The closed-door session by the Beaufort Regional Health System Board of Commissioners was moved from the board’s usual meeting room after a doctor who represents the medical staff on that board objected to being excluded from the session.

Acting Chief of Staff James Manning objected after the BRHS board voted to go into closed-door session with lawyers Joseph M. Kahn and Dan Boyce and asked hospital staff and nonvoting members of the board to leave the room.

Citing policy from the BRHS administrative manual, Manning said he would not leave the room during the board’s discussion with its lawyers.

The hospital’s chief of staff is an ex-officio member of the BRHS board.

Manning, who serves as a hospitalist at Beaufort County Medical Center, was named acting chief of staff following the resignation from that post earlier this week by Rachel McCarter.

Manning is expected to be named the hospital’s chief of staff at a meeting of its medical staff next week.

“I’m very uncomfortable with this,” Manning told the board.

His refusal to leave the room led to a heated exchange with BRHS Board Chairwoman Alice Mills Sadler and board member Hood Richardson, who also serves on the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners.

It also led to a quick discussion in an adjoining room with Board Vice Chairwoman Brenda Peacock, a Washington gynecologist.

“I’m really asking you not to fight us on this,” Sadler said to Manning.

Said Richardson: “I can’t be in a meeting if staff is allowed to stay.”

Retorted Manning: “Ex officio does not mean I’m here at the whim of the board.”

After continued discussion with Manning, Sadler moved the closed-door session to a nearby room.

“The board will retire to another room so that we can proceed with our business,” Sadler said.

While the board met with its lawyers, Manning, who has worked at BCMC for about six years, remained in the meeting room for almost an hour.

He said closed-door sessions over the future of the local health-care system that exclude the elected representative of the hospital’s medical staff have concerned the medical staff for some months.

“I think it’s my right,” he said in an interview while the BRHS board met with its lawyers. “I’m a member of the board as chief of staff. I don’t think it’s appropriate to exclude a member of the board.”

“It also raises suspicion when they act in that manner,” he said.

Manning said he had discussed his opposition to being excluded from the closed-door session with other members of the medical staff before Wednesday’s meeting and raised concerns over the issue in a December letter on behalf of the medical staff to BRHS Chief Executive Officer Susan Gerard.

“This is something that the medical staff had discussed,” he said.

Manning said he was prepared to be removed from the meeting room by law-enforcement officers, if necessary.