photo by: LMH Health

LMH Health, 325 Maine St., is pictured in May 2021.

By this time a month from now, LMH Health may have completed the hiring process for its next top financial official.

At Wednesday’s LMH Health Board of Trustees meeting, LMH President and CEO Russ Johnson told the group that he expects a new CFO will be in place by the board’s April meeting. Johnson briefly mentioned his expectation for the impending hire while discussing the hospital’s financial position.

“… I think we’re well underway for getting the organization back to a sound financial footing, which allows us to do so many other things that are part of our mission and our purpose — supporting our staff and all of those good things,” Johnson said. “I wanted to come back to the board because a lot of times, my comments are less than uplifting in that space, and since the next meeting we’ll have a new chief financial officer, I didn’t want to give them all of the opportunity to have good news.”

If that holds true, it will complete a search process that’s been underway for the past four months, starting in November after hospital officials discovered that Mike Rogers — the CFO hired just a couple of months prior — was a convicted felon who had legally changed his name in 2022 and failed to disclose those details during his hiring process.

As the Journal-World has reported, LMH Health said Rogers took “elaborate steps” to conceal his true work history and criminal record.

Rogers pleaded guilty to a mail fraud case in 2005 and was originally accused of a scheme that scammed about 40 people out of more than $80,000 using internet auction sites; he was later sentenced to 16 months in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $72,000 in restitution and perform 104 hours of community service upon release. Two years later, he was arrested on charges of extortion, felony theft and simple theft after allegedly using hospital credit cards illegally and trying to get money out of hospital administrators while serving as CFO at a hospital in Louisiana.

An LMH spokesperson confirmed to the Journal-World following the meeting that there is a candidate who’s working through the more stringent background check process LMH Health introduced in December 2023, in the wake of a report analyzing how Rogers was able to escape identification when he was hired. The spokesperson said if all goes well with that process, LMH Health could identify the candidate in the next few weeks.

As the Journal-World has reported, the hospital’s new hiring process uses third-party online application portals and asks applicants to submit a formal resume and answers to screening questions. LMH also announced in December that it planned to use primary source verification and other direct methods to check for required elements of the position it’s hiring for, and also would extend the timeframe for background checks beyond industry standards for key positions.

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At Wednesday’s meeting, the board also discussed LMH Health’s efforts to support Medicaid expansion. Earlier this month at the Kansas Statehouse, an expansion bill was shot down after just one day of discussion. Board chair Pat Miller said despite the lack of immediate progress, the hospital will “continue our advocacy for Medicaid expansion and drug pricing relief in order to ensure access to affordable health care for our community and for the long-term financial strength of our community hospital.”

“I think we should expect downward pressure from any kinds of state or federal programs like Medicare or Medicaid to really have no relief in the future,” Johnson added later in the meeting. “… We continue to see how somewhat intractable our state is around Medicaid expansion, despite genuine conversation and testimony and the statewide, clear preference for enabling another 150,000 people to have some kind of health care coverage.”