Head of South Jersey's CAMcare ousted from job

Mark Bryant, the longtime CEO of Camden's community health center, CAMcare, has been ousted from the organization.

Though Bryant's name still appears on CAMcare's website as "President/CEO," Bryant confirmed Friday that he was suspended from his job last November and terminated in early March.

Speaking from his home in Lawnside, the borough where he served as mayor for 20 years, Bryant declined to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding his departure.

The president of CAMcare's board of trustees, Duane Myers, said he could not comment in any way on Bryant's current relationship to the federally funded organization.

"We're not allowed to discuss personnel matters," said Myers, who is president of the South Jersey-based M&C Insurance Agency and who also sits on the board of trustees for Cooper University Hospital.

At CAMcare's headquarters on Federal Street last month, questions about Bryant were directed to Scot McCray, most recently listed as an assistant vice president of the organization. McCray, a former Camden County freeholder who has been with CAMcare since 2011, referred all questions to the board of trustees.

CAMcare is a federally qualified health center, a designation that means it provides medical services to low-income patients. Last year the organization served more than 38,000 people, according to its website.

CAMcare was established by Cooper University Hospital in 1978 as an ambulatory care and residency training clinic. A few years later, it became an independent, government-funded health center.

Bryant, who earned a degree in business administration from Rutgers University, was assistant vice president of operations at Cooper from 1984 until 1992, when he took over at CAMcare. His total compensation for 2014 from CAMcare was listed at $259,000 in publicly available tax filings.

Bryant comes from a family with a long history of public service in South Jersey, particularly Lawnside, where his father was on the school board. Bryant himself served on the Borough Council for a decade before he was elected mayor.

He is the brother of former State Sen. Wayne Bryant, who was convicted in 2008 of illegally steering money to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Mark Bryant was a staunch defender of his brother, and when he stepped down as mayor of Lawnside in 2010, he told the Inquirer that his brother's indictment on federal corruption charges influenced the decision and affected how the whole family felt about holding public office.

Wayne Bryant served about three years in prison.

CAMcare, which has six locations in Camden, one in Clementon, and one in Paulsboro, is one of 20 federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) throughout the state. The FQHC designation allows a community health center to provide free or sliding-scale services to patients, regardless of their ability to pay. The centers receive cash grants and cost-based reimbursement from the federal government for Medicaid patients, as well as some funding from the state Department of Health for patient care in the form of reimbursements for under- or uninsured patients.

CAMcare functions under the supervision of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Elizabeth Senerchia, a representative of the Department of Health and Human Services, said centers such as CAMcare are not required to make a report to the government when administrators go on paid or unpaid leave, but that any such decisions must be approved by the organization's governing board.

Donna Leusner, director of communications for the state Department of Health, said CAMcare had notified the state that Bryant was no longer there.

asteele@phillynews.com

856-779-3876 @AESteele