OST HHS Committee hears concerns on Oyate Health Center

RAPID CITY – An important meeting on healthcare in the Rapid City community began quietly and then people started to pull out stacks of health bills that they could not pay.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee met on March 2 at the Ramkota hotel and convention center in Rapid City. The meeting began at 10 a.m. and its purpose was to hear updates on the OST Master Health programs that include CHR, Native Healing and Native Women’s Health.

Also slated to give an update was a representative from Oyate Health Center (OHC), an organization that manages part of the Sioux San campus. An Elder Committee from the Rapid City area organized a group of around 30 people to attend the meeting to express concerns about the Sioux San 638 contract and issues with Purchase Preferred Care.

Before any concerns were brought forward, Brandon Ecoffey, a spokesperson for Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Health Board (GPTCHB) and OHC, spoke to the HHS Committee. “I want to provide a small report but other than that I want to turn it over to you guys to hear what you have to say,” he said about the community members with concerns. “To take notes, to create passive communication, to move forward, to make things better for our people.”

After Ecoffey gave his presentation, the floor was immediately turned over to a community member who brought a stack of bills for health care that a relative had received. “My sister is laying out there half-dead, worrying about all these bills,” they said. “We have a big building out there in Rapid Valley, why do we have that out there?” The community member presented the bills to OST President Kevin Killer who eventually passed them onto Sunny Colombe, GPTCHB’s CFO and one of two representatives from GPTCHB present at the meeting.

“We want better for our people all the way around, even up here. We have new council reps that are young, that are eager, that are trying to help and it’s really tough when people come at us like we are not trying to help,” said OST representative Garfield Steele. “You guys shouldn’t be stuck with bills so we will look into that and we will try to figure out an answer for you because there is a lot of people back home that are getting bills from the air ambulance and all of that, and they can’t afford a $12,000 trip to Rapid on an air ambulance.”

More community comments from elders were heard which included a person who said that they had no complaints against IHS for 43 years but began to experience hardships through Oyate Health Center.

Another community member worked at Sioux San for 42 years, but defended the 638 contract and said that no problem has been experienced through Oyate Health Center.

After hearing three public comments and a statement from Steele, both GPTCHB representatives left the meeting without responding to any concerns that day.

Tim Peterson, a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and professional consultant for tribal health systems around the country, gave a presentation to the OST HHS Committee on behalf of the Rapid City Elder Committee. The presentation outlined several areas of concern about OHC that included access to quality services, empowerment and self-determination, the governance of OHC and its accountability to the OST and CRST tribal councils, and the accountability to the staff.

Peterson’s presentation concluded by saying that “we believe the Council should investigate, evaluate, and address the financial and quality of care performance of OHC, to understand and minimize the financial risk to the Tribes, and to minimize the resumption by IHS.” Three possible outcomes were highlighted and included two options that Peterson and the Elder Committee did not want to take which were doing nothing and promoting the resumption of OHS back to the IHS. The option that was encouraged by the group was to “put into place a true governing board and have that governing board do the investigation, evaluation, and address the issues to preserve our tribal health system” within 90 days.

For nearly two more hours after Peterson’s presentation, the HHS Committee heard concerns from around 15 more individuals before the meeting was concluded. Community members included several elders, former staff members of OHC and GPTCHB, and people impacted by poor health care. Also among those who voiced concerns were Donna Gilbert and Charmaine White Face who are currently suing IHS for issuing the 638 contract to GPTCHB. They claim that the GPTCHB does not fall into the correct filing status for a 638 contract and therefore the contract is illegal.

Recommended action suggested from the community included full resumption of OHC to IHS, a fully tribal 638 contract ran by OST and/or CRST, and replacing the leadership of OHC and GPTCHB.

By the end of the meeting, the HHS Committee decided to create a 3 person panel to investigate, evaluate, and address the concerns that were raised. The Committee also scheduled another meeting for March 26 that will hopefully have CRST, RST, and GPTCHB in attendance. The public is encouraged to attend and questions about the future meeting can be fielded to Shirley Poor Thunder at (605) 342-8573.

(Contact Travis at travisldewes@gmail.com)

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