healthy4u: free speech

The Return of PharmaLot

After an unfortunate hiatus (see<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/01/pharmalot-sent-down-memory-hole.html"> this post</a>), <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/">PharmaLot</a> is back.  PharmaLot was one of the premier sources of incisive information on the pharmaceutical industry, is back.  PharmaLot was and now is run by Ed Silverman, and is known for publishing important, but sometimes unpleasant truths. Ed Silverman provided unbiased, insightful reporting.  Notably for the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a> audience, he was not afraid to report on the good, the bad, and the ugly. He was no friend of marketing and public relations smarm.  Often he was first to break stories involving legal settlements, guilty pleas, and miscellaneous misconduct, and in some cases was one of the few to document such stories. For example, when PharmaLot last disappeared, I noted that it provided one of the few accounts of a $21 million fine imposed on Merck by French antitrust regulators (here is the brief <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/19/us-france-fine-idUSBRE9BI0Q420131219">Reuters version</a>.)  PharmaLot reported on a judgement against Actelion for anti-competitive practices in support of its drug for pulmonary artery hypertension.  The only other media report on this was <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Actelion-loses-appeal-in-lung-drug-case-5079481.php">in the San Francisco Chronicle</a>, and it was less detailed.  As we have noted endlessly, bad behavior by large health care organizations, including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and the various organizations with which they interact, like <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/contract%20research%20organizations">contract research organizations</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/medical%20education%20and%20communication%20companies">medical education and communication companies (MECCs)</a>, etc has often been <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">anechoic</a>.  If one likes to get along by going along, it is not a good idea to make too much of a fuss about such issues and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/suppression%20of%20medical%20research">suppression</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/manipulating%20clinical%20research">manipulation of clinical research</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/deception">deception</a> in  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/marketing">marketing</a>, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/perverse%20incentives">perverse incentives</a> including the creation of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest">conflicts of interests</a>, much less outright <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/crime">crime </a>and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/health%20care%20corruption">corruption</a>.  Ed Silverman was known to fuss about such issues. So the return of his fearless reporting, and willingness to post controversial interviews and editorials, is a rare ray of light in the gloom.  PharmaLot has just been added back to our blog roll.  Welcome back! PS - It may be too much to hope that the back archives of older versions of PharmaLot can be restored to public view.  We wait with baited breath.  Hat tips to <a href="http://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2014/06/04/oh-how-weve-missed-our-pharmalot/">1BoringOldMan</a>, <a href="http://loathingbioethics.blogspot.com/2014/06/pharmalot-is-back.html">Fear and Loathing in Bioethics</a>

The Return of PharmaLot

After an unfortunate hiatus (see this post), PharmaLot is back. PharmaLot was one of the premier sources of incisive information on the pharmaceutical industry, is back. PharmaLot was and now is run…

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05 Jun 2014

PharmaLot Sent Down the Memory Hole

As noted in blog posts (<a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38780/title/Goodbye--Pharmalot/">The Scientist</a>, the <a href="http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2013/12/where-have-all-critical-pharma-bloggers.html">Pharma Marketing Blog</a>, <a href="http://shearlingsplowed.blogspot.com/2014/01/if-you-know-ed-and-like-his-work-please.html">Shearlings got Plowed</a>), and one solitary newspaper article (<a href="http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Jan/02/pharmalot-ubm-canon-silverman/">San Diego Union-Tribune</a>), Ed Silverman's PharmaLot blog is no more. The main page of the blog has been replaced with a simple announcement. <blockquote class="tr_bq">UBM Canon has ceased the production of the following brands: Med Ad News, PharmaLive.com, Pharmalot, eKnowledgeBase and R&D Directions. Thank you for your loyalty and support that has played such an important part over the last thirty years. </blockquote> As others have noted, the shutdown of PharmaLot will remove an important source of news and opinion about the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.  Ed Silverman provided unbiased, insightful reporting.  Notably for the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a> audience, he was not afraid to report on the good, the bad, and the ugly. He was no friend of marketing and public relations smarm.  Often he was first to break stories involving legal settlements, guilty pleas, and miscellaneous misconduct, and in some cases was one of the few to document such stories. For example, in my current file, I note that PharmaLot provided one of the few accounts of a $21 million fine imposed on Merck by French antitrust regulators (here is the brief <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/19/us-france-fine-idUSBRE9BI0Q420131219">Reuters version</a>.)  PharmaLot reported on a judgement against Actelion for anti-competitive practices in support of its drug for pulmonary artery hypertension.  The only other media report on this was <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Actelion-loses-appeal-in-lung-drug-case-5079481.php">in the San Francisco Chronicle</a>, and it was less detailed.  As we have noted endlessly, bad behavior by large health care organizations, including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and the various organizations with which they interact, like <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/contract%20research%20organizations">contract research organizations</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/medical%20education%20and%20communication%20companies">medical education and communication companies (MECCs)</a>, etc has often been <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">anechoic</a>.  If one likes to get along by going along, it is not a good idea to make too much of a fuss about such issues and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/suppression%20of%20medical%20research">suppression</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/manipulating%20clinical%20research">manipulation of clinical research</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/deception">deception</a> in  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/marketing">marketing</a>, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/perverse%20incentives">perverse incentives</a> including the creation of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest">conflicts of interests</a>, much less outright <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/crime">crime </a>and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/health%20care%20corruption">corruption</a>.  Ed Silverman was known to fuss about such issues. So the loss of his ongoing reporting, and willingness to post controversial interviews and editorials, will be sorely missed. Even more concerning, however, is the loss of his previous work. As noted in <a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38780/title/Goodbye--Pharmalot/">The Scientist's blog</a>, the PharmaLot archives are now inaccessible.  Although there are workarounds for the web-savvy that may allow retrieval of some of his previous work, especially if one knows what one is looking for, straightforward access is now difficult, and may become more difficult as it ages. Since PharmaLot provides an important archive of important problems with ethics, management and governance in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and since such issues as noted above often go minimally or not reported, permanent loss of previous PharmaLot content would be a big blow to transparency in health care, and a big boost for the anechoic effect. The current owner of PharmaLot is UBM Canon.  This company, as noted by a comment on The Scientist's blog post, easily verified <a href="http://ubmcanon.com/medical/">here</a>, is heavily involved with marketing and promotion for the pharmaceutical industry.  I can only hope that they will not succumb to any temptation to suppress the important documentation of the industry that PharmaLot provided, even if that documentation might have not always made industry honchos happy.  ADDENDUM (17 January, 2014) - the <a href="http://www.outcomes-marketing.com/pharmalot">PharmaLot site </a>is now entirely unavailable, that is, going to it yields a 404 not found error.

PharmaLot Sent Down the Memory Hole

As noted in blog posts (The Scientist, the Pharma Marketing Blog, Shearlings got Plowed), and one solitary newspaper article (San Diego Union-Tribune), Ed Silverman's PharmaLot blog is no more.The mai…

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09 Jan 2014

NYU Faculty Vote No Confidence in their President

Faculty at large American universities, in which most of the country's medical schools and teaching hospitals are embedded, are becoming increasingly concerned about the leadership and governance of their organizations, and whether the universities are putting their academic (and clinical) missions ahead of other concerns, like making money and rewarding top executives. In January, 2013, we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/01/at-university-of-miami-faculty-without.html">discussed</a> a an informal, anonymous vote faculty at the University of Miami medical school expressing no confidence in their dean and his chief lieutenant. The NYU No Confidence Vote The faculty of a major component of another big US university have just openly voted no confidence in their president, and are raising questions about their board of trustees.  The setting was New York University.  Some background comes from a New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/nyregion/john-sexton-is-tested-by-nyu-faculty.html">article</a> this month: <blockquote class="tr_bq"> Embarking on an ambitious expansion at home, constructing a network of new campuses around the globe, wooing intellectual superstars and raising vast amounts of money, John Sexton of New York University<a class="meta-org" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about New York University."></a> is the very model of a modern university president — the leader of a large corporation, pushing for growth on every front.   <div itemprop="articleBody">To some within N.Y.U., Dr. Sexton is a hero who has transformed the university. The trustees have thanked him by elevating his salary to nearly $1.5 million from $773,000 and guaranteeing him retirement benefits of $800,000 a year. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">But to others, he is an autocrat who treats all but a few anointed professors as hired help, ignoring their concerns, informing them of policies after the fact and otherwise running roughshod over American academic tradition, in which faculty members are partners in charting a university’s course. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">'He has a very evangelical sense of purpose,' said Andrew Ross<a href="http://sca.as.nyu.edu/object/andrewross.html"></a>, a professor of social and cultural analysis, 'that does not extend beyond the concept that the university should be an entity of his own making.' </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">'I think,' he added, 'when other administrations see that they say, Well that’s what leadership should be. And when faculty see that they say, That is not what university leadership should be. It’s the style of a maverick C.E.O.'</div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">The debate over Dr. Sexton’s presidency will come to a head this week. The faculty of the university’s largest school, Arts and Science, has scheduled a five-day vote of no confidence. Given Dr. Sexton’s international stature, the vote may serve as the most important referendum yet on the direction of American higher education. </div></blockquote><div itemprop="articleBody"> President Sexton lost the no-confidence vote, as noted in another NY Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/education/no-confidence-vote-for-head-of-nyu.html">article</a> a week later: <blockquote class="tr_bq">The vote, 298 to 224 (with 47 abstaining), took place via electronic balloting from Monday through Friday. Full-time tenured and tenure-track professors were asked to respond to the statement: 'The faculty of Arts and Science has no confidence in John Sexton’s leadership.' Voter participation was 83 percent. </blockquote> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Top Executives Usurp Power from Faculty An <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/opinion/the-war-at-nyu.html">op-ed </a>in the NY Times by a leading dissenting faculty member further explained the issues.  He charged that the President ignored faculty concerns about an ambitious plan to expand the physical plant of the university:</div><div itemprop="articleBody"></div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div itemprop="articleBody">How did Dr. Sexton lose the confidence of so many faculty members? By ignoring us. Of course, many professors everywhere feel overlooked by today’s generation of jet-setting university presidents. But we have very specific complaints: above all, Dr. Sexton has consistently refused to address concerns about plans to expand N.Y.U. offices and dorms into the part of Greenwich Village south of Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, where many of us live. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">This expansion plan is known as N.Y.U. 2031, indicating the year in which all the building will be complete. The very name told us that we’d be living on a construction site for a couple of decades. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Not surprisingly, this did not go over very well with many faculty members. We were also concerned about where the money would come from to pay for this expansion, as no business plan for the project has been made public. </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Thirty-nine departments and schools passed resolutions last year against the 2031 plan. These resolutions were typically passed unanimously or nearly unanimously. And yet Dr. Sexton’s response was a deafening silence. </div></blockquote><div itemprop="articleBody">Academic Values, Particularly Academic Freedom and Free Speech Ignored </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Furthermore, the faculty were concerned about plans to expand the university overseas to nations not known for their vigorous support of academic freedom and free speech:</div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div itemprop="articleBody"> Many of us are also concerned with Dr. Sexton’s plans to expand N.Y.U. overseas, including branch campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, with inadequate faculty involvement or oversight. It is doubtful that faculty members would have chosen to build campuses in countries where academic freedom, and free speech generally, are so parlous. </div></blockquote><div itemprop="articleBody"> Executives Enriching Themselves at University Expense </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Finally, the faculty were concerned about top university executives immodestly enriching themselves from the coffers of a non-profit university:</div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div itemprop="articleBody">As the faculty vote approached, more trouble arose for Dr. Sexton in the form of news reports about lavish compensation for NY administrators.  The central but by no means sole figure in this scandal is Jacob J Lew, the Obama administration’s new Treasury secretary, who worked at N.Y.U. in the early 2000s for a salary that eventually reached $900,000, larger even than Dr. Sexton’s at the time. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Mr. Lew received loans to buy a nice home, which apparently were largely forgiven. He also received a severance of some $700,000 when he left for a well-paid position at Citigroup. Severance? For someone who leaves voluntarily? </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> Dr. Sexton himself is to receive a salary of more than $1.4 million this year, and a 'length of service' bonus of $2.5 million in 2015. (Full disclosure: the university gave me a set of mugs when I completed 25 years of teaching.) And he will receive $800,000 a year after he retires. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">Other top administrators make similarly extravagant salaries. Some experts believe there may even be something illegal in the way Dr. Sexton has rewarded them; N.Y.U.’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors has asked New York States’s attorney general to investigate. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">All of which raises a question for many N.Y.U. faculty members: Should administrators be able to enrich themselves like this at educational institutions? N.Y.U. is not a Wall Street firm, but a tax-exempt university that gets millions in taxpayer dollars, not least from student loans<a class="meta-classifier" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/student_loans/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about student loans."></a>. In fact, our students have the highest total debt load of any university in the country. Rather than expanding, or paying huge salaries to top administrators, why doesn’t N.Y.U. do more to help its alumni pay off their debts? </div></blockquote><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div>Forsaking the Academic Mission An <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/18/new-york-university-vote-no-confidence-raises-debate-about-ambitions-and-governance">article</a> in Inside Higher Education underlined how the dispute is really about the mission of the university in this brave new corporate era: <blockquote class="tr_bq">As Rebecca Karl, an associate professor of East Asian studies and history <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/16/summers3_16">recently told Inside Higher Ed</a>, 'We’ve become very critical of the whole idea of ‘expand or die,’ which of course is a corporate maxim, but we don’t understand why it needs to become our maxim.'</blockquote> Also, <blockquote class="tr_bq"> Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media, culture and communication in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, who has been an outspoken critic of the Greenwich Village plan [said]. 'The fact is we see NYU as a school, we see our mission as educational. Sexton and the trustees who support him view NYU as a bundle of assets whole value they will apparently do anything to maximize on paper. We believe that this approach is destroying this university.'</blockquote>By the way, maybe in retrospect the trustees' role should not be so surprising.  Back in 2011 we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/12/they-think-we-are-imbeciles-and-they.html">posted</a> about a group of extremely rich corporate and finance leaders who attacked critics of their growing power as "imbeciles," among other terms.  Several of the individuals featured in the news article which inspired this post were trustees of New York University.  These included   Kenneth Langone and John Paulson.  A quick look at the<a href="http://www.nyu.edu/about/leadership-university-administration/board-of-trustees.html"> list of current trustees</a> shows that it includes  many top leaders of finance firms, including firms whose actions were alleged to have helped cause the great recession/ global financial collapse or have been subsequently accused of other financial shenanigans, e.g., Steven S Miller, a Vice President of JP Morgan Chase, and Maurice Greenberg (a life trustee), former leader of AIG, E John Rosenwald Jr (a life trustee), Vice Chairman Emeritus of JP Morgan Chase, and William R Salomon (a life trustee), honorary chairman of Citigroup. Summary In summary, the issues that inspired the no-confidence vote against the President of New York University appeared to be allegations that university: -  administration usurped power, particularly from the faculty -  administration used this power to put corporate priorities, like expansion for its own sake, and increasing short-term revenue ahead of the academic mission -  administration took advantage of their power to enrich themselves -  trustees, who are supposed to exert stewardship that ensures the university upholds its mission, instead aided and abetted all this All of these should be very familiar issues to <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a> readers.  We have discussed the rise of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/generic%20managers">generic managers</a> of health care organizations, trained supposedly in general management skills, but not in health care, and indifferent at best to the values of health care professionals.  At times their power has gotten so great as to constitute a <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/managers%27%20coup%20d%27etat">manager's coup d'etat</a>.   We have discussed how managers of health care organizations often put short-term revenue ahead of all other concerns, sometimes called <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/financialization">financialization</a>.  In doing so, they may end up perpetrating <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/mission-hostile%20management">mission hostile- management</a>.  We have discussed how managers are able to command often outrageous levels of  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">executive compensation</a>.   <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/boards%20of%20trustees">Boards of trustees</a>, who are supposed to exert stewardship over the organization, and see that its leadership upholds its values, often come from management backgrounds themselves, and are at best clueless about, if not hostile to the mission.  It is time for university faculty to defend their institutions' mission.  Students, alumni, and patients at academic medical centers, medical school clinics, and of academic health professionals ought to be equally fervent in support of the academic and academic health care missions.  Academic medicine needs to be lead and stewarded by people who understand that mission, value it, uphold it, and are accountable for that.  These leaders and stewards should eschew management fads, cronyism, and excess personal enrichment. Maybe the vote of no confidence at NYU is a small step on the path back to the academic and academic medical missions.  But do not expect those who are enriching themselves in the current system to go quietly. ADDENDUM - see also <a href="http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=39339">this post</a> by Prof Margaret Soltan on the University Diary blog.

NYU Faculty Vote No Confidence in their President

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21 Mar 2013

At University of Miami, Faculty Without Confidence in their Hired Managers Afraid to Identify Themselves

The University of Miami has provided some vivid examples of the contrast between the power and privileges of the leaders of large health care organizations and the subservient role of faculty and staff.  Background Back in 2006, we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/02/tale-of-three-ironies-university-of.html">noted</a> that while the University of Miami was paying its janitorial support staff less than seven dollars an hour, and supplying them with no health insurance, its President, Donna Shalala, was living in a 9000 square foot official mansion, with staff hired to make her bed.  While Ms Shalala did not seem very perturbed about the living conditions of the lowliest University staffers, as a member of the board of directors of UnitedHealth, she approved the munificent compensation given to its then CEO, Dr William McGuire (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/03/questionable-timing-of-unitedhealth_20.html">here</a>), who was a billionaire until he was forced to give up  some of the backdated stock options she had approved (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/final-settlement-of-unitedhealth.html">here</a>).  More recently, we discussed how Ms Shalala's "visionary" leadership included presiding over the hiring of Dr Charles Nemeroff, who had previously been forced to resign as chairman of psychiatry at Emory University for various unethical activities (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/06/embedded-networks-of-influence-in.html">here</a>).  Last year, while awaiting the construction of a new presidential mansion, Ms Shalala presided over layoffs of hundreds of faculty and staff, which may have been necessitated by bad spending decisions made by her or those who reported to her (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/06/university-of-miami-lays-off-800-cuts.html">here</a>).  The Faculty Protest All these shenanigans apparently finally succeeded in upsetting the faculty, as described in a <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html">new article</a> in the Miami Herald.  The article's headline was about the resignation of the University of Miami Miller Medical School's second highest ranking executive in response to faculty anger: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Amid roiling faculty anger over drastic budget cuts, the University of Miami announced that the No. 2 executive at the Miller School of Medicine, Jack Lord, is 'stepping down.' </blockquote> Dr Lord was apparently taking the fall for the previous mass layoffs, some affecting faculty in 2012: <blockquote class="tr_bq">[Medical School Dean Pascal]  Goldschmidt defended his administration’s performance: 'Last year we had many challenging issues to fix, as do many medical schools in the U.S. Thanks to Jack Lord’s leadership and hard work by everyone at the Miller School, we have met those challenges and turned things around financially.'  The announcement comes after a tumultuous year in which the medical school suffered a severe financial crisis and its leaders responded with a major overhaul that included the layoffs last spring of over 900 full-time and part-time employees — moves that angered many professors. In a letter to faculty sent on Wednesday, Goldschmidt insisted the problems have been fixed. Goldschmidt credited Lord for helping improve the medical school’s finances, which showed a surplus of about $9 million for the first six months of this fiscal year — compared to a $24 million loss for the first six months of the previous fiscal year. Lord, a physician who had been an executive at Humana, became chief operating officer last March, as the restructuring plans started. </blockquote> However, the faculty's anger was not just directed at Dr Lord, who as noted above seemed to have been hired to take responsibility for the layoffs: <blockquote class="tr_bq">The change, announced by Dean Pascal Goldschmidt, comes as a petition circulates among tenured medical school faculty expressing no confidence in both Goldschmidt and Lord.</blockquote>In particular, <blockquote class="tr_bq">Meanwhile, several sources sent The Herald a copy of a petition being circulated among school faculty members who 'wish to express, in the strongest possible terms, the concern we feel for the future for our school of medicine.' The petition blamed 'the failed leadership of Pascal Goldschmidt and Jack Lord. ... We want to make clear that the faculty has lost confidence in the ability of these men to lead the school.'</blockquote> Furthermore, <blockquote class="tr_bq"> Many faculty members, who had spent decades at the medical school without seeing mass layoffs, were angry that the cuts were made without consulting them. A report by a faculty senate committee said medical school professors described the layoffs as 'unprofessional,' 'graceless' and 'heartless.' </blockquote> Yet there is no hint that Dr Goldschmidt, or President Shalala to whom he reports are yet affected by this protest.   Tenured Faculty Scared into Anonymity In fact, while the faculty are upset, they are also afraid. <blockquote class="tr_bq">The report contended that the internal turmoil had prompted some faculty members to consider leaving and that 'fear is widespread.' It also cited instances of employees suffering retribution for criticizing the administration. </blockquote>There is so much fear that the faculty constructed an elaborate mechanism to register protest while remaining individually anonymous. <blockquote class="tr_bq"> A half-dozen people closely connected to the medical school who requested anonymity told The Herald that they’ve heard that between 400 and 600 of the school’s 1,200 faculty have added their names to individual copies of the petition. The petitions are addressed to the chair of the faculty senate, Richard L. Williamson, a law professor. Williamson said last week he would not comment on how many had signed the petition because it was 'an internal matter' and may never become public. He said the number of those who know how many have signed is 'extremely small and none of them will talk.' Three sources told the Herald that faculty are sending individually signed copies of the petition to the senate chair with the understanding that Williamson would not reveal their names to UM administrators. </blockquote> Summary <div style="color: black; font: 10pt sans-serif; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-transform: none; width: 1px;"> Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198_p2/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html#storylink=cpy</div><div style="color: black; font: 10pt sans-serif; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-transform: none; width: 1px;"> Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html#storylink=cpy</div><div style="color: black; font: 10pt sans-serif; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-transform: none; width: 1px;"> Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html#storylink=cpy</div><div style="color: black; font: 10pt sans-serif; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-transform: none; width: 1px;"> Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html#storylink=cpy</div>  So, up to half of the University of Miami's medical faculty may be so upset with the current administration, apparently in part due to faculty and staff layoffs after questionable decisions by administrators some of whom may have lived large at university expense, that they essentially voted no confidence.  Yet the faculty are afraid to put their own names on their protest. So this is not just a story about allegedly incompetent university executives, and about the contrast between the rewards such executives get and the results of their dubious management.  It is also a story about how the executives' power now threatens a bed-rock value of academia, the ability of faculty (and by extension, staff and students), to speak freely, even if that speech offends the university's management.  In this case, while apparently hundreds of faculty condemned the administration for autocratic, incompetent, self-serving actions, they all feared what that same administration could do to them if their identities were known. In the last few years there has been a lot of prattle about the "flat organization," and there have probably been at least a few small high technology start ups that really were run on a collegial basis.  However, as we have shown again and again, throughout the corporate world, extending to health care corporations, and then to non-profit health care organizations, top management insiders have assumed more power and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">paid themselves better and better </a>at the expense of all others (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/compensation-madness-insiders-hijacking.html">here</a>).  Even now in universities, which used to be examples of collegiality, and were run in somewhat democratically  by their faculties, faculty are obviously afraid to challenge the hired managers.  Clearly, universities in which faculty cannot disagree with management are not going to be able to exercise the free enquiry that is core to their academic role.  In a health care context, why should anyone trust medical schools or academic medical centers run as tin-pot dictatorships by some hired executives?  Clearly, real health care reform would restore free speech and free enquiry to academic medicine. Hat tip to Prof Margaret Soltan <a href="http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=38728">on University Diaries</a>. <div style="color: black; font: 10pt sans-serif; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-transform: none; width: 1px;"> Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html#storylink=cpy</div><div style="color: black; font: 10pt sans-serif; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-transform: none; width: 1px;"> Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/03/3166198/um-medical-school-names-new-coo.html#storylink=cpy</div>

At University of Miami, Faculty Without Confidence in their Hired Managers Afraid to Identify Themselves

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09 Jan 2013

Health Care Academics' Unrest and Bad Health Care Leadership?

Last month we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/08/will-another-study-on-physician-burnout.html">discussed</a> a recent, large scale study of physician burnout, and wondered whether it would finally inspire some discourse about why physicians are really so upset.  In particular, we hypothesized,  based on some real, if limited data, that physician angst, dissatisfaction, burnout, etc may mainly be a response to the problems with leadership and governance of health care organization we post about on <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal.</a> After that post, one of our scouts found a very interesting and relevant article from earlier this year which got little attention at the time, but deserves more.  [Pololi LH, Krupat E, Civian JT, Ash AS, Brennan RT. Why are a quarter of faculty considering leaving academic medicine? A study of their perceptions of institutional culture and intentions to leave at 26 representative U.S. medical schools. Acad Med. 2012; 87: 859-69. Link <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22622213">here</a>.] Study Design This was a cross-sectional survey of faculty at 26 medical schools in the US, selected to be similar to the general population of medical schools in the country.  At each school, 150 faculty were randomly chosen stratified by sex and age, and then the sample was enriched to include additional minority faculty and women surgeons, for a total of 4578. The faculty were sent a multi item survey to assess their perception of the organizational culture of their institutions, and asked about their intentions to continue in or leave their current positions and academic medicine.  Responses to each survey item were allowed to be from 1 = strongly disagree, to 5 = strongly agree.  The items on the survey were combined into various scales.  A number of items on the survey seemed to be related to issues we frequently discuss on Health Care Renewal.  These items ended up in three different scales, entitled Relatedness/Inclusion, Values Alignment, and Ethical/Moral Distress.  The survey items are listed below, grouped by issue, with the scales into which they were combined noted. Issue: <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/mission-hostile%20management">Mission-Hostile Leadership</a> Administration only interested in me for revenue   (Reverse coded) (Values Alignment) Institution committed to serving the public (VA) Institution's actions well-aligned with stated values and mission (VA) Institution puts own needs ahead of educational/clinical missions (RC) (VA) My values well-aligned with school's (VA) Institution awards excellence in clinical care (VA) Institution does not value teaching (RC) (VA) Have to compromise values to work here (Ethical/Moral Distress) Issue: <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/deception">Deceptive</a>, Unethical Leadership Felt pressure to behave unethically (Ethical/Moral Distress) Need to be deceitful in order to succeed (EMD) Others have taken credit for my work (EMD) Issue: Generation of the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">Anechoic Effect</a> by  Suppression of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/free%20speech">Free Speech</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/academic%20freedom">Academic Freedom</a>, Dissent, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/whistle-blowers">Whistle-Blowing,</a> Feel ignored/ invisible (RC) (Relatedness/Inclusion) Hide what I think and feel (RC) (R/I) Reluctant to express opinion/ fear negative consequences (RC) (R/I) So in summary, the survey contained quite a few questions about mission-hostile management, comprising nearly all of the Values Alignment scale, some questions about deceptive or unethical leadership, all in the Ethical/Moral Distress scale, and some about generation of the anechoic effect by suppression of free speech, academic freedom, dissent, and whistle-blowing, all in the Relatedness/Inclusion scale. Results The response rate was 52% (N=2381.) Unfortunately, the article did not include the distributions of the responses to individual survey items, and only included the mean and standard error of the scale scores.  The values for the scales of most interest were: Relatedness/Inclusion  3.56 SE= 0.022 Values Alignment  3.25 SE=0.028 Ethical/Moral Distress 2.36 SE=0.022 Note that the article did not address the degree individual items, especially those listed above, contributed to variation in the scale scores. A small majority of faculty indicated their intentions to stay at their institutions (57%).  Of the remainder, 14% were considering leaving their school due to dissatisfaction, and another 21% were considering leaving academic medicine due to dissatisfaction.  The remainder were considering leaving due to personal/ family reasons or to retire. The authors did complex multinomial logit modeling to assess the relationships among the various scales, demographic factors, and intention to leave.  Most relevant to us, Relatedness/Inclusion was significantly related to intention to leave the institution due to dissatisfaction (Coefficient -0.69, p lt 0.001, OR =0.50), as was Values Alignment (-0.39, p=0.04, OR=0.68), but not Ethical/ Moral Distress.  Furthermore, Relatedness/Inclusion was related to intention to leave academic medicine due to dissatisfaction (-0.48, p lt 0.001, 0.62), as was Ethical/Moral Distress (0.60, p lt 0.001, OR =1.82). The article did not address whether individual survey items, including those of most interest listed above, were related to intention to leave.  The article also did not address whether responses to the survey or intention to leave varied across faculty characteristics, medical school characteristics, or individual medical schools.  Summary and Comments This very large survey of faculty from multiple US medical schools showed that more than one-third were considering leaving their institutions or academic medicine due to dissatisfaction, indicating a striking prevalence of faculty distress.  Their responses to questions about perceived organizational cultural and leadership problems, including those possibly related to leadership's perceived hostility to the mission, leadership's perceived dishonesty or unethical behavior, and leadership's suppression of dissent, free speech, academic freedom, and whistle-blowing were related to their intentions to leave due to dissatisfaction. These results suggest the hypothesis that much of faculty angst may be due to the sorts of problems with leadership and hence organizational culture that we discuss on Health Care Renewal.  Since this was a cross-sectional survey, it certainly does not offer scientific proof of this hypothesis.  Note that there is other evidence from numerous cases discussed in Health Care Renewal, qualitative studies and our much smaller study published only in abstract form that also supports this hypothesis (look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/08/will-another-study-on-physician-burnout.html">here</a>).  One part of the author's discussion of their findings was particularly relevant: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Our findings are congruent with metaanalyses of 25 years of organizational justice research outside medicine. These studies suggest that employee perceptions of organizational justice and an ethical climate are related to increased job satisfaction, trust in leadership, enhanced performance, commitment to one’s employer, and reduced turnover.  The scale of ethical/moral distress (see Table 1) reflects reactions to the prevailing norms and possible erosion of professionalism and increased organizational self-interest. There is a growing belief that organizations influence and are responsible for the ethical or unethical behaviors of their employees.To our knowledge, faculty perceptions of 'moral atmosphere' and 'just community' embedded in our survey have not been previously investigated in academic medicine, even though the ethical concepts of professionalism and justice can be used to guide the pursuit of excellence in the missions of medical schools. Several scholars have called for academic medicine to attend to its social justice and moral mission. Faculty perceptions of organizational justice are pivotal to the critical issue of professionalism in medicine. The ethical/moral distress scale in the survey reported here included items such as 'the culture of my institution discourages altruism' and 'I find working here to be dehumanizing.' (See Table 1 for other items in this scale.) In that ethical/moral distress was more strongly related to intent to leave academic medicine entirely than intent to leave one’s own institution, these negative feelings among faculty must be particularly disheartening to them and may color major career decisions.</blockquote>I believe that the study by Pololi et al adds to the evidence that physician distress is a symptom of a dysfunctional system in which major health care organizations have been taken over by leaders more devoted to self-interest and short-term revenue than the values prized by health care professionals and academics.  This applies obviously to academic medical institutions, but also to other organizations that might have been expected to defend such professional and academic values, such as professional associations, accrediting organizations, and health care foundations.  As we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/08/will-another-study-on-physician-burnout.html">said before</a>, if physicians really want to address what is making them burned out and dissatisfied, they will have to regain control of their own societies, organizations, and academic institutions, and ensure that these organizations put core values, not revenue generation and providing  cushy compensation to their executives, first.

Health Care Academics' Unrest and Bad Health Care Leadership?

Last month we discussed a recent, large scale study of physician burnout, and wondered whether it would finally inspire some discourse about why physicians are really so upset. In particular, we hypo…

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03 Oct 2012

Using a "Professionalism" Initiative as a Speech Code to Punish Students' Criticisms of Administrative Authority?

The original impetus to set up <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a> was increasing evidence of external threats to physicians' professional values.  So it seemed to me that renewed interest in addressing professionalism in academic medicine might lead to more attention to these threats, and perhaps even real challenges to them.  Instead, most academic professionalism initiatives seem to have steered away from this contentious area.  Worse, at times the academic medical concept of professionalism has been turned on its head.  A Dispute Among Students at University of California - Davis A recent <a href="http://thefire.org/article/14251.html">post</a> in the Torch blog from our friends at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) provided a graphic example.  The case involved an apparently trivial dispute among two medical students: <blockquote>[University of California - Davis medical student Curtis] Allumbaugh's ordeal began after he emailed the 'med2014' mailing list (or 'listserv') on July 19, 2010, regarding a party he was organizing. The listserv was widely used for a variety of non-academic purposes. Allumbaugh's email provided the address of the party, detailed the available space, and listed the variety of alcohol that would be available at the party. The email noted that others had signed up to bring snacks and mentioned that some things were still lacking for the party, such as music, fruit juice, and beer. Prior to Allumbaugh's message, others had sent similar emails using the same listserv about their own parties, such as a 'kegger' one student called 'CAMP MED.' On July 20, 2010, a second-year student emailed Allumbaugh, notifying him that she had 'been placed on the class of 2014's listserve' and had monitored the class email. She criticized Allumbaugh's email for placing 'a heavy emphasis on alcohol.' In response, Allumbaugh emailed her directly on July 21, calling her a 'busy body' and telling her, 'You should really just mind your own business and let our class be.'</blockquote> Note that the second-year student's email (available <a href="http://thefire.org/article/14238.html">here</a>) carried a suggestion that she had some sort of authority to monitor the extra-curricular actions of first year students as manifested on the list server, and perhaps even punish them for perceived misconduct: <blockquote>I can tell you that as MS2s, we work and play hard, but we do it responsibly and always in the forefront of our minds we remember what image we are portraying in public and through the messages we send. I'd hate to see any one of you 2014ers get into any trouble right before you start an amazing period of your life.</blockquote> Note that the exchange between the two students did not occur in an academic or clinical setting, and it was never clear why the second year student was "placed on" the list server, or why she should have any authority over the Allumbaugh. . The School Administration Invokes "Professionalism" The medical school saw fit to cast Allumbaugh's actions as violations of the school's standards of professionalism: <blockquote>As a result of this email exchange, Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Graduate Medical Education James Nuovo sent Allumbaugh a letter on September 14, 2010, citing him for 'failing to demonstrate the highest standards of civility and decency to all' and 'failing to demonstrate courtesy, sensitivity and respect.' On November 3, 2010, Allumbaugh received a letter from the SOM Committee on Student Progress, punishing him with academic probation for the rest of his time in medical school and requiring him to undergo a psychological assessment to determine whether he was 'fit' to continue in medical school. Finally, on November 19, 2010, SOM changed its rules to force all medical students to abide by the Principles of Community or else face academic probation. </blockquote> The result was a series of interventions by FIRE: <blockquote>In response, FIRE wrote UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi on August 3, 2011, noting that enforcing professional standards in truly professional settings differs greatly from enforcing workplace standards in other settings such as private conversations. FIRE also noted that it is blatantly unconstitutional to police student speech under the UC Davis Principles of Community because such a 'civility' policy violates the First Amendment right to freedom of speech when it is given disciplinary force. </blockquote> When that letter had no effect, it took threats of litigation for the medical school to suspend Allumbaugh's punishment more than one year after it began: <blockquote>SOM Associate Dean of Curriculum and Competency Development Mark Servis replied to FIRE on August 10, 2011, defending the policy. FIRE responded on November 23, 2011, reminding Katehi that 'violating well-established law regarding the First Amendment rights of students at public universities leaves you at risk of losing qualified immunity, thereby opening you and other administrators to personal liability' for the deprivation of students' First Amendment rights. Servis again defended the policy in a reply on December 5, 2011. Finally, on February 16, 2012, the Committee on Student Progress notified Allumbaugh that his probation had been dropped, but persisted in requiring him to adhere to the Principles of Community. </blockquote>Note that Associate Dean <a href="http://thefire.org/public/pdfs/6d24a77115edf335c1cb2b1d1a737622.pdf?direct">Servis' letter</a> stated that the email sent to Allumbaugh by the second year student was "a genuine suggestion of concern and an offer of albeit unsolicited friendly advice."  Thus, Servis seemed unaware that it could have been interpreted as an assertion of authority and a threat of punishment ("I'd hate to see any one of you 2014ers get into any trouble.") Dean Servis also defended the use of probation to punish a student for failing to "work effectively with classmates." Yet the dispute that had nothing to do with (academic or clinical) work, and only involved a single student from another class.  Why that student was not equally to blame was not clear, unless it was because she had been granted special authority by the administration to monitor the actions of less senior students.  The implication appears to be that the punishment was in defense of a student who had been granted special authority by the administration, and hence was ultimately in defense of the administration's power.  Summary In this case, the medical school's professionalism policy seemed to be used by the administration primarily to control students' speech outside of the academic and clinical setting. Furthermore, the student's main offense seemed to be failure to kowtow sufficiently to another student who by implication had been given some sort of authority by the administration.  What the two students' dispute had to with professionalism is not  apparent. On one hand, this seems like a case in which a speech code was mainly used to defend administrators from criticism and challenge. On the other hand, this speech code was cloaked in the mantle of professionalism.  So this case seems to be an example of a professionalism initiative used as an excuse for the leadership to maintain its power. It is beyond ironic that while this was going on, the University of California - Davis, and its Chancellor Linda Katehi were becoming briefly infamous for another effort, a more violent one, by the administration to prevent criticism and challenge. Chancellor Katehi had authorized university police to "clear" student demonstrators from an "occupation" of the campus which was protesting, among other things, rising tuition and economic inequality, and in doing so, the police used pepper spray on unarmed students (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/uc-davis-pepper-spray-case-as.html">this post</a>.) There are a lot bigger threats to physicians' and other health care professionals' professionalism than medical students' sarcasm or even rudeness in disputes about alcohol served at off-hours parties. Since many of these threats also generate personal benefits to academic leadership, it may not be much of a surprise that they have received little attention.  (See the list of threats appended below.  Note that we have discussed two of these threats in the specific context of the University of California - Davis.  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/university-leaders-goal-taking-new.html">Here</a> we noted that Chancellor Katehi seemed to be re-imagining her medical school as a biotechnology company.  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/john-wiley-and-sons-director-apologizes.html">Here</a> we noted that Chancellor Katehi was also on the board of a company with a medical education and communication company subsidiary.) However, while they remain unaddressed, I submit that using "professionalism" to cloak increased social control of students to prevent them from looking too closely at what academic administrators are doing will eventually backfire.  === ADDENDUM: List of Threats to Professionalism Instead, to really uphold professionalism, we need to defend it from its real threats, as listed in my <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/lancet-emphasizes-threats-to-academic.html">2010 post</a>: <ul><li>Abandonment of traditional prohibitions of the commercial practice of medicine - In the US, a Supreme Court decision was interpreted to mean that medical societies could no longer regulate the ethics of their members.  Until 1980, the US American Medical Association had  ruled that the practice of medicine should not be "commercialized, nor treated as a commodity in trade."  After then, it ceased trying to maintain this prohibition.  The result was increasing, now rampant commercialization.  See posts  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/12/relman-in-jama-on-threats-to-physicians.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-did-us-physicians-give-up-their.html">here</a>.</li><li>Making money takes precedence over education -  A recent survey showing that more than half the faculty at multiple US medical schools felt they were valued more for how much money they brought in than their teaching or patient care abilities (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/american-medical-schools-are-only-in-it.html">here</a>), confirming previous anecdotal reports (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/04/medical-schools-to-faculty-show-me.html">here</a>).  </li><li>The medical school re-imagined as a biotechnology company -  In 2000, a Vice President of the American Association of Medical Colleges(1) wrote that research universities must respond to "societal demands that they become engines of economic development…."  Many universities now defend lax conflict of interest policies with similar arguments.  For more details, go <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-you-gonna-call-how-should-young.html">here</a>.</li><li>Faculty become employees of industry - For numerous examples of this and other kinds of conflicts of interest, go <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest">here</a>.  A survey by Campbell et al suggested that approximately two-thirds of medical academics get significant payments from industry.(2)</li><li>Academics become "key opinion leaders" paid to market drugs and devices - Marketers regard "key opinion leaders" as salespeople who appear more credible because of their professional guise.  See anecdotal evidence <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/key%20opinion%20leaders">here</a>.  </li><li>Control of clinical research given to commercial sponsors - A study by Mello et al showed how universities' grant administrators are willing to sign contracts giving commercial sponsors control over key aspects of human research studies.(3)  See post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2005/05/troubling-study-of-contracts-between.html">here</a>. </li><li>Conflicts of interest allow manipulation and suppression of clinical research - Commercially sponsored research design, implementation, and dissemination are often <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/manipulating%20clinical%20research">manipulated</a> to favor the sponsor's interests.  When such manipulation fails to produce favorable results, the results may simply be <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/suppression%20of%20medical%20research">suppressed</a>.</li><li>Academics take credit for articles written by commercially paid ghost-writers - Such <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/ghost%20writing">ghost-writing</a> is often part of organized <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/stealth%20marketing">stealth marketing</a> campaigns.  </li><li>Whistle blowers are discouraged, or worse, and academic freedom is damaged.  Discussion of some examples of what may happen to whistle blowers is <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/whistle-blowers">here</a>.  The survey mentioned earlier (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/american-medical-schools-are-only-in-it.html">here</a>) showed that about one-third of faculty fear they may be punished for speaking  out.  </li><li>Leadership of academic medical centers by businesspeople - <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/ill-informed%20management">Ill-informed management</a> may result from leaders who have no background or training in actual health care.  </li><li>Leaders of teaching hospitals and universities become millionaires -  A recent example is <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-hospital-ceos-join-millionaires.html">here</a>, and more may be found <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">here</a>.  Leaders of academic medical centers and the parent universities of medical schools often make more than $1 million a year in the US.  When such amounts are in play, executives may focus more on short-term measures that lead to even more pay than on upholding the mission.  </li><li>Medical school leaders become stewards (as members of boards of directors) of for-profit health care corporations - A recent example is <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/duke-divinity-students-protest-pay-of.html">here</a>, and a summary of how we discovered this phenomenon in 2006 is <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/03/new-species-of-conflict-of-interest-in.html">here</a>.   The conflict of interest is severe because directors of for-profit corporations are supposed to have unyielding loyalty to the interests of the corporation and its stockholders, although they are frequently accused of acting mainly as cronies of the top hired executives (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-york-times-reports-university.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/01/one-small-step-towards-reducing.html">here</a>).</li><li>Leaders of failed finance firms become stewards of academic medicine - We have found numerous examples, recently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/04/failed-leaders-of-citigroup-as-leaders.html">here</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/04/wamu-worry-more-overlaps-between.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/03/members-of-board-of-now-bankrupt-lehman.html">here</a>, of top executives and/or board members of the finance firms who helped bring on the global financial collapse also being trustees of medical schools, academic medical centers, or their parent universities.  Such "stewards" may bring to the academic environment the "greed is good" culture now pervasive in finance.  </li></ul>References 1. Korn D. Conflicts of interest in biomedical research. JAMA 2000; 284: 2234-2237. Link <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/284/17/2234">here</a>. 2. Campbell EG, Gruen RL, Mountford J et al. A national survey of physician–industry relationships. N Engl J Med 2007; 356:1742-1750. Llink <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa064508">here</a>. 3. Mello MM, Clarridge BR, Studdert DM. Academic medical centers' standards for clinical-trial agreements with industry. N Engl J Med 2005; 352: 21.  Link <a href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/21/2202">here</a>.

Using a "Professionalism" Initiative as a Speech Code to Punish Students' Criticisms of Administrative Authority?

The original impetus to set up Health Care Renewal was increasing evidence of external threats to physicians' professional values. So it seemed to me that renewed interest in addressing professionali…

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07 Mar 2012

SELF INFLICTED DAMAGE

SELF INFLICTED DAMAGE The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the news again for bad public relations: worse than bad, actually – appalling. Locked in a bunker mentality, they have moved to stifle advance criticism of their flagship initiative, DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition), which is a work in progress. Lawyers for the APA have threatened the owner of a UK blog that served as a discussion forum for issues affected by DSM-5 and other, international psychiatric classifications. The blog, named <a href="http://dsm5watch.wordpress.com/">dsm5watch</a> was considered authoritative and accurate. If you go to this site now you will find that it has been deleted. As <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201201/is-dsm-5-public-trust-or-apa-cash-cow">recounted</a> this week by Allen Frances, MD, the editor of the last published DSM edition, the blog’s owner, Suzy Chapman, told him, ”On December 22, I was stunned to receive two emails from the Licensing and Permissions department of American Psychiatric Publishing, claiming that the domain name my site operates under was infringing upon the DSM 5 trademark in violation of United States Trademark Law and that my unauthorized actions may subject me to contributory infringement liability including increased damages for willful infringement. I was told to cease and desist immediately all use of the DSM 5 mark and to provide documentation within ten days confirming I had done so." "Given my limited resources compared with APA's deep pockets, I had no choice but to comply and was forced to change my site's domain name to <a href="http://dxrevisionwatch.wordpress.com/">dxrevisionwatch</a>. Hits to the new site have plummeted dramatically and it will take months for traffic to recover - just at the time when crucial DSM 5 decisions are being made." In effect, the APA, acting not through its medical or scientific officers but through its wholly owned publishing house, has attempted a SLAPP maneuver. SLAPP is the acronym for strategic lawsuit against public participation. What kind of leadership does this signal in a major professional organization? The normal remit of professional medical societies is stewardship of professional values and ethics. That is why these societies are accorded deference and respect on matters of clinical guidelines, health policy and public education. Even when, like the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, they <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/04/institute-of-medicine-report-on.html">tolerate compromised members</a>, they can generally hope to retain the public trust. One reason for this assurance is that they are expected as a matter of professional duty to avoid conflicts of interest – personal and financial. The APA, however, has an enormous conflict in this case: it counts on millions of dollars in revenue from sales of the DSM volumes and it is under siege currently for perceived scientific and clinical weaknesses of the DSM-5 that is due to be released next year. Professional criticism is running so high that over 10,000 interested parties have signed a petition for the APA to reconsider planned changes. There is even talk of abandoning DSM-5 in favor of the ICD system (International Classification of Diseases), which is a WHO initiative. The APA doesn’t own psychiatric classification and diagnostic criteria. When the field allows the APA to take the initiative for revisions of the DSM, it is with the understanding that the work will be conducted in the public interest rather than in the commercial interest of the APA itself, which is said to derive over $5 million annually in profits from DSM sales. The public interest and the public trust are served by transparency and open discussion, not by contrived SLAPP threats. It is bad enough that the APA resorts to this legal artifice to stifle public discussion. When they do it through their lawyers and business entities rather than through their medical and scientific officers, they sink to a lower level yet. The parallels with corporate sleaze that we have discussed so often on this blog are obvious. For shame.

SELF INFLICTED DAMAGE

SELF INFLICTED DAMAGE The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the news again for bad public relations: worse than bad, actually – appalling. Locked in a bunker mentality, they have moved to s…

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04 Jan 2012

The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Case as Illustrative of Problems with the Leadership of Health Care

The aggressive actions by University of California-Davis police against unarmed, peaceful student protesters turn out to be the latest illustration of the problems with leadership and governance we discuss on <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a>.  The University of California - Davis Pepper Spray Incident To summarize the current episode, I start with quotes about its background <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/19/us-protests-davis-pepperspray-idUSTRE7AI0ZA20111119">from Reuters</a>, <blockquote>Student protesters at Davis had set up an encampment in the university's quad area earlier this month as part of the nationwide Occupy movement against economic inequality and excesses of the financial system. Their demonstrations, which had been endorsed by a faculty association, included protests against tuition increases and what they viewed as police brutality on University of California campuses in response to recent protests. The students had set up roughly 25 tents in a quad area, but they had been asked not to stay overnight and were told they would not be able to stay during the weekend, due to a lack of university resources, [university Chancellor Linda] Katehi said. Some protesters took their tents down voluntarily while others stayed.</blockquote> Then, <blockquote>The pepper spray incident appeared to take place on Friday afternoon, when campus police moved in to forcibly evict the protesters.</blockquote> Then, as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/outcry-over-chilling-campus-pepper-spray-use-6265203.html">per the (London, UK) Independent</a>, <blockquote>A police officer saunters up to a group of young protestors who are sat in a line on the ground, with their arms linked. Then he removes a canister of pepper spray from his belt, with a flourish, before casually proceeding to unload its contents into their faces. The demonstrators remain silent and motionless, with their heads bowed. So the policeman carries on, methodically covering them, from point blank range. By the time he’s finished, their heads and faces are covered in a thick layer of the toxic red liquid.</blockquote> The actual video is below: <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WmJmmnMkuEM" width="560"></iframe> The UC-Davis Chancellor's Defense of the Police Actions The Independent's coverage emphasized that initially the leadership of the campus police defended the use of pepper spray on apparently unarmed, peaceful students: <blockquote>Annette Spicuzza, the head of the UC Davis Campus Police, who were responsible for Friday’s incident .... told reporters that her officers had been 'forced' to use the pepper spray, after demonstrators surrounded them. Lt Pike gave his victims sufficient warning of the impending attack, she added, and emptied the canister with a sweeping motion, in keeping with official procedures. 'When you are encircled by 200 individuals, I don’t know if I want to say ‘afraid,’ but I think they were quite concerned about their safety,' she said, regarding the circumstances her officers faced. 'There was no way out of that circle... It's a very volatile situation.'</blockquote> That coverage also made clear that the directive to clear the demonstrators came from the top: <blockquote>Linda Katehi, the Chancellor of UC Davis ... had asked the police to clear demonstrators from her campus, a couple of hours north of San Francisco. In the aftermath of the incident, she had initially joined Spicuzza in defending the force's methods, saying that they had 'no option' but to adopt a hard line.</blockquote> Ms Katehi later backed off, but only after her first response <blockquote>sparked immediate outrage, and within hours, the university’s Faculty Association, representing Ms Katehi’s employees, issued a statement called for her resignation, saying that her authorisation of 'excessive' force had amounted to a 'gross failure of leadership.' Nathan Brown, an assistant English professor who witnessed the incident, wrote in an open letter: 'Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood... You are responsible.'</blockquote> Other comments likened the police actions to something "coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria," [<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/pepper-spray-brutality-at-uc-davis/248764/">James Fallows in the Atlantic</a>] called them indicative of "a police state in its pure form," [<a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/11/20/the_roots_of_the_uc_davis_pepper_spraying/">Glenn Greenwald in Salon</a>], or otherwise denounced them as "outrageous" or "awful." (Clark McPhail, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois, and Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, respectively, <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/21/experts-and-activists-question-use-pepper-spray-davis">via Inside Higher Ed</a>.) This aggressive, violent response to peaceful protest seems to be the latest example of the arrogance of some current leaders of our important organizations. Our Previous Discussion of the Chancellor in Health Care Renewal This case appears directly related to the problems in leadership and governance we discuss on <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal </a>Ms Katehi has the distinction of having been already written up twice on Health Care Renewal for questions about her leadership. On her arrival at UC-Davis in 2009, she promised to "help UC Davis to become more aggressive in taking new biotechnology and agriculture products to market." This indicates at best ignorance of, at worst hostility to the fundamental university mission, which is hardly developing and particularly marketing products, but discovering and disseminating knowledge (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/university-leaders-goal-taking-new.html">this post</a>). At that time, I called this an example of "how the leaders of academic institutions seem to be forgetting or radically deconstructing their academic missions." In 2011, Ms Katehi defended the payment to the medical center CEO, whom she called a "great CEO,' of nearly a million dollars yearly in compensation. However, that CEO was part of a group of top university leaders demanding large increases in their pensions at a time when the university was under great financial distress. For that, some called them not great leaders, but greedy and "despicable." Thus, Ms Katehi seemed to stand up for top leaders' privilege and exceptionalism, including their entitlement to huge compensation whatever the circumstance, even in a time of financial travail (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-repeats-of-talking-points.html">this post</a>). I could not have predicted that Chancellor Katehi would preside over the pepper spraying unarmed students for peaceful, legitimate protest. However, it is not surprising that a leader who does not understand the fundamental academic mission and who supports executive privilege and exceptionalism would foster an authoritarian climate in which such an incident could happen. This example clearly illustrates the issues we have been discussing on Health Care Renewal for a long time. In particular, leaders who are more dedicated to their own and their fellow executives' privilege and exceptionalism than their organizations' missions are likely to end up promoting actions that threaten those  missions. The Moral of the Story Instead, as we have been preaching endlessly,... health care organizations need leaders that uphold the core values of health care, and focus on and are accountable for the mission, not on secondary responsibilities that conflict with these values and their mission, and not on self-enrichment. Leaders ought to be rewarded reasonably, but not lavishly, for doing what ultimately improves patient care, or when applicable, good education and good research. On the other hand, those who authorize, direct and implement bad behavior ought to suffer negative consequences sufficient to deter future bad behavior. If we do not fix the severe problems affecting the leadership and governance of health care, and do not increase accountability, integrity and transparency of health care leadership and governance, we will be as much to blame as the leaders when the system collapses. You heard it here first on <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal </a>. Keep your eye on Health Care Renewal for continued discussion of parallels between problems in health care and in the larger political economy.

The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Case as Illustrative of Problems with the Leadership of Health Care

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21 Nov 2011

Embedded Networks of Influence in Health Care: An Illustrative Case

At the 12th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), sponsored by Transparency International, one of the <a href="http://www.12iacc.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=45">plenary sessions</a> was devoted to the topic of "embedded networks of influence."  The session description included this description of the topic as: <blockquote>the major stumbling block in the fight against corruption, namely, the power of 'embedded networks' in advancing personal or group interests through state institutions. The extent of their power can create what is known as “state capture” meaning democratic governance failure. It will take a close look at the influential role of private sector, especially of the multinational private sector.</blockquote>A recent <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Fast-Growth-Strategy-Has-Its/127941">investigative report </a>in the Chronicle of Higher Education illustrated a striking case of how one key individual has affected health care through multiple connections to what can be regarded as embedded networks of influence, thus tying in to many of the topics we have discussed on <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/">Health Care Renewal</a>. The article focused on the University of Miami and its current President, Donna Shalala. Let me summarize the set of relevant topics in roughly chronological order and note how the article links them to President Shalala. Speech Codes and Restrictions on Free Speech within Academia As I wrote in my 2003 article, (Poses RM. A cautionary tale: the dysfunction of the American health care system.  Eur J Int Med 2003; 14: 123-130.  Link <a href="http://www.ejinme.com/article/S0953-6205%2803%2900029-3/abstract">here</a>), speech codes and other restrictions on free speech within academia created the framework for the suppression of clinical research that may offend those with vested interests: <blockquote>Failure of universities to champion the academic freedom of their clinical researchers may stem from their abandonment of their own academic core value of free enquiry. There is abundant evidence that universities may restrict expression and limit academic freedom. In The Shadow University, Kors and Silverglate charged that 'universities have become the enemy of a free society.' Universities have punished faculty and students who raised unpopular viewpoints.</blockquote> In the Chronicle, <blockquote>Ms. Shalala, ... was previously president of Hunter College of the City University of New York and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison....</blockquote> <a href="http://www.shadowuniv.com/">The Shadow University</a>, the pioneering work on challenges to individual rights by leaders at academic institutions, dealt with Ms Shalala's role as a leading early proponent of silencing speech that offended academic leaders. <blockquote>Wisconsin chose to enact a speech code. On March 29, 1990, the Wisconsin ACLU joined a suit against the university, announcing that the important moral goals of toleration and equal opportunity 'can be accomplished through means other than the creation of rules which infringe upon the fundamental freedom to express ideas.' The speech code was drafted with the help of UW-Madison Law School professors Richard Delgado, Gordon Baldwin, and Ted Finman.... On June 9, 1989, upon recommendation by Chancellor Shalala, it was adopted by the Board of Regents...."</blockquote>The speech code was soon declared unconstitutional by a federal court, which held: <blockquote>the policy was unconstitutional precisely because 'the UW rule regulates its speech upon its content.'</blockquote>Ms Shalala then: <blockquote>recommended a new code to the regents in the spring of 1992, which they adopted in March.</blockquote>However, <blockquote>Faced with another lawsuit, the regents reversed themselves</blockquote>For these and similar efforts, as <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/govt/admin/stories/shalala010893.htm">discussed</a> by Evans and Novak in 1993, Ms Shalala was dubbed "the Queen of PC" [political correctness]. Speech codes and other restrictions on free speech in the academic setting seem mainly to be used to target speech that administrators find offensive, including speech critical of management practices. This is echoed in the Chronicle story, which suggested how fearful University of Miami faculty now are of criticizing Ms Shalala: <blockquote>Others, including several current and former faculty members, outline their complaints in far more detail. But they do so anonymously, saying they don't want to tangle head-on with such a politically powerful president.</blockquote>Ms Shalala's prominence in academics, probably more due to rather that in spite of her hostility to free speech and free enquiry, may have enabled her to join another and even more powerful network of influence, this one at the center of the US political world.   The Rise of Commercial Health Insurance  In <a href="http://wendellpotter.com/deadlyspin/">Deadly Spin</a>, former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter documented how clever and unscrupulous use of public relations and marketing techniques enabled commercial health care insurance and managed care companies to increase dominance of US health care, while allowing health care costs to soar, and denying access to larger numbers of patients.  The Chronicle article briefly alluded to Ms Shalala's role in the rise of for-profit health insurance.  Despite being labelled "farthest to the left and most controversial of all President-elect Clinton's Cabinet appointments," again per Evans and Novak, Ms Shalala departed the University of Wisconsin in 1993 to become US Secretary of Health and Human Services. In that role, she presided over the administration's failed attempt at health care reform, as Potter wrote, <blockquote>When President Bill Clinton was forced to give up on comprehensive health care reform in 1994, the damage was far more extensive than anyone could have imagined - the administration's defeat emboldened health insurance companies to totally redefine the mission and methods of an industry that now strands nearly fifty million people without insurance. As I outlined..., insurers knew after the Clinton disaster that the coast was clear for them to abandon nonprofit practices, long-standing commitments to public service, and traditional insurance models and turn instead to satisfying Wall Street investors' desire to make money, by limiting spending on health care.</blockquote>Note that my only quibble with what Wendell Potter wrote is that it may be that the insurance companies' top executives, rather than their stockholders who benefited the most from these changes, as we will address below. Ms Shalala remained Secretary of HHS until 2001, but after the failure of the health care reform proposal in 1994, her department apparently did nothing to try to ameliorate the changes to health care that Potter described above. Bloated Executive Compensation Disproportionate to Any Measure of Organizational Performance We have frequently discussed how health care leaders now seem entitled to get huge amounts of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">compensation</a> disproportionate to their organizations' performance and their responsibility for it.  Despite Ms Shalala's reputation in the 1990s as an extreme leftist, upon leaving her role in the Clinton administration, she almost immediately embraced the for-profit corporate model of health insurance. In a notable example of what now is called the "revolving door" that went unnoticed at the time,  Ms Shalala went from would be regulator of commercial managed care to leader of commercial managed care.  As noted by the Chronicle: <blockquote>Debates over ethical boundaries are not new to those involved in the university's growth surge. Ms. Shalala was on the compensation committee of the board of the health insurer UnitedHealth Group when it was caught in one of the nation's largest-ever stock-options scandals. She also received low-cost loans in 2002 as part of a favors-for-politicians scandal at Countrywide Financial Corporation. Both Ms. Shalala and [University of Miami medical school dean] Dr. Goldschmidt have served on the boards of companies directly or indirectly affected by the university's business decisions. The university had $30-million in annual business with UnitedHealth Group when Ms. Shalala was on its board.</blockquote>Note that Ms Shalala served as Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 2001, (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Health_and_Human_Services">this list</a>), then joined the board of UnitedHealth Group within months (see <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2001/05/21/daily20.html">this article</a>.) We discussed in considerable detail the ethical failings of UnitedHealth Group while Ms Shalala had fiduciary responsibility as a board member for its conduct. A particularly striking failing was how the board of directors granted sufficient back-dated stock options to the company's former CEO to make him a billionaire on paper.  The resulting <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-entangled-web-unitedhealth-case.html">scandal</a> was followed by his <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/10/another-really-big-one-bites-dust-ceo.html">resignation</a>.  Later, Dr McGuire was forced to <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/12/some-payback-by-former-managed-care-ceo.html">give back</a> some the options.  The <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/final-settlement-of-unitedhealth.html">final settlement</a> of the fiasco cost UnitedHealth $895 million, and Dr McGuire $30 million and the cancellation of 3.6 million stock options.  As we most recently summarized <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/despite-scandal-former-unitedhealth-ceo.html">here</a>, former CEO William McGuire was one of the top 10 best compensated CEOs of the first decade of the 21st century, despite the company's multiple ethical failings.  Conflicts of Interest, Especially Involving Key Opinion Leaders who Promote Marketing Objectives Cloaked in Academic Respectability We have extensively discussed the web of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest">conflicts of interest</a> that now pervades health care. For academic health care leaders, the most intense kind of conflict of interest may be created by service on the board of directors of a for-profit health care corporation.  Note that corporate directors, as we have discussed previously, have a fiduciary duty to exhibit "unyielding loyalty" to the stockholders of the company and their interests  [Per Monks RAG, Minow N. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Governance-Robert-G-Monks/dp/1405116986">Corporate Governance</a>, 3rd edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. P.200.].  We first <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/03/new-species-of-conflict-of-interest-in.html">started to discuss</a> the intense conflicts of interest generated when leaders of academic medicine are also members of boards of directors of for-profit health care corporations in 2006.  The issue really made the big time in 2010 when the New York Times published <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/business/01prez.html">a front page article</a> in its Sunday Business section about whether university presidents who also were corporate directors were part of an "academic-industrial complex."  As we noted above, Ms Shalala's service on the board of UnitedHealth Group created such a conflict, and she apparently presided a similar board level conflict of interest affecting her medical school dean.  A particularly pernicious kind of conflict of interest may be created when a company selling health care goods or services pays an academic to become a "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/key%20opinion%20leaders">key opinion leader</a>."  Industry spokespeople and key opinion leaders themselves tout KOLs as clinical, educational, and/or scientific experts chosen for their expertise to advance medicine, science and public health.  There are documented instances (e.g., see posts <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/06/key-opinion-leaders-were-sales-people.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-best-and-brightest-drug-marketers.html">here</a>) in which defectors from marketing departments of commercial health care corporations described KOLs as salespeople who could be more influential hidden within their professional or academic cloaks.  Even some physicians paid to be speakers on behalf of pharmaceutical corporations have acknowledged their role as salespeople in fancy dress (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/11/of-drug-talks-deception-and-denial.html">here</a>).  There are cases of documents revealed by discovery in legal actions that show how companies planned organized stealth marketing efforts for drugs that included activities by KOLs (e.g., see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/09/lexapro-marketing-plan-was-meant-to.html">here</a> about marketing of Lexapro, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/08/stealth-marketing-of-neurontin.html">here</a> about Neurontin). The Chronicle recounted how Ms Shalala also was linked to one of the better known examples of industry paid KOLs: <blockquote>Dr. Goldschmidt did not fully report the income from such corporate associations on the medical school's financial-disclosure Web site, even while promoting the site as evidence of his faculty's commitment to openness. He also brought to Miami a repeat violator of financial-conflict-of-interest standards, Charles B. Nemeroff, to serve as a professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.</blockquote>In a <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-Miamis-Deal-Making/127935/">companion article</a>, the Chronicle summarized Dr Nemeroff's career thus: <blockquote>Dr. Nemeroff had quit as chairman of Emory University's psychiatry department in December 2008 after the university received complaints about his secretly receiving money from GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies while helping promote their products.</blockquote>We (Dr Bernard Carroll more than yours truly)  have posted previously about Dr Nemeroff's exploits, including those at the University of Miami, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Charles%20Nemeroff">numerous times</a>.  The Fall of Municipal Hospitals, the Rise of For-Profit Hospitals We have frequently discussed how the leaders have <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/mission-hostile%20management">undermined</a> health care organizations' core missions, and particularly how hospitals and hospital systems have strayed from their patient care mission to make more money. The Chronicle suggested how Ms Shalala's leadership of the University of Miami has enriched the institution's teaching hospital at the apparent expense of the local municipal hospital system: <blockquote>Another set of problems, cited by current and former university faculty and Jackson staff members, stems from the 2007 takeover of a facility that became the University of Miami Hospital, across the street from Jackson. The purchase has greatly expanded the university's ability to direct many of the area's most profitable patients and procedures to the new facility and to other university-owned hospitals, further worsening Jackson's own considerable budget woes.</blockquote>In addition, <blockquote>The university's patient-enrollment practices were part of the problem. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida are looking into the question of whether university doctors routinely enrolled Jackson patients in research projects without telling the hospital. In a 2008 letter from Jackson officials to university leaders, Nathan Anspach, who was vice president for physician services at the hospital, described a series of failed efforts 'to stop new clandestine research' at Jackson by university doctors. Meetings with university officials aimed at stopping the practice 'went badly,' Mr. Anspach wrote, and Dr. Goldschmidt, the medical-school dean, was 'outwardly annoyed' by Jackson's requests for information that would help it identify research patients in the building. Ms. Shalala was copied on at least some of the correspondence, including a 2006 letter in which Marvin O'Quinn, then-president and chief executive of the Jackson Health System, which runs Jackson Memorial, warned Dr. Goldschmidt about the legal risks of submitting claims for patient care that should be covered by a medical study. The current director of compliance at Jackson Health System, Diana Salinas, said the allegations are a matter of investigation by the two federal agencies. Ms. Shalala and Dr. Goldschmidt told The Chronicle that they were unfamiliar with the matter. 'This must not be a very big issue,' Ms. Shalala said, 'because none of the Jackson senior leadership has ever brought it up with me.'</blockquote>Finally, <blockquote>And the departing chief executive of the Jackson Health System, Eneida O. Roldan, whose appointment two years ago was supported by the university, said medical-school officials made clear from the start 'that they were going to take cardiology across the street.' Ms. Dixon-Shim, of the support-workers' union, is among those who say they've seen it happen. 'Most of the indigent patients, they're staying at Jackson,' she says. 'But most of the private patients, the physicians are taking them over to their area' at the university-owned hospitals.</blockquote>Note that we previously <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/send-mercenaries-guns-and-money.html">discussed</a> how Jackson's financial troubles lead to a bid by for-profit Steward Health Care to take it over. Summary So, through her mutiple roles that allowed her to serve at several key nodes of networks of influence in health care, one person has been linked to multiple dysfunctional aspects of US health care that arguably have been responsible for our increasing costs, declining access, and poor quality.  Note that these multiple roles seem to have been logically and even ideologically inconsistent, suggesting that multiplying her roles within the  networks may have been more compelling to her than logical or ideological rationales for particular actions. We have discussed before, the leadership of health care organizations has become incredibly interrelated, interlocked, and incestuous. It appears that top leaders of various health care organizations may be more familiar with and identify more with each other, and with other hired executives and managers, than with their organizations, their organizations' missions, and their organizations' professionals, staff, students, clients, and patients.  It now appears reasonable to characterize the relationships among health care leaders as embedded networks of influence.  So to repeat- I strongly believe that there needs to be much more investigation, academic, journalistic, and perhaps legal, of the identity, nature, and culture of the leaders of health care, and their relationships. A few bloggers cannot do it all. Obviously, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect">the anechoic effect</a> mitigates against medical and health care academics looking into their own leaders. However, failing to understand who is leading our march to the brink of health care failure ought not to be something such academics would want on their conscience. Finally, and obviously, health care organizations need leaders that uphold the core values of health care, and focus on and are accountable for the mission, not on secondary responsibilities that conflict with these values and their mission, and not on self-enrichment. Leaders ought to be rewarded reasonably, but not lavishly, for doing what ultimately improves patient care, or when applicable, good education and good research. If we do not fix the severe problems affecting the leadership and governance of health care, and do not increase accountability, integrity and transparency of health care leadership and governance, we will be as much to blame as the leaders when the system collapses.

Embedded Networks of Influence in Health Care: An Illustrative Case

At the 12th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), sponsored by Transparency International, one of the plenary sessions was devoted to the topic of "embedded networks of influence." The ses…

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24 Jun 2011

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