County board to decide disputed healthcare bill
The Trempealeau County Board of Supervisors will decide whether to pay a disputed bill from the county healthcare center for the care of an elderly man in 2020.
The county’s executive-finance committee Monday reiterated its previous decision that the county is responsible for the $18,696 bill. Following that earlier executive finance decision on Sept. 7, the county’s human services board on Sept. 13 voted to not pay the bill.
The dispute between the county committees involves whether the payment should come out of the general fund or be covered by the human services department. The county board of supervisors is scheduled to meet next Oct. 18.
The county’s human services director, Deb Suchla, assistant director, Erica Anderson, and members of the human services board contend the center’s care was not authorized and even “unethical.”
Officials with the Trempealeau County Healthcare Center say Suchla and Anderson participated in numerous conferences about the man and did not raise objections to his treatment in the center’s locked unit. Those officials say they also have no record of an objection about the man’s care from Rick Niemeier, the county’s corporation counsel. Niemeier said it would not be accurate to say he did not file an objection. Suchla said she also filed an objection to the care. Healthcare center officials say they have no record of that either.
Healthcare center officials have said their treatment of the man, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, followed orders from physicians. The man, once a resident of the center’s unlocked nursing home, became agitated in August of 2020 and was taken to Gunderson Tri-County Hospital in Whitehall. There two physicians examined him, a third physician was consulted and all agreed the patient required a more secure setting.
Healthcare center officials say that when a Trempealeau County judge ruled in October that the man could be placed again in an unlocked unit, he instead was transferred to a locked facility in LaCrosse by the human services department.
