By Michelle Crouch
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority board has scheduled a special meeting for today with four hours set aside for a closed session, an unusually long stretch of private discussion for a public body.
The authority, which does business as Atrium Health, said in a public notice that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss “competitively sensitive health care information.”
North Carolina’s open meetings law requires public bodies to conduct as much of their business as possible in public view, said Amanda Martin, supervising attorney at the Duke University School of Law First Amendment Clinic. While the law allows closed sessions for limited reasons — including for competitively sensitive health care information — those exceptions are meant to be narrow, she said.
“Closed sessions should be the exception, not the rule,” she said.
Martin said sometimes it’s possible for a public body to justify spending several hours behind closed doors. A detailed discussion of personnel, for example, could take a while.
But a pre-planned, four-hour session could invite skepticism, she said.
“They can only justify going in when they really have to,” Martin said. “That could call into question whether, out of a four-hour meeting, absolutely all of it had to be in a closed session. Really — none of that could have been in an open session? Maybe. It’s a little hard to believe.”
Today’s board meeting is scheduled to start at 12:30 p.m. at The Pearl, Atrium’s new innovation district just outside uptown Charlotte.
Atrium did not respond to specific questions about what types of competitively sensitive health care information would be discussed or whether more of the agenda could be considered for public discussion.
“The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority Board conducts meetings in compliance with North Carolina law, and any closed session is limited to matters permitted under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 143‑318.11,” the hospital said in an email.
Kristina Wilson, an assistant professor at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Government who studies and writes about the state’s open meetings law, said the duration of a closed session alone is not enough to raise concerns.
“The main compliance concern would be whether they announced a proper closed session purpose when they moved to enter closed session, and whether they stuck to that purpose within the closed session,” she said.
It’s not the first time Atrium’s board has held a lengthy closed session. In each of the past two Aprils, it announced similar special meetings with several hours behind closed doors.
In subsequent open meetings attended by a Ledger/NC Health News reporter, board members occasionally referred to prior discussions at what they described as a “retreat.”
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority is legally a unit of local government, a designation that comes with legal protections and tax exemptions that go beyond those of other nonprofits, but also carries requirements for transparency.
State law requires public bodies to not just vote in public, but to deliberate in public. At Atrium board meetings over the past three years, however, discussion has been rare, with most agenda items presented through PowerPoints before unanimous votes. More detailed conversations are referenced as having taken place in closed committee meetings.
This article is part of a partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and North Carolina Health News to produce original health care reporting. You can support this effort with a tax-deductible donation.
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