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Upcoming Keynote Presentation to Health Informatics Society of Australia: Health IT Must First Do No Harm

Pulse+IT Magazine (<a href="http://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/">http://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/</a>) is Australasia's first, and they claim only, eHealth and Health IT periodical. In a May 30, 2012 article entitled "Patient and safety advocates a highlight at HIC2012" at <a href="http://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1014:patient-and-safety-advocates-a-highlight-at-hic2012&catid=16:australian-ehealth&Itemid=327" target="_blank">this link</a>, writer Kate McDonald describes my upcoming panel participation and Keynote Presentation at the annual Health Informatics Conference (HIC) of the <a href="http://www.hisa.org.au/" target="_blank">Health Informatics Society of Australia</a> (HISA) in Sydney. The focus of the HIC2012 meeting is "Building a Healthcare Future through Trusted Information." Ms. McDonald had called me from Down Under to discuss my upcoming talk.  She writes: <blockquote class="tr_bq"> ... Also on the panel [one of the conference's annual Q&A panels - ed.] will be NEHTA CEO Peter Fleming, HISA board director and well-known consultant David Rowlands, and Scot Silverstein, an adjunct professor of health informatics at Drexel University in the US. Dr Silverstein also has a personal story to tell that brings home the importance of what exactly is 'trusted' information. A qualified medical doctor and medical informatics researcher, Dr Silverstein is a strong advocate for safety in health IT systems, having been personally involved in what he believes was a case of medical misadventure caused by an electronic health record that resulted in harm to a close relative. He will also deliver a keynote speech on the topic of improving health IT systems as a first step towards evidence-based medicine and better clinical outcomes. Dr Silverstein told Pulse+IT that there is a “syndrome of over-confidence” in computer output that he finds puzzling. “In other fields people, when they start getting incorrect bills or they keep coming and they can't stop them, it is always blamed on a computer system,” he said. “And yet in medicine, it seems to have evolved a culture around computing that machines in healthcare must deterministically create improvement and are purely beneficent and can't be capable of creating harm. “It is a strange philosophy because in the same breath, people say healthcare information technology is capable of great benefit, that is a very powerful technology and when it is done well, it is. [As I've written before, "doing HIT well" is a challenge of 'wicked' complexity - ed.]  But anything that is a potential source for great good can also have a downside. There seems to be a cognitive gap in connecting computing in healthcare to its possible risk.”</blockquote> She summarizes the views expressed in our phone conversation well.  My theme will be that health IT and the information it generates cannot be trusted until the technology itself is trustworthy, and earns our trust, through better engineering and implementation practices. Ironically, I was invited to 2011's meeting.  I would have attended, but was tending to the injuries of my relative caused by the aforementioned medical misadventure. That relative is no longer with us and is hopefully resting in peace. HISA was kind enough to re-invite me for 2012, for which I am grateful. I will also be spending some time with several Medical Informatics professors in Australian universities, which should provide an excellent opportunity for sharing of views. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvFU828jpijB3bF46WY9PhM5RgJ5aGKmOSLdR7Q4MKlOxfKX_DbjWnOLJDlfu8MRCWAhWl_cW3PY0VJvD1VdW-OHXdPLdl5tBGm4d6-KvRZ3AM1X_pAQzhk8Dc2NSZ-jhC3zFIYEl7-rb9/s1600/sydney.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvFU828jpijB3bF46WY9PhM5RgJ5aGKmOSLdR7Q4MKlOxfKX_DbjWnOLJDlfu8MRCWAhWl_cW3PY0VJvD1VdW-OHXdPLdl5tBGm4d6-KvRZ3AM1X_pAQzhk8Dc2NSZ-jhC3zFIYEl7-rb9/s320/sydney.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sydney, Australia</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div> I look forward to being in Sydney, never having been physically present in Australia, although being a ham radio operator, my single sideband (voice) and Morse code shortwave signals have been there on many occasions over the years.  This is a mere ~ 10,000-mile path.  No Internet or phone lines needed!  (I hope I get the opportunity to operate an Amateur radio station from "Down Under.") More here after my presentation. -- SS

Upcoming Keynote Presentation to Health Informatics Society of Australia: Health IT Must First Do No Harm

Pulse+IT Magazine ( http://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/ ) is Australasia's first, and they claim only, eHealth and Health IT periodical...

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Know-Nothing, or Industry Shill? You Be The Judge.

I have not been writing much the past few weeks due to other concerns, and will probably not write much this summer. However, I have been commenting on various posts on other blogs.  One resultant thread stands out as yet another example of a likely industry shill or sockpuppet defending the state of health IT, oddly at a blog on pharma (same blog as was the topic of tmy post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/04/more-youre-too-negtive-and-you-dont.html" target="_blank">More 'You're Too Negative, And You Don't Provide The Solution To The Problems You Critique', This Time re: Pharma</a>"). Industry-sponsored sockpuppetry is a form of stealth marketing or lobbying, through discreditation of detractors, although in a perverse form. The following exchanges meet the sockpuppetry criteria once pointed out by business professional and HC Renewal reader Steve Lucas in 2010 in a post about an industry sockpuppet caught red-handed through IP forensics <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-perversity-in-hit-world.html" target="_blank">here</a>: <blockquote class="tr_bq">... In reading this thread of comments I have to believe [anonymous commenter moniker] "IT Guy" is a salesperson. My only question is: Were you assigned this blog or did you choose it? We had this problem a number of years ago where a salesperson was assigned a number of blogs with the intent of using up valuable time in trying to discredit the postings. In my very first sales class we learned to focus on irrelevant points, constantly shift the discussion, and generally try to distract criticism. I would say that HCR is creating heat for IT Guy’s employer and the industry in general. I find it sad that a company would allow an employee to attack anyone in an open forum. IT Guy needs to check with his superiors to find out if they approve of this use of his time, and I hope he is not using a company computer, unless once again this attack is company sanctioned. </blockquote> In the hopes that continued exposure of this nonsense can educate and thus help immunize against its effects, I present this: At "In the Pipeline", a blog on medicinal chemistry (the science of drug making) and other pharma topics, a rebuttal to a claim that over 500,000 people (not 50K) might have died due to VIOXX was posted entitled "<a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php" target="_blank">500,000 Excess Deaths From Vioxx? Where?</a>" That 500K possibility appeared on a UK site 'THE WEEK With the FirstPost' at "<a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/46535/when-half-million-americans-died-and-nobody-noticed" target="_blank">When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed</a>."  The author of the FirstPost piece started out by raising the point made by publisher Ron Unz that life in China might be more valued than that in the U.S., where major pharma problems and scandals generally meet what this blog calls "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/anechoic%20effect" target="_blank">the anechoic effect</a>."  (In China, Unz noted, perpetrators of scandalous drug practices actually get arrested and suffer career repercussions.) FirstPost notes: <blockquote class="tr_bq">ARE American lives cheaper than those of the Chinese? It's a question raised by Ron Unz, publisher of <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/chinese-melamine-and-american-vioxx-a-comparison/%20" target="_blank">The American Conservative</a>, who has produced a compelling comparison between the way the Chinese dealt with one of their drug scandals – melamine in baby formula - and how the US handled the Vioxx aspirin-substitute disaster ... (Unz) "The inescapable conclusion is that in today's world and in the opinion of our own media, American lives are quite cheap, unlike those in China."  </blockquote><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> Not to argue to merits of the order of magnitude-expanded VIOXX claim, which I disagree with, but having concern for the general state of ethics in biomedicine in the U.S., I posted the following comment at the comment thread of the rebuttal post at "In the Pipeline" <a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#973935" target="_blank">at this link</a>: </div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="commentsbody"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#973935">6. </a>MIMD on May 30, 2012 11:38 AM writes...</div> While I agree the VIOXX numbers here are likely erroneous, the point of the cheapening of the value of American life is depressingly accurate. For instance, look how readily companies lay people off, ruining them, and perhaps forcing them out of the workforce forever. Also, currently being pushed by HHS is a medical device for rapid national implementation known to cause injury and death. The government is partially financing it to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, probably with Chinese money no less.  [Either that, or with freshly-printed money adding to the trillions of $ in our deficit - ed.] There are financial penalties for medical refuseniks (non-adopters). However, FDA, the Institute of Medicine and others readily admit in publication thay have no idea of the magnitude of the harm because of lack of data collection, impediments to information diffusion and even legal censorship of the harms data. In effect, we don't even know if the benefits exceed the harms, and FDA and IOM admit it. FDA in fact refers to the known injuries and deaths from this device as "likely the tip of the iceberg." Perhaps to some it's no longer a big deal if people are injured and/or die in data gathering for this medical enterprise. E.g., see "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/smoking-gun-internal-fda-memorandum-of.html">FDA Internal Memo on H-IT Risks</a>", and the Inst. of Medicine report in the same issues <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/iom-report-on-health-it-safety-nix-fda.html">here</a>. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">It's all for the greater social good, they might say.</blockquote>  </div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The following anonymous reply ensued:</div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="commentsbody"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#974103">10. </a>Watson on May 30, 2012 1:47 PM writes...</div> @6 You keep using that word - "device" - I do not think it means what you think it means</blockquote>  </div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">I replied:</div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#974232">11. </a>MIMD on May 30, 2012 3:48 PM writes...</div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> #10 'medical device' is the term chosen by FDA and SMPA (EU). But that's a distraction from the points I raise in the linked post about the experiment.</div></blockquote> To which this confused misdirection came forth from the ether: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="commentsbody"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#974290">12. </a>Watson on May 30, 2012 4:46 PM writes...</div><div class="commentsbody"> </div>The linked article is discussing the poor state of "medical device records" because of a lack of uniform specifications with respect to Health Information Technology, i.e. how these technologies code data and the challenges of making the data obtained uniform across a wide variety of implementations and vendors. [Erroneous, incomplete misdirection - ed.] It seems that the concern, far from being that Health Information Technology is "killing" people, is that the Medical Device Records may contain duplicate reports for adverse health events because of health care providers encoding the data more than once for each event.  [What in the world? - ed.] This problem with replication exists because there are different health record systems where this data needs to be input, and perhaps the same patient uses different physicians who have different systems, but all of which are required to report adverse events. [I have little idea what this even means - ed.] </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In other words, "Health Information Technology" is not some monolithic "device", and your conflation of "HIT" which is more properly an abstract term with the "devices" which are used to generate some forms of patient data is in my view the real distraction. [The "real" distraction from the ethical issues of the HIT experiment is terminology about medical devices?  Misdirection again from the ethical issue, and of a perverse nature - ed.] Yes, some of the "devices" (a blood pressure monitor for example) may have underlying issues, which the FDA regulations for "medical device records" are designed to identify. The FDA, as a governmental entity has no constitutional power to mandate certain devices or implementations are to be used.  [Now we're in la-la land of misinformation and distraction- ed.] The power that the FDA does have is to inspect that the manufacturer of a device keeps appropriate medical device records (e.g. a lot of syringes, or a batch of formulated drug) and addresses any complaints about the device to the satisfaction of the FDA.</blockquote> My replies: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#976431">17. </a>MIMD on May 31, 2012 8:51 PM writes... #12 It seems that the concern, far from being that Health Information Technology is "killing" people, is that the Medical Device Records may contain duplicate reports for adverse health events because of health care providers encoding the data more than once for each event Yes, fix just that little problem and then the problems with clinical IT are solved! (Actually,I'm not even sure what you're referring to, but the evidence is that fixing it as you suggest is the cure.)  [Sarcasm - ed.] The FDA, as a governmental entity has no constitutional power to mandate certain devices or implementations are to be used. You are also right about FDA. They were completely toothless even <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/12/fda-recalls-health-it-software-because.html" rel="nofollow">in this situation</a>.  [Sarcasm again - ed.] <a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#976453">18. </a>MIMD on May 31, 2012 9:10 PM writes... #12 In other words, "Health Information Technology" is not some monolithic "device", and your conflation of "HIT" which is more properly an abstract term with the "devices" which are used to generate some forms of patient data is in my view the real distraction. Those who conducted the Tuskegee experiments probably felt the same way. It's all about definitions, not ethics, and not data - which FDA as well as IOM or the National Academies, our highest scientific body, among others, admits, as in the linked posts in #6, is quantitatively and structurally lacking on risks and harms. I don't really mean to laugh at you, not knowing how little you really know about the Medical Informatics domain, but you bring to mind this Scott Adams adage on logical fallacy: FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE WHAT’S IMPORTANT Example: My house is on fire! Quick, call the post office and tell them to hold my mail! And with that, I move on, letting others enjoy the risible comments from surely to follow! :-)</blockquote> <div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">I could not have been more correct. In typical industry shill/sockpuppet fashion comes this, with clear evidence of a not-so-clever liar which I've bolded:</div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#976731">19. </a>Watson on June 1, 2012 12:35 AM writes... @18 I read the articles you originally linked to, and my comments were based upon trying to interpret your meaning from those selections. I worked in the industry and had to deal with GMP, and had to make sure to follow all of the guidelines with respect to medical device manufacturing and electronic records. I understand the terminology very well. Luckily, I never had to deal with "health IT", but I did have to pore over enough pages of Federal Register legalese to know that what is sufficient is not necessarily what is best.  [Right.  See below - ed.] Is that risible enough for you? The link that you provided in @17 was a much more concrete example, and if you had referenced it in your original post, would have cleared up much of the confusion that I (and I assume @9) faced in understanding what it was you were trying to convey. It would have been useful if you had explained which device or devices you were talking about. If you had more than conjecture to back up the Chinese money trail, and if you had provided an example of a company that has been damaged by being a refusenik, those would have supported your argument as well. [Continuing haphazardly with the irrelevant as a distraction in an attempt to shift the focus from the ethical issue of nationally implementing HIT in a relative risk-information vacuum, having weakly conceded the main argument's been lost - ed.] Straw man and ad hominem fallacies are pretty transparent around here, and I wish you the best with both. [Another attempt at diversion - ed.] I assure you that I recognize what's important, that I have ethics, and that I care about people having reliable healthcare. [This seems a form of post-argument-lost attempt to seize the moral high ground - ed.]</div></blockquote><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" id="content"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="100%"> I then point out the nature of what is likely a bold-faced lie.  Someone who's read the Federal Register in depth would likely know FDA's authority is not a "Constitutional power", as bolded below: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#977304">20. </a>MIMD on June 1, 2012 6:44 AM writes... @19 The FDA taxonomy of HIT safety issues in the leaked Feb. 2010 "for internal use only" document "H-IT Safety Issues" available at the link in my post #6 is quite clear: - errors of commission - errors of omission or transmission - errors in data analysis - incompatibility between multi-vendor software applications or systems This is further broken down in Appendices B and C, with actual examples. Both this FDA internal report and the public IOM report of 2011 (as well as Joint Commission Sentinel Events Alert on health IT of a few years ago, and others) make it abundantly clear there is a dearth of data on the harms, due to multiple cultural, structural and legal impediments to information diffusion. Yes, it's in the linked IOM report at #6 entitled "Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care". See for instance the summary pg. S-2 where IOM states about limited[ed] transparency on H-IT risk that "these barriers to generating evidence pose unacceptable risks to safety." Argue with them, not me. Back to my original point: national rollout of this medical device (whatever you call it is irrelevant to my point, but see Jeff Shuren's statement to that effect <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/04/fda-decides-regulating-implantable.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>) under admitted conditions of informational scarcity regarding risks and harms represents a cheapening of the value of patient's lives. Cybernetics Over All. As to your other misdirection, spare me the lecture. It's not ad hominem to call statements like "The FDA, as a governmental entity has no constitutional power to mandate certain devices or implementations are to be used" for what they are - laughable (and I am being generous). FDA's authority is statutory, not written in the Constitution. Same with their parent, HHS. To get quite specific, on human subjects experimentation, which the H-IT national experiment is, the statutory authority for HHS research subject protections regulations derives from 5 U.S.C. 301; 42 U.S.C. 300v-1(b); and 42 U.S.C. 28. [The USC or United States Code is the codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States.  HHS revised and expanded its regulations for the protection of human subjects in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The HHS regulations on human research subjects protections themselves are codified at 45 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations, aka Federal Register) part 46, subparts A through D. See <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/">http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/</a>. - ed.] A real scientist would have known things like this before posting, or have made it their business to know. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Tell me: are you in sales? Not to point fingers, but with your dubious evasion of the ethical issue that was the sole purpose of my post, and your other postings using misdirection and logical fallacy to distract, you fit that mindset. You certainly don't sound like a scientist. Any med chemist worth their salt (pun intendend) would have absorbed the linked reports and ethical issues accurately, the first time.</blockquote> I then pointed out I've moved this 'discussion' to the HC Renewal Blog, as it is not relevant per se to pharma, the major concern of In the Pipeline. Industry shill/sockpuppet (as in the perverse example at <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-perversity-in-hit-world.html" target="_blank">this link</a>) or just a dull, ill-informed but opinionated person who happens to read blogs for medicinal chemists, where layoffs have been rampant in recent years, takes issue with my attacks on those practices, and defends health IT like a shill? You be the judge. Whether a shill or know-nothing contributed the cited comments, it is my hope this post contributes to an understanding of pro-industry sockpuppetry. -- SS </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td><td valign="top" width="100%"> </td></tr></tbody></table></div><a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_from_vioxx_where.php#zemail"></a>

Know-Nothing, or Industry Shill? You Be The Judge.

I have not been writing much the past few weeks due to other concerns, and will probably not write much this summer. However, I have been co...

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Who Cares if The Patients Die? - Apparently Not Some Hospice Marketers

An <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2012-06-11/hospice-marketing-Medicare/55120284/1">article</a> in USA Today suggests that marketers for hospices are pushing even more aggressive measures to recruit patients, regardless of the consequences. Marketing Hospice to Prevent Re-Admission Per USA Today, <blockquote>Hospice marketers, exploring possibilities for new revenue to help continue the industry's remarkable growth, are looking to exploit a provision in the 2010 health care law by persuading hospitals to send Medicare patients into end-of-life hospice care instead of readmitting them to the hospital. Such a move, the hospice marketers say, will enable hospitals to avoid paying the Medicare penalties required by the new law when hospitals discharge patients and then have to readmit them within 30 days: Instead of readmitting the patients, hospitals should send them to hospice care, which also is covered by Medicare, according to a USA TODAY analysis of marketing materials. Patients with severe heart problems and pneumonia tend to decline quickly and often move in and out of hospitals, said hospice marketing specialist Rich Chesney, who proposed the idea. It might be better, Chesney said, if a hospital CEO hired people to talk to family members about hospice, instead of a doctor, who is more focused on not losing a patient. Chesney made his proposal recently at a conference sponsored by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, an industry trade group. [Chesney is apparently the <a href="http://www.healthmr.com/information/about-us">President of Healthcare Market Resources,</a> whose slogan is "growing bottom lines with information." - Ed] 'If (hospices) make that part of their business and their revenue stream, that's sound business,' said Stan Massey, <a href="http://www.transcendhospicemarketing.com/main/stan-massey/">chief marketing officer</a> for <a href="http://www.transcendhospicemarketing.com/">Transcend Hospice Marketing</a> in Holland, Ohio. Massey recently wrote a blog recommending hospice marketers talk to hospital CEOs instead of the doctors who usually decide who is eligible for hospice care. Those conversations, he wrote, 'must be framed heavily in terms of financial benefit.'</blockquote> Ignoring the Hospice Mission Lost in the marketers' thinking seems to be any notion of the hospice mission. Hospices are supposed to provide compassionate palliative care to patients at the end of life who do not want any further aggressive intervention. Good hospice care is likely to make the last days of such patients more tolerable. However, generally hospices intentionally do not provide any care beyond palliation, such as, for example, antibiotics for acute infections, transfusions in the case of acute blood loss, or surgery for acute trauma. Should a patient who is not at the end of life be erroneously admitted to hospice, and then suffer some new acute problem, that patient is at risk of bad outcomes, including death because of denial of the sort of care available in acute care settings. Thus, admitting patients to hospice who are not at the end of life or have not given truly informed consent for hospice care may lead to patients dying prematurely, or suffering suffering preventable complications of treatable diseases and injuries. Aggressive marketing of hospice, particularly pushing hospice for patients just because they seem likely to be re-admitted to a hospital, especially by having marketers try to go around patients' own physicians, risks admitting patients to hospice who should not be in hospice. Thus such aggressive hospice marketing may lead to needless, and wrongful deaths of, injuries to, and morbidity for patients who should have received more aggressive treatment. The USA Today article did note: <blockquote>Health care analysts and ethicists, however, say such proposals are contrary to the intent of the health care law, which is to provide better care, not to put more patients into hospice care for which they are not ready. The proposals warp the 'whole idea behind hospice,' said Josh Perry, a business and ethics professor at Indiana University.</blockquote> In addition, <blockquote>Good hospices have been working with hospital CEOs for years, said Carolyn Cassin, president of the National Hospice Work Group, a coalition of the 25 largest not-for-profit hospice organizations. But the goal, she said, was to make sure patients received the care they needed. She said she was surprised to hear it characterized as a marketing approach to cut costs. While hospice care costs less than hospital care, at $151 a day for Medicare patients, it's meant for people who are going to die. In hospice care, patients agree not to seek care to improve their health, such as more surgeries, hospitalizations or chemotherapy. After a doctor certifies that he expects a person to die within six months, Medicare covers hospice care. Experts say they fear patients will be sent to hospice before their time and miss the proper care that could restore their health. Penalties, Perry said, are a 'good thing' to hold hospitals accountable. 'This isn't about extending hospice.'</blockquote> Summary We have previously discussed, most recently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/03/gentivas-odyssey-healthcare-settles.html">here</a>, allegations that specific for-profit hospice corporations were admitting patients who were not at the end of life just to make more money. The current USA Today article suggests that the phenomenon of hospices enrolling inappropriate patients just to enhance revenue could be more widespread than previously appreciated. The more often hospices enroll patients who are not at the end of life, and/or have not given true informed consent for hospice care, the more patients are likely to suffer needless and wrongful morbidity and injuries, and the more patients are likely to needlessly, and wrongfully die prematurely. It seems to me that unexpected morbidity of, injuries to, or premature death of hospice patients who were not obviously already at the end of life could lead to civil litigation, and even criminal investigation. Furthermore, the realization that hospices, once considered the most humane of health care institutions, are more frequently run for profit, and may put profit ahead of their mission should provoke re-examination of our haste to encourage more and more patient care to be given by for-profit organizations in an era of "greed is good." If we really want better health care, we will have to change policies, practices, and laws so that leaders of health care organizations are motivated more by the desire to help patients than by the desire to become rich.

Who Cares if The Patients Die? - Apparently Not Some Hospice Marketers

An article in USA Today suggests that marketers for hospices are pushing even more aggressive measures to recruit patients, regardless of t...

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The Case of the Vanishing Graduate Medical Education Funds

While primary care falters in the US, those who teach it seem to feel increasingly poverty stricken.  Now it appears that one reason for this is an amazing example of multiple failures of transparency and accountability.  Let me work through it, begging your pardon for a little bit of "inside baseball," medical education style.  The results suggest how we desperately need some medical disciples of Sherlock Holmes. Background My personal experience and increasing data suggests that most medical school faculty believe that their teaching is not valued by their institutions because teaching brings in no external funds.  In 2004, Dr Catherine DeAngelis, then the editor of JAMA, wrote "few medical schools provide adequate, if any, reimbursement for teaching time."(1)  (See<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2005/01/medical-schools-charge-more-for.html"> this 2005 post</a>.)   This seems absurd on its face, since what are medical schools for if it is not to provide teaching.  However, there is evidence of this mission-hostile behavior.  In 2007, we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/04/medical-schools-to-faculty-show-me.html">quoted </a>from a revealing interview with Dr Lee Goldman, Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences at Columbia University,(2) who stated that "taxpayers," faculty who "generate more [money] than they cost," are valued most, and implied that faculty who focus on teaching are regarded as "welfare recipients," who bring in less external funding, and are valued least.  In 2010, we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/12/american-medical-schools-are-only-in-it.html">noted</a> the results of a large-scale survey presented by Dr Linda Pololi in which 51% of faculty felt that the administration only valued them for the money that they brought in, and half felt that their institutions did not value teaching.(3) Yet while faculty seem to believe that educational institutions receive little if any money to pay for teaching, it is not clear why the believe something so counter intuitive, and it is less clear what money actually goes to pay for medical education. US Government Funding for Graduate Medical Education However, several recent publications affirm that actually a lot of money goes towards one important form of medical education, yet the specifics of the money flows are shrouded in secrecy.  In the May, 2012, SGIM Forum, Dr Mark Liebow and colleagues summarized some of what is known about federal support of graduate medical education, that is, education of interns, residents, and other house officers.(4)  There are two streams of money that flow from Medicare to US hospitals: <blockquote>Direct GME (DGME) payments help hospitals pay the salaries of residents, teaching faculty, and support staff. DGME is the product of three numbers: a per resident amount that varies by hospital, adjusted annually for inflation; the number of residents in the hospital (capped for each hospital at 1997 levels); and the fraction of discharges from the hospital that are Medicare beneficiaries. The Indirect Medical Education (IME) payment is a percentage amount added on to each DRG payment. The percentage is calculated via a complex formula (the only US statute containing an exponent!), where the key factor is the ratio of interns/residents to beds (IRB ratio).</blockquote> These two streams are of considerable size: <blockquote>Of the $9.2 billion Medicare paid for GME in 2010, $3 billion was for DGME and $6.2 billion for IME. The money is paid to hospitals sponsoring training programs rather than to the training programs or other hospitals where training occurs. While about 1,100 hospitals receive GME payments, 66% goes to the 200 hospitals that have the largest numbers of residents.</blockquote> So, the 200 largest hospitals get about $2 billion in direct GME money (and presumably about another $4 billion in indirect money). This averages then to about $10 million DGME and $20 million indirect GME per hospital. Thus, teaching, at least the teaching of interns, residents, and other house-staff does pay, and much more than trivial amounts. (Note that these amounts are not for teaching of medical students, which ought to be supported by other funding streams.) Why then do faculty think that teaching does not bring in any money? The GME Money Vanishes An article by Dr Saima I Chaudhry and colleagues in the American Journal of Medicine begins to explain, although the explanations are found between the lines.(5) First of all, while the graduate medical education money is paid by the government to the hospitals, the government does not publish what it pays to individual hospitals: <blockquote>It has been previously reported that the amount of GME funding individual hospitals receive is not publicly reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,.... </blockquote> The government also does not hold the hospitals accountable for how they spend this money, nor for the quantity or quality of education they supply in exchange for it. Remarkably, Chaudhry et al imply that that the people who run graduate medical education teaching programs also may not know how much money their hospitals receive from the government to fund their programs. The introduction to their article noted: <blockquote>It is unclear how much program directors know about the amount and flow of DME funds to their programs. Program directors' beliefs about the transparency of funding to their programs, or their desire to influence how funds are distributed to them, also are unknown.</blockquote> The article reported on a survey of internal medicine residency program directors which asked about "their knowledge of D[G]ME funding for their programs, the transparency with which funds are distributed to them, and their desire to influence this disbursement." The researchers sent surveys to 372 member programs, representing 97.1% of all US internal medicine residencies. They got 268 responses, a 72.0% response rate. The main results were that only 159/268 (59.3%) of program directors had tried to find out how much DGME money their programs received, and of those, only 84 (52.8% of those enquiring, but only 31.3% of all respondents) actually knew how much money their programs got. Of the 92 program directors who did not even try to discover how much money their programs received, approximately 21% said that "no one would tell me," 21% said that the "information would be inaccurate," 14% said they "don't know who to ask," and 2% were "afraid to ask." Summary US medical school faculty, especially those in primary care, increasingly feel pressured to perform activities that they perceive brings in money from external sources. They tend to believe that their own teaching somehow does not bring in any money, and that their careers will fail if they do not put more emphasis on other activities that the institution views as more profitable. However, literally billions of US government dollars go to support the education of house staff, including the salaries of faculty who teach interns and residents, who probably are the majority of physician faculty. Faculty probably do not know this, because the government does not publish the amounts given to individual hospitals, nor demand of the hospitals any accountability for how they spend the money they receive. Presumably, the top executives of each hospital know how much money the government gives them. Nonetheless, the majority of physician leaders of residency programs are never told these amounts, apparently because their hospital executives kept the amounts secret. Many of those educators who have tried to find out the figures were unsuccessful. Some did not even try to find out based on beliefs that their attempts would be unsuccessful, any amounts they discovered would be inaccurate, the people who knew the amounts were hidden, or that it would be dangerous to their careers to even try. Thus billions of dollars of money flowing from the government to fund graduate medical education seems to have vanished in an amazing example of widespread deficiencies in accountability and transparency. There are many people who blame government for many social ills. In this case, one can blame the US Congress for not writing a law that makes the money flows transparent and hospitals accountable for providing good educational value for the money provided. One can also blame the executive branch, particularly the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for not making the money flows and the values received for them transparent. There are a few people, including this author, who also blame the leadership of health care organizations for many of the problems besetting health care. In this case, one can blame top leadership, presumably CEOs and chief financial officers (CFOs) of hospitals for hiding the amounts of money they receive from Medicare to finance graduate medical education. One can also blame the physician leaders of residency programs for not insisting that they know the true sources of financial support for their programs, obtain budgets that reflect this support, and recognition that their faculty really do bring in external funds for their teaching of house staff (and are thus valuable "taxpayers" in Dr Goldman's parlance.) It is amazing that such amounts of money have been flowing for years mostly in secret. The secrecy has fueled incorrect, and in retrospect, bizarre ideas about the funding of medical education, and the value of medical educators to their institutions. This secrecy, in turn, has helped suppress the morale of medical educators, support the control of managers of health care professionals, and distort the flow of money within academic institutions and to compensation for certain favored individuals. Would our dysfunctional health care system not be better off if we demanded transparency and accountability from its leaders?  In particular, the US government should make payments to hospitals for graduate medical education completely transparent, and develop a system to hold these hospitals accountable for how they spend the money.  Meanwhile, top leaders of hospitals receiving this money should make the amounts transparent, first to the people who are supposed to be doing the education that the money pays for, and to the public at large.  This would allow those running the relevant educational programs to develop reasonable and realistic budgets, to treat their faculty with respect, and to demonstrate what value they provide for the money received.  The ongoing anechoic effect, and related deception and secrecy fostered by leaders in health care are major reasons our health care system is so dysfunctional, that costs are so high, and access and quality so poor.  True health care reform would ensure health care leaders put the mission before their personal enrichment, and act ethically with accountability, transparency, and honesty.  References 1.   DeAngelis CD. Professors not professing. JAMA 2004; 292: 1060-1.  Link <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/292/9/1060">here</a>. 2.  Goldman L, Halm EA.  A view from the top: general internal medicine from the perspective of a chair and dean.  SGIM Forum, April, 2007.  Link <a href="http://www.sgim.org/userfiles/file/Forum/2007/Forum200704.pdf">here</a>. 3.  Pololi L, Ash A, Krupat E.  Faculty Values in the Culture of Academic Medicine: Findings of a National Faculty Survey. Link <a href="https://www.aamc.org/download/154216/data/your_career_is_more_than_your_specialty_-_246.pdf">here</a>. 4.  Liebow M, Jaeger J, Schwartz MD. How does Medicare pay for graduate medical education? SGIM Forum, May, 2012.  Link <a href="http://www.sgim.org/userfiles/file/May%202012%20Forum/May2012-09.pdf">here</a>. 5. Chaudhry SI, Khanijo S, Halvorsen AJ, McDonald FS,Patel K. Accountability and transparency in graduate medical education expenditures. Am J Med 2012; 125: 517-522. Link <a href="http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2812%2900071-X/fulltext">here</a>.

The Case of the Vanishing Graduate Medical Education Funds

While primary care falters in the US, those who teach it seem to feel increasingly poverty stricken. Now it appears that one reason for thi...

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More Rising Compensation for Executives at Financially Challenged Hospitals, Justified by More Talking Points

In the spring, leaves turn green, and executive compensation turns greener.  The media has provided another set of stories about the inexorable rise of compensation for executives of non-profit hospitals, presented in order of the stories' appearance. Westchester Medical Center The Journal-News <a href="http://www.lohud.com/article/20120401/NEWS02/304010064/At-Westchester-Medical-Center-executives-get-raises-others-lose-jobs">reported</a> in April, <blockquote>A Journal News analysis of salary data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, revealed that 20 hospital administrators received increases in their total compensation for 2010, including one employee whose pay package jumped 18 percent.</blockquote> Also, <blockquote>The newspaper’s analysis of data for 2010, the latest year available, shows that 26 administrators at the medical center would have exceeded Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s limit of $199,000 a year for executive compensation. Cuomo signed an order, scheduled to take effect April 15, that restricts the amount of state money that nonprofit organizations can use toward salaries and benefits. Overall, the medical center spent $11.8 million in compensation to 44 executives in 2010, during which three administrators resigned and three others had their titles downgraded to the director level. The executive payroll rose 11 percent between 2008 and 2010.</blockquote> In particular, <blockquote>Administrators who received increases in their total compensation included CEO Israel, who earned the top salary of $1.3 million in total compensation; the chief financial officer; an executive vice president and several senior vice presidents.</blockquote> However, the fortunes of the top executives were rising at a time of financial trouble for the institution: <blockquote>That same year, the medical center laid off 130 workers, instituted a hiring freeze and announced an $18 million budget cut for the following year. 'There is no shared sacrifice, there is no appearance of a shared sacrifice,' said Jayne Cammisa, a union representative and a registered nurse in the hospital’s transplant unit. </blockquote> Those who defended the executives' compensation sounded familiar themes: <blockquote>Hospital boards rely on compensation committees, outside consultants and market analysis and documentation to justify how much they pay administrators. The medical center uses an outside firm to analyze compensation packages, which are based on market values, [Senior Vice President for Communications Kara] Bennorth said. The only way to keep the institution and be financially viable is you have to have top management,' [Chairman of the Board Mark] Tulis said. </blockquote>Note that we briefly mentioned the CEO's compensation in <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/02/bloat-continues-more-tales-of-non.html">this post</a>. Connecticut In May, the Hartford Courant <a href="http://articles.courant.com/2012-05-08/business/hc-hospital-executive-compensation-20120508_1_median-compensation-top-executives-executive-director">reported</a>, <blockquote>The health care system may be ailing, but newly compiled data show that compensation for top executives at Connecticut hospitals remains healthy. Eighteen executives at the state's 30 hospitals made more than $1 million in 2009-10, according to information the hospitals reported to the Internal Revenue Service. </blockquote> Some of the more notable examples included, <blockquote>Hartford Hospital's outgoing chief executive officer, John J. Meehan, was the highest paid in Connecticut and one of the highest paid nationally. His compensation totaled $6.98 million – all but $1.1 million of it nontaxable and retirement benefits, according to the hospital.</blockquote> Also, <blockquote>In addition to Meehan, Connecticut's 10 highest paid administrators were two Yale-New Haven Health System executives, the departing CEOs at the Hospital of Central Connecticut and the Hospital of St. Raphael, the departing treasurer of Hartford Hospital, the treasurer of the Hospital of Central Connecticut and the presidents of Stamford, Yale-New Haven and St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. All made more than $1.59 million in 'reportable' W-2 and 1099 miscellaneous compensation. A few executives had significant 'non-reportable' compensation in addition to W-2 and 1099 pay. The outgoing president at William Backus Hospital in Norwich had $2.2 million in deferred compensation related to his retirement, for total pay of nearly $3 million, according to a C-HIT analysis of the data. The chief operating officer at the Hospital of Central Connecticut had $472,443 in reportable pay and $838,880 in other compensation, for a total of $1.3 million.</blockquote> Again, there were complaints that executive compensation had nothing to do with the performance of the executives' organizations, <blockquote>'I don't understand what the hospitals are getting for their money. Some of the highest paid are the worst performing,' said Ellen Andrews, executive director of the Connecticut Health Policy Project in New Haven. 'The system isn't working for anyone – for the state, for the hospitals or for consumers.'</blockquote> Note, however, that the system is working for the top hired executives. In response to these complaints, the Courant cited the usual defenses of executive pay: <blockquote>Others say the compensation reflects the complexity of the health care business, keen national competition for good leaders, and the uncertain future that executives face when they sign on for top-level positions in an industry undergoing enormous change. Pay needs to be competitive to attract and retain key executives, they say – even for nonprofits that are struggling to find their place. 'Hospital executives are responsible for extremely complex organizations,' said Michele Sharp of the Connecticut Hospital Association. In addition to managing advanced medical services and technology, a skilled staff and extensive physical plants, hospital CEOs are often responsible for an array of services beyond the hospital, such as primary care clinics, home health organizations and surgery centers. They work in a highly regulated environment and must comply with demanding standards in areas that range from patient safety and financial performance to institutional stability and community health, Sharp said. 'When you bring in exceptional talent, you can manage effectively and efficiently,' said Vin Petrini, senior vice president for public affairs atYale-New Haven Hospital. 'It's a very complicated and complex industry. We need to be thoughtful about how we manage and retain and recruit talent.'</blockquote> Wake Forest Baptist The Winston-Salem Journal <a href="http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2012/may/15/wake-forest-baptist-ceo-mcconnell-receives-nearly--ar-2280364">uncovered</a> the compensation of several local executives, <blockquote>A commitment Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center made to Dr. John McConnell, its chief executive, when he was recruited led to a nearly 50 percent increase in his total compensation for fiscal year 2010-11, the center reported Tuesday. McConnell was paid almost $2.5 million in total compensation, compared with $1.68 million for fiscal 2009-10.</blockquote> The total included essentials such $25,560 for moving expenses and $9,568 for country club dues. Other executives did well too: <blockquote>Donny Lambeth, former president of N.C. Baptist Hospital, had a 36 percent increase in total compensation to $1.16 million. Lambeth now serves as president of Davie County Hospital and Lexington Medical Center. His salary dropped 11 percent to $537,997, while his bonus and incentive compensation rose 165 percent to $186,261. Dr. Thomas Sibert, president of Wake Forest Baptist Health and chief operating officer, received a 2 percent increase in total compensation to $995,133, including $545,517 in salary and $166,027 in bonus and incentive compensation. Sibert took over his role in September 2010. Edward Chadwick, chief financial officer, received a 32 percent increase in total compensation to $974,587. His salary rose 71 percent to $503,663 in salary, while his bonus and incentive compensation fell 42 percent to $200,000. Dr. William Applegate, retired president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences and dean of its medical school, was paid $743,541 in total compensation, down 25 percent. His salary dropped 3 percent to $518,231, while his bonus and incentive compensation fell from $378,900 to $99,900. Doug Edgeton, former president of Piedmont Triad Research Park, received a 38 percent decrease in total compensation to $655,048. His salary fell 1 percent to $484,360, and his bonus and incentive compensation fell from $361,600 to $111,700.</blockquote> However, a Winston-Salem Journal <a href="http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2012/apr/13/wake-forest-baptist-to-aggressively-reengineer-ove-ar-2160506">article</a> in April noted that the same CEO, Mr McConnell would be aggressively cutting costs and possibly laying off employees: <blockquote>Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has told employees it is considering reducing its workforce as part of a major initiative aimed at improving patient outcomes at a lower cost. The center confirmed Friday a memo sent April 2 by Dr. John McConnell, its chief executive, which addressed what the center is calling 'accelerated transformational initiatives.'</blockquote> In particular, <blockquote>In a separate statement, the center said it is looking at expense-reduction opportunities that include 'energy conservation, cost savings through supply chain management, revenue-cycle improvements, efficiencies such as reducing length of stay, reduction in discretionary spending, and managed employment through attrition, retirements, eliminating duplication and process redesign.'</blockquote>"Managed employment" seems to be the latest circumlocution for layoffs. The largess given to top executives at a time when lesser employees may be sacked was explained by trotting out the usual suspects, <blockquote>Wake Forest Baptist said the center is a 'very complex organization that requires a special set of skills and experience to manage relationships with physicians and researchers, the university, its patients and community.'</blockquote>I wonder if "complexity" comes from a set of talking points, since it gets aired so often in this context. Note that we discussed compensation given to Wake Forest executives the year before, and its relationship, or lack thereof to the quality of their leadership <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/09/highly-paid-skilled-executives-and.html">here</a>. Summary There they go again. We have the latest additions to what has become a long series of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">examples of executive exceptionalism </a>in health care organizations. Top hired executives, be they of for-profit health care corporations, or non-profit organizations, tend to be <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">paid very well</a>, even when their organizations perform poorly or are financially threatened. The same rationales are cited repeatedly to justify their treatment. Executives are said to have very difficult jobs, Competitive pay is necessary to hire the brilliant people required.  Left unsaid, however, is how difficult these managerial positions are in comparison to the demanding work and sometimes life or death responsibilities of health professionals, how brilliant executives are in comparison to such well trained professionals, and why the executives deserve competitive pay when other employees may be laid off. Perhaps the close ties of those making the arguments to the executives explains the questions they beg. So it is time to say it again,....  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.

More Rising Compensation for Executives at Financially Challenged Hospitals, Justified by More Talking Points

In the spring, leaves turn green, and executive compensation turns greener. The media has provided another set of stories about the inexora...

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Wall Street Journal Defends Hired WellPoint Executives' Lack of Accountability to the Company's Owners

The lack of accountability of the hired managers (or executives or bureaucrats) of health care organizations came into sharper focus thanks to a bizarre, in my humble opinion, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304746604577381882918797726.html">Wall Street Journal editorial</a> from last week.  Background: Shareholder Campaign for Oversight of Hired Executives Use of Corporate Money for Political Purposes In the background is the campaign by some of the owners, that is, shareholders of giant publicly held for-profit insurance company WellPoint to make its executives' attempts to involve the company in politics more transparent and accountable.  (See our previous post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/04/some-of-wellpoints-owners-stockholders.html">here</a>.)  As noted more recently in Fortune (<a href="http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/08/wellpoint-faces-shareholder-ire-over-political-spending/">by way of CNN</a>), <blockquote>shareholders and major U.S. companies have been meeting behind the scenes to discuss improvements in oversight and disclosure practices. 'Companies need to remember that shareholders have a right to know how their money is being spent,' wrote Eric Sumberg, spokesperson for New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, representing the New York State pension fund, in an email. 'Transparency and full disclosure will help to deter high risk political spending that could hurt shareholder value.' Aetna and WellPoint are two companies contending with shareholder proposals on political spending disclosure this year. The Center for Public Accountability (CPA) rates the disclosures at Aetna and WellPoint as having 'room for improvement.' Both WellPoint and Aetna have disclosure practices that 'leave significant room for serious misrepresentation of the company's political spending through trade associations,' according to the Center's Political Accountability and Transparency Reports. According to the Center reports, both companies gave money to AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans). And $86 million in funds from AHIP were allegedly funneled to the Chamber of Commerce to lobby against health care reform, according to reports from Bloomberg and the National Journal.</blockquote> Note that this money was supposedly used by WellPoint executives to undermine the Obama administration's health care reform proposals while the company was publicly supporting aspects of these proposals. The Wall Street Journal Says Hired Executives Not Accountable to Shareholders The Wall Street Journal's editorial page's <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304746604577381882918797726.html">denunciation</a> of this campaign by corporate owners to assert their rights, and the accountability of hired managers opened thus, <blockquote>The campaign to intimidate companies from exercising their free-speech rights is in high gear as shareholder proxy season arrives, and the most prominent early target is health-insurer WellPoint. The arc of this attack will be one of the election year's political leitmotifs, and it should be on the radar of every corporate boardroom. In the favored new tactic of the left, unions and activists are using politicized shareholder resolutions to send a message to corporations: Drop support for free-market and conservative causes, or you'll take a political beating. </blockquote>The Journal conveniently ignored that the campaign is not from outside the corporation, but from its very owners, and that the people they are supposedly trying to intimidate are actually supposed to be responsible to them.  In addition, it begged the question of how political spending by hired corporate bureaucrats unaccountable to the people who own the company could possible have anything to do with free markets. If some owners do not think that executives should be spending company money on political causes (especially presumably causes that the executives favor, or that reflect the executives' self-interest), they have a perfect right to think so, and to act on their thoughts. Then the  Journal went on to assail the shareholders' challenge to some members of the WellPoint board of directors.  After first defining Change to Win as a "union front group," - <blockquote>Change to Win is now targeting WellPoint's annual meeting on May 16 when it will demand that shareholders vote against board members Julie Hill and Susan Bayh (wife of former Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh) because the company has refused to disclose or stop all of its political spending. Among the company's crimes? Corporate funding of, you guessed it, ALEC.</blockquote>Now let us back up a minute. This is about a campaign by stockholders, that is, people who are owners, albeit fractional owners of WellPoint. It is some shareholders who want to vote against the particular board members.  WellPoint directors are supposed to have a fiduciary duty to represent the stockholders', that is, the owners' financial interests. If stockholders think members of the board of directors are not representing the stockholders' interests, the stockholders have a perfect right to vote against them.  However, the Journal fulminated, <blockquote>The union attack on WellPoint is notable for targeting two board members by name and the effort to make extra hay out of Susan Bayh's political profile. (Added frisson: Evan Bayh has worked as a consultant to the Chamber.) The ad hominem attack is right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook and is intended as a warning to other corporate directors that their personal reputation will be damaged if they don't force companies to stop donating to industry groups. </blockquote> Note further that all stockholders are owners, whether they are also union members, or have green hair. Note further that the owners again have a perfect right to criticize or vote against board members who they believe are not properly exercising their fiduciary responsibilities to stockholders, that doing so has nothing to do with the <a href="http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html">ad hominem fallacy</a>, and that this right is not nullified for stockholders with particular political opinions, or stockholders whom the Wall Street Journal does not like. Summary So we see the Wall Street Journal, supposed defender of capitalism, attacking a fundamental part of capitalism, the right of ownership, corporate ownership in this case. Instead, presumably, the Journal editorialists thinks that hired corporate executives ought to be completely unaccountable to the stockholders, and able to do whatever they want, including to do what is in their self-interest but not the owners' interests. So this is how far the coup d'etat by hired executives/ managers/ bureaucrats has progressed. Supposed defenders of capitalism are now defending the rule of hired corporate insiders, completely disregarding the rights of owners. All we are lacking is a catchy name for rule by the hired managers/ bureaucrats/ executives. I am open to suggestions. We have long criticized leaders of health care organizations who are ill-informed, unaware or hostile to health care professionals' core values, self-interested, or even corrupt.  We have discussed how bad leadership has advanced as leaders have become less accountable.  It appears that the lack of accountability of health care leaders, and their tendencies to put their own interests first, is part of a larger problem.  This is the take-over by most of society's important organizations by the managers, bureaucrats, and executives who were hired to run them.  For profit corporate hired leaders have become unaccountable to the corporations' owners.  Non-profit organizations' hired leaders have become unaccountable for the mission, or for their organizations' stakeholders.  If we want health care, and democratic society to survive, we need to counter the managers' coup d'etat and make leaders accountable once again.

Wall Street Journal Defends Hired WellPoint Executives' Lack of Accountability to the Company's Owners

The lack of accountability of the hired managers (or executives or bureaucrats) of health care organizations came into sharper focus thanks ...

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The CEO as False Messiah

Why is the leadership of health care organizations so bad?  An <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/industry_analysis/232901524">important explanation</a> of one part of the puzzle appears on InformationWeek's Brainyard blog written by Venkatesh Rao.  The Visionary, Charismatic, or Messianic Leader In "The Fall of the Messiah Leader," Rao described the rise of the concept of "visionary" leadership: <blockquote>we'll look at the rise in the 1980s and impending fall of the idea of 'Leadership' as a pop business construct. The role of visionary leader emerged to make up for the apparent failure of the manager mind, but it evolved into something very different, illustrated in the picture below: a role dedicated mainly to creating and maintaining an illusion of control in the markets interspersed with occasional Big Bold crisis management moves that generally fail.</blockquote> Rao suggested that the first example of the messianic organizational leader was former General Electric CEO Jack Welch: <blockquote>Welch was the first modern example of 'charismatic leadership,' and his was the first widely recognized business name since the robber barons. I challenge you to name, off the top of your head, one "celebrity" business name between Rockefeller and Welch that the average man on the street would have recognized. </blockquote> Rao described the charismatic, or visionary leader in truly messianic terms: <blockquote>one savant-like figure can intuitively read market conditions, spot brilliant strategic opportunities, create clarity of purpose in pursuit of that opportunity, and steer by an innate sense of True North, without a compass. Oh yeah, and while performing this miracle routinely, the leader also models virtues and values that would put saints to shame. This idealized leader sparks a pursuit of corporate greatness with a brilliant strategic insight every few years, and he ensures that the pursuit is conducted in accordance with values so noble you feel like writing epic poems in his honor. These charismatic figures are supposed to be capable of intuitively cutting through complexity and producing visionary decisions that make the managers' jobs tractable again. </blockquote> In case this description of supposedly messianic leaders of recent years sounds far-fetched, recall the example of the failed, then eventually jailed CEO of what was once the Allegheny Health Education and Research Foundation (AHERF), one of the largest vertically integrated health care systems of the 1990s. (Currently, we call such organizations accountable care organizations, or ACOs.) Abdelhak was described in an American College of Physicians publication as a "visionary." (See the summary beginning on p 5 <a href="http://www.acponline.org/about_acp/chapters/ri/nl-fall04.pdf">here</a>.) Abdelhak had previously been called a "visionary" or a "genius" in the media. [Gaul GM. Creator of a cross-state health system despite personal and financial questions, Sherif Abdelhak has boldly expanded from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 4, 1991. P. D1. Gaul GM. The new prescription for health care: Hahnemann’s merger dwarfs - and frightens - many local rivals. Philadelphia Inquirer, November 21, 1993. P. E1.]  For more recent examples of how health care leaders may be described in messianic terms, look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-repeats-of-talking-points.html">here</a>, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/09/talking-points-sans-original-thought-to.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-tales-of-hospital-ceo-compensation.html">here</a>. The False Messiahs Just as Abdelhak proved to be not a messiah, but a criminal, most messianic leaders are anything but. As Rao put it, <blockquote>Do these Messiahs actually do the job required of them--relieve beleaguered mere-mortal managers and steer the company toward greatness? Nine out of 10 times, they do nothing of the sort. What they do is convince people that they're in control. </blockquote> His main point is that the "messiahs" are just people playing at that role, supported by public relations, if not propaganda and disinformation: <blockquote>Heroic, charismatic leadership in the context of large public companies is mostly a myth. What makes it a myth isn't that such figures don't exist (there have been a handful, such as Welch himself, Jobs, and Bezos), but the idea that the phenomenon can be studied in general terms, codified, and turned into a teachable skill. True leaders are born, not manufactured. And they're quite rare. What the leadership cottage industry can manufacture are false leaders: People who can act like leaders. That theater has two audiences: the media and Wall Street. The psychological allure of 'leadership' as a concept is almost entirely due to its profitability as a business-writing cottage industry, which in turn is based almost entirely on appealing to the vanities of wannabe-Messiahs. On the other side, there's an entire shadow world devoted to manufacturing perceptions of Messianic capabilities, by 'proving' claims to charismatic leadership using hagiographic narratives. </blockquote> Rao claimed that the rise of such falsely messianic leadership was due to the ability of such leaders to bewitch investors: <blockquote>The de facto job of a leader is to manage perceptions on Wall Street and thereby manage the stock price. Projecting an image of charismatic leadership is the easiest way to do that. Managers fight fires out of sight, creating a perception of corporate normalcy and control, and the Glorious Leader uses that blank canvas of apparent normalcy to spin tales that mesmerize Wall Street.</blockquote> Who Else Benefits Rao wrote mainly in the context of understanding the stresses and challenges of managers (who he sees as distinct from leaders in the context above). Thus he may not have written about other factors in the etiology of falsely messianic leaders. I hypothesize that such leaders are not only good at bewitching investors, but bewitching other constituencies and stakeholders. Most health care organization now must deal with government agencies. Non-profit health organizations must deal with groups that are interested in their ostensibly charitable missions. Having a apparently messianic leader makes it possible to bewitch these groups. Furthermore, I hypothesize that falsely messianic leaders greatly benefit two groups within their organizations. The first is obviously their apostles, often the top layers of organizational executives just below the CEO. Such positions are now almost as personally remunerative as are CEO positions. The second is obviously the spin-doctors, that is mainly the public relations and sometimes the marketing people who help produce the theatre that creates the perception of messianic qualities. The Final Common Pathway Rao suggests that falsely messianic leaders are likely to lead their organizations to a bad end, even if they themselves may escape the consequences: <blockquote>Charismatic theater-leadership is about to die a messy death, like Qadaffi, because the sheer amount of chaos converging in a bottom-up torrent to the CEO's office will become unmanageable very soon. The theater will become increasingly hard to sustain. Leaders fail when their managers fail to keep up with the fire-fighting. Once the fires become visible externally, the apparent normalcy necessary for the leader to manage perceptions is gone. At this point, the leader is an impossible situation, but the theater must continue. And so we're treated to the grand finale of the tenure of a CEO: the Big Bold Move, the Bet The Company moment. The Big Bold Move is usually a Big Dumb Move--deciding to go after large new markets, taking on bold new product initiatives costing hundreds of millions of dollars, making major acquisitions. It's a high-stakes game with a billion-dollar ante. And usually these moves fail because charismatic leaders are forced to make them at terrible times, with bad data, when growth has stagnated or is plummeting, and there's a need for an 11th hour business model shift to replace hundreds of millions of dollars of collapsing revenue streams. A case of too much, too late. The leaders who fail are sacked, land safely with golden parachutes, and proceed to loudly blame 'culture' (read: 'incompetent middle management') for the failure.</blockquote> Rao is writing for a general business audience. The outcomes of such failures when the falsely messianic leader is in charge of a health care organization can obviously be even worse, leading to rising health care costs, declining access and quality, and threats to patients' and the public's health. Summary We have seen many health care leaders praised for their brilliance and paid royally despite leadership resulting in financial distress, <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/mission-hostile%20management">threats to the organizations' health care missions</a>, poor patient care, unethical behavior, or even <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/crime">crime</a>. (The most recent example as of the time this was written was <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/04/2011-best-paid-us-ceos-companys-latest.html">here</a>. For other examples look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/executive%20compensation">here</a>.)   Yet health care CEOs are just people, sometimes smart, but almost never brilliant.  Promoting them as messianic to bewitch key constituencies, justify the remuneration of other top managers, and the hiring of more public relations flacks is likely to lead to the sort of organizational disasters and system-wide dysfunction we discuss on Health Care Renewal.  The rise of the falsely messianic leader may allow the entry of the most dangerous false messiahs, the psychopathic ones.  (We discussed the likelihood that some health care leaders are actually psychopaths <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/psychopaths">here</a>.) Rao's theory of falsely messianic leadership (and related, and also religiously allusional theories of the "divine rights of CEOs," look <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/03/golden-calf-explains-how-economism-lead.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-health-care-leaders-remain.html">here</a>), suggest that the better paid the CEO, and the more expansive the descriptions of the CEOs talents, the more skeptical we ought to be.  In the secular occupation of health care, we ought not to yearn for messiahs, but hope for reasonable leadership that draws on the collective knowledge and values of health care professionals rather than dubious "visions," and that show accountability, integrity, transparency, honesty, and ethics.

The CEO as False Messiah

Why is the leadership of health care organizations so bad? An important explanation of one part of the puzzle appears on InformationWeek...

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