Group Is Charged With Finding New Owner for System
By James Hohmann
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008
A high-powered group of local leaders is getting started on a year-long effort to find a new owner for the struggling Prince George's County hospital system.
The man chosen as chairman of the state-created authority has three decades of experience engineering big deals, but this could be one of the hardest.
Kenneth E. Glover, an executive at PNC Bank and the county's former chief administrative officer, said that he knows he is taking on a tough task but that problems in the financially strapped system are too important to ignore.
"Failure and success are real clear," he said. "I'm confident we'll come up with a solution. I have no idea what that solution looks like."
The 56-year-old Mitchellville resident said he has been getting 10 calls a day from civic leaders with congratulations, condolences and offers of help, with an understanding that big obstacles need to be overcome.
The next hurdle: waiting for the state and the county to finish negotiating how much both are willing to pony up to coax a business or consortium into bidding for parts or all of the system, which comprises Prince George's Hospital Center, Laurel Regional Hospital, Bowie Health Campus and two nursing homes. The system is owned by the county and managed by the nonprofit Dimensions Healthcare System.
Glover said he is willing to work pro bono because he or members of his family could someday need emergency care.
"He's one of the people who is firmly interested in making this system work. I think everyone on the commission is," said Donald E. Wilson, former dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and vice-chairman of the group.
Glove said his wife, Lauren, was instrumental in his accepting the post, for which there is no salary. She is a management consultant who advises governments on art in public places and the Maryland Democratic Party's vice chairwoman.
Glover has been involved in Prince George's government since the late 1970s, when he was an assistant to the executive and staff director of the county's delegation to the General Assembly in Annapolis.
Since graduating with a master's in urban management and planning from the University of Maryland in 1975, he has worked in a variety of corporate jobs. As a senior vice president of RJR Nabisco from 1990 to 1992, he managed government relations and minority outreach for the owner of one of the country's biggest cigarette manufacturers, whose leading brand was Camel.
In 2000, he gave up a lucrative job to become a top deputy of his boyhood friend, then-County Executive Wayne K. Curry (D). During two years as the county's chief administrative officer, Glover managed a $1.6 billion budget and 6,000 employees.
The hospital authority brings together seven community leaders with medical, financial and legal backgrounds. Also appointed to the group are lawyers Stan Brown, Andrea Leahy-Fucheck and Karen J. Shaheed, who is general counsel for Bowie State University. Joining them are former county official Thomas M. Himler and Joseph L. Wright, executive director of the Child Health Advocacy Institute at Children's National Medical Center.
During the recent swearing-in ceremony, Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) reminded people about the impressive credentials of those named to the authority.
"One of the reasons we're so optimistic about the future is the talent of the folks appointed to the authority," he said.
Glover said that after years of finger-pointing about the system, leaders in the region are finally committed to getting something done.
"This is going to blow up unless we fix it," he said. "If it doesn't work, and that's not an option, everybody's fingerprints are on it."
Efforts to fix the system, however, have gotten bogged down in the past. But close observers say the new authority is the best hope to navigate tricky political waters.
"The county taxpayer has already pumped a tremendous amount of money into this," said Judy Robinson of Hyattsville. The community activist has been urging the government to address the hospital ownership issue for nearly 20 years.
"If they've put in the board, and they have confidence in it, let them do their work, don't exert a tremendous amount of political pressure and see if we can get someone who is decent."
By law, the authority is required to complete the funding and bidding process by the start of the 2009 legislative session.
Glover said he will continue working full time at the bank, but he is scaling back volunteer work.
Anyone who lives, visits or even drives through the county could wind up with his life on the line in a Prince George's hospital, Glover said. That means everyone has a stake in who controls the system, he said, and that's why the authority's meetings will be open.
"At this point in time, we're all ears," he said. "We have to listen to everybody."
Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
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