, she was a stringer (freelancer) for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Parade Magazine.

In 2004, she married Raymond Red Corn and moved to Oklahoma, where she worked for the Tulsa World before she bought the weekly newspaper in Barnsdall and turned a tired newspaper into the award-winning Bigheart Times, which she sold in 2018. She hired on at the Osage News in early 2022.

Throughout her career she has won dozens of state, national and international journalism awards.

Red Corn is comfortable reporting on nearly any topic, the more complex the better, but her first love is covering courts and legal issues. Her proudest accomplishment was helping to exonerate a Tennessee man facing the death penalty after he was wrongfully charged with capital murder in Kentucky, a state he had never visited.

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