A couple of stories I’ve reported this week on Jennie Stuart Health — one about concerns that the local hospital could be sold and the other about a meeting of the board that oversees Jennie Stuart Medical Center — prompted several readers to message me with questions about whether our state open government laws provide any help in requiring transparency from Hopkinsville’s community hospital.
The short answer is, no. The Kentucky Open Meetings and Open Records laws do not apply to Jennie Stuart for two key reasons. The hospital is not a public agency, as defined by the open meetings law, and it does not receive at least 25% of its funding from a local or state agency.
One reader questioned why Medicare and Medicaid payments to Jennie Stuart don’t count as government funding under the open records law.
It’s a good question, so I ran it by Amye Bensenhaver, a retired state assistant attorney general. Amye and I are co-founders of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition, a nonprofit established in 2019. The coalition works to arm everyday Kentuckians with the information they need to make good use our state’s open government laws, which are also known as sunshine laws.