Another Dr. Kearney Update

3/18/2016

Once again, for those new to this blog site, at present there are 12 posts on the blog and each has its own set of comments. To read the comments you have to hit the word "Comments" at the beginning or end of the post. Somewhat confusing is that when you bring up the comments for a specific post it eliminates the other posts from the screen. To bring the other posts back up simply go back to the top of the page and click on Blog. Finally, to understand the development of the blog it is best to read it from the bottom post (Dr. Paul Kearney Case) up. One point of note here, to read the earliest posts you have to click on the word "<<Previous" at the very bottom of the posts available.

With March “Madness” in the air, I thought it was about time for another update on the Dr. Paul Kearney situation.

1. The University’s motion to dismiss Dr. Paul Kearney’s Whistleblower case was overruled and therefore this case now proceeds to trial.

2. The open records request for information concerning the University’s College of Medicine Compensation Committee in which the University appealed the former Attorney General’s ruling that these are truly open records and that they are obligated to make them available (http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article48492640.html), was not acceptable to the current offices of the Attorney General and they have once again demanded that the university make available these public records. I have that documentation should anyone wish to see it.

3. Dr. Kearney is currently attempting to appeal his annual performance evaluation, which was as might be expected, as poor as they could make it. This is perhaps the most interesting development. It appears clear from the information available that, having failed through a kangaroo court, threats, intimidation, and even letters to the Board of Licensure, the University and the College of Medicine administration are now attempting to generate a trail of poor faculty performance evaluations to justify there avarice to terminate Dr. Kearney’s employment. This after signing off on 20 years of outstanding performance evaluations.

In essence what is being done here is to bar Dr. Kearney from performing any of his work as a teacher and a physician (keep in mind during this time period he has been forbidden to enter campus and/or talk with any of his co-workers), and then justify signing off on the poorest performance evaluation they could give him by declaring he has not been performing his duties as a teacher and physician. This really seems counterintuitive to me. In essence, Dr. Kearney should have received an outstanding performance evaluation, because he performed precisely everything they asked him to do, which was nothing.

What is even more interesting, when Dr. Kearney requested in the email below to Dean de Beer, his faculty right to a formal appeal of this matter:

From: Kearney, Paul A 
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2016 3:17 PM 
To: de Beer, Frederick C 
Subject: Performance Evaluation Appeal

Dear Dean de Beer:

In accordance with the controlling President's Administrative Regulation 3:10.D,E, I am lodging to you, the Dean of the College, a formal complaint and appeal regarding your action that you have characterized as faculty performance evaluation for the calendar year 2015.

He received this reply:

From: de Beer, Frederick C
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 9:15 AM
To: Kearney, Paul A
Subject: RE: Performance Evaluation Appeal

Dr. Kearney: That is the way it is being handled. Please direct all communication through your counsel to the University counsel, Mr. Thro. Fred de Beer

So in essence, the Dean is telling Dr. Kearney that lawyers are now responsible for handling performance evaluation appeals. Better yet, University General Council Mr. Thro has now been given the authority and responsibility to define a faculty’s right of appeal of a performance evaluation. If I remember correctly, isn’t this the same person that told Dr. Kearney to ‘take the deal or we will destroy your career’. One can only assume that the next move will be to put together another set of EVPHA puppets (kangaroo court) to validate their actions.

The bottom line appears to be 'faculty rights are a thing of the past'. It is clear why so many are looking for jobs elsewhere, and why recruiting is such a problem. Oh well, President Capilouto doesn’t appear to be bothered by any of this. I hope no one shows him the bills for the outside attorneys the University has had to hire to implement this travesty of justice.

31 Comments

3/19/2016 11:10:29 am

I have to admit that this is getting a bit ridiculous. I am curious, is this University of Kentucky Professor William Thro or University of Kentucky Instructor William Thro, that you are referring to in your post? I ask this because in a recent public records request that I made simply looking into Mr. Thro's position and duties at the University, the following sentence preceded the University's Public Records Office response to 6 of my inquires:

"RESPONSE: Although Mr. Thro does not hold the formal academic rank of Professor (Adjunct Title Series), his use of "Adjunct Professor of Law" in biographical materials to describe his role is consistent with the College of Law's custom and norms of the legal academy."

I interpret this to mean that the College of Law endorses the use of the title of "Professor" by anyone instructing in their College. I sure hope they do not have any teaching assistants working for them. This, at least to my way of thinking, also somewhat belittles the years of hard work and effort put forth by faculty in other colleges to attain this Professor ranking. But then again, I guess when you are the University's General Council you can make up or modify the rules to fit the situation. It is clear that this is what has been done in the handling of the Dr. Kearney case.

Dan Noonan

3/20/2016 09:49:27 am

Thanks for the blog comment JK. From the sounds of it these are the same Mr. Thros. I am not at all surprised either. From what I hear, it took the Board of Trustees something like 4 years to vote on his appointment to General Council. I am wondering now if they knew something that we didn't know. Unfortunately Mr. Thro seems to have taken an adversarial approach in dealing with this Dr. Kearney situation and look where it has gotten us. Many hours and many dollars wasted on litigation, and unquantifiable collateral damage in areas of recruiting, retention, morale and paranoia throughout the College and the hospital. If I was a Law School Professor (which appears to be anybody teaching over there) I would have to give Mr. Thro a grade of F for this class on "University Faculty Rights and Approaches to Negotiating within those Parameters". My best guess is that this all goes back to the issues Dr. Kearney raised with respect to the mismanagement of hospital finances. They clearly are afraid of any audit of these and are seemingly willing to endure any price to avoid this audit. It definitely is a sad state of affairs. Thanks again JK for the comment.

M&M

3/22/2016 12:19:33 pm

This is clearly a vendetta against Dr. Kearney. I can tell you that the vast majority of students, residents, faculty and staff of the hospital view this as an administration vendetta. This is more like something you might expect to find in some third world country and not here at the University of Kentucky. I tend to agree, this has little to do with Dr. Kearney's treatment of this patient (which by the way we have heard little about since the filing of the lawsuit) but rather something they are trying to hide.

3/22/2016 04:48:29 pm

Thanks for the comment M&M. I think it is fairly safe to say that this is no longer about the young man Dr. Kearney treated in ER. I believe the graduating medical students have protest shirts they are wearing.

Mrs LT

3/24/2016 09:05:04 am

Au contraire-

FAYETTE : 15-CI-03303
WILSON, JAMES R VS. KEARNEY, MD, PAUL A

Probably going to trial in parallel to Kearney's case against UK

3/24/2016 11:06:55 am

Trial or no trial, I still think this, the vendetta, is no longer about the trial. I think the administration and their handling of this was as much responsible for this going to trial as Dr. Kearney.

3/22/2016 02:53:04 pm

I'll just leave this here:

https://pageonekentucky.com/2016/02/23/juicy-affidavit-hits-in-uk-kmsf-case/

And here are the penalties for violation of the KY state procurement code. I bet Mike Karpf is really worried about a fine of no more than $20K.

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/statutes/statute.aspx?id=22507

And of course Darryl Griffith is a very reliable witness:

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2015/12/29/u-of-l-associate-vice-president-cited-for-dui-in-rowan-county/78052170/

3/22/2016 02:57:17 pm

What I'm more interested in at the moment is how "the administration" are going to disqualify Kearney from being a candidate for the upcoming board of trustees election. Any ideas?

3/22/2016 05:06:03 pm

Thanks for the comments Mrs LT. I guess my questions would be, how much of the money (e.g. RCTF etc.) would have to be returned to the state, what other violations might these mismanagement of funds involve and is this just the tip of the ice berg? Thus the request for a 10 year public audit of KMSF. I doubt that Mr. Griffith, as former head of KMSF, would expose violations that would impact his future.

3/22/2016 05:12:41 pm

Dr. Kearney a member of the BOT, now wouldn't that frost some you know whats. I hope he runs and I wish I had a vote.

3/23/2016 05:21:40 am

Apparently having more than 50% effort for administration disqualifies an individual for being a candidate for the BOT. Kearney has been complaining about his lack of a DOE. I bet they give him 51% effort for administering the janitors closets in the multidisciplinary research building!

3/23/2016 05:28:10 am

The point I was trying to make about the KMSF "issues" is "so what"? How would using clinical revenue to support RCTF be a bad thing (aside from the misuse of the funds to hire weak faculty)? Who has been harmed here? Now, if you could show that someone personally profited from manipulating the procurement process that would be a big deal.

If I were defending UK in the Kearney court case it would be very easy to make the case, with examples, that victimization and marginalization/disenfranchisement of faculty is a common practice, if not the modus operandi of the Karpf/DeBeer administration. People's actual accomplishments and intrinsic value count for nothing if you are not willing to go along with the culture of cronyism. Kearney is just a very extreme example of what happens to many people at UK on a daily basis. These are nasty people. This is what they do.

3/24/2016 03:56:54 am

Thanks again for the comments Mrs LT. I have nothing against the RCTF and thought it was a great idea. I guess my concern is that the RCTF was a pot of money that was dedicated to enhancing the research efforts of the colleges and universities throughout the state, not just ours. The use of this pot of money was supposedly predicated upon matching funds from charitable contributions from entities not affiliated with the institution. KMSF clearly is affiliated with the University of Kentucky. Therefore, using KMSF to milk funds from this pot of money is not only wrong from this perspective, but it also is unfair to the other universities who were trying to tap into this limited resource. So no matter how enterprising and advantageous it is for UK, it still, at least in my thinking, was both illegal and wrong.

With regards to the Dr. Kearney situation I totally agree that it is simply a more visible example of what unfortunately is becoming a more common practice of intimidation to silence or manipulate the masses. Shortly after I retired I received an email from a 3rd year assistant professor in the department. It so happened that on that day the department chair and a lawyer came into her office and told her she would be “given three weeks to decide whether I am going to voluntary resign and waive all my rights, or I am going to be fired by the end of June, 2015.” The appointed chair, most probably through counseling and promised incentives from his appointer, decided this was the most efficient pathway to get rid of a 3rd year assistant professor who he deemed not as productive as he would have wished. I contacted the Provost, Dr. Riordan at the time, and she at least put a halt to the process. Unfortunately, I suspect Dr. Riordan saw the light and the requisite cronyism here at the UK, didn’t like it and got out while she could. Our new Provost appears well into the cronyism, in which case one might expect something like this to be handed off to the General Council, and we are back to, ‘take the deal or…. Well anyway, I agree with your point. Any idea of when the new Dean is scheduled to take over?

3/23/2016 03:23:15 am

What a pathetic excuse for a president of a university. Our administration leads not by example but rather by what not to do. It is pretty sad when your university legal council as opposed to the president ends up running your university (or should that be ruining). I see M&M thinks they are ruling like some third world country, I am thinking more like 1970s South Africa. No wonder we can't keep or attract good people to work here. I know I am not staying around this place.

3/23/2016 05:20:07 am

"I am thinking more like 1970s South Africa." Nice- do you have anyone in particular in mind?

3/23/2016 12:19:47 pm

Take your pick.

3/24/2016 04:04:51 am

LL thanks for the comment. What can I say, I agree. I don't know much about the new Dean, but it may be worth it to stick around just to get a feel of how he plans to run the College. Who knows, he may even talk with you rather than at you. It is nice to dream sometimes.

3/24/2016 07:04:10 am

He reports to Mike Karpf.

3/24/2016 11:10:44 am

And here I thought all Deans reported directly to the Provost. Like I said, it is nice to dream.

3/24/2016 03:17:00 pm

The Dean is a member of the UK Healthcare "Leadership" team which Karpf controls. So if he wants money for anything then he has to deal with Karpf. Anything else, including Kearney harassment duties probably does have go to through the provost.
The new dean will be starting on April 1. Apparently one of his first initiatives will be to stop providing the basic sciences departments with 100% of the faculty salaries. I'm hearing this will be 90% this year and will decrease in subsequent years.

3/25/2016 04:01:11 am

Thanks again for the informative comments Mrs LT. From the sounds of what you are saying the long term plans of the new Dean are to convert the College of Medicine into a soft money research institute. I can only guess they will use the tuition revenue for building more buildings and for administrative bonuses. I can see making those that do not teach pay their salary, but unless the intentions are to eliminate postgraduate programs from the COM, I can't see this strategy of targeting basic sciences salaries doing much for the College itself. Again, those that can leave will, and although some think the major hurdle for graduating from medical school at this university is the entrance requirements, I don't think the accreditation offices agree with that. So, I guess what I am implying here is, someone has to teach the basic sciences and get these kids through their exams.

3/25/2016 04:08:42 am

Actually a lot of the basic sciences are now expected to be taught at the undergraduate level and are no longer part of step 1 of the USMLE. Like biochemistry for example. So, the need for people to teach medical students basic sciences is diminishing (and in any case this has never been a full time job that would require departments of 20-30 faculty).
The reduction in support for faculty salaries will put the onus on the departments to make the savings which I can see is likely to result in some of the overpaid more long serving faculty being pressurized into retiring. This would not be a bad thing. There are a couple of obvious candidates in your old department.

3/25/2016 04:12:35 am

Also, do you really think the COM gets any of the medical school tuition money? None of this ever comes anywhere near the college. it all stays over in main campus. Everything that goes on in the COM, including the educational programs, is paid for by the mythical state $, research $ and the funds transfer to the college from UK Healthcare.
A more interesting question then is why is the medical school tuition so high? Particularly when the facilities for teaching and education are so poor. Why not build a center for medical education (like many other places have) instead of hospital and research buildings?

3/25/2016 12:03:32 pm

Thanks again for the input Mrs LT. Having taught the 500 level biochemistry course for many semesters and to hundreds of these students, who as you are stating supposedly know it all already, I can state with great confidence that they either forgot it all or it was never taught. In addition, even with the mandated pampering of the medical school population that is required for teaching medical students any basic sciences course, many still struggle making the grade. Perhaps the attitude towards academics should be more as one medical student who was struggling with biochemistry recently declared to me, "why in the hell do we need to know biochemistry anyway?" My answer was simply that, "when they socialize medicine it will offer you other job opportunities". I figured the real reason probably was beyond his capabilities. Hopefully he is going into podiatry. From my naive perspective, I view this question somewhat like the NIH demand for prioritization of funding of translational research. When you begin translating things you do not understand you are simply fishing in shark-infested waters. A billion years of evolution dictates that everything that goes on in living plants and animals is somehow connected. It is as simple as using thalidomide to treat morning sickness. You might say that we are smarter than that now, but I am not believing it. I still think there is a lot of basic science to be learned and the volume of accumulating information is: a) much more than you can teach in undergraduate courses, and b) often outdated by the time they reach medical school. The scary part to me is that these are the potential physicians attempting to diagnose and treat my family’s illnesses and mine.

With respect to the COM medical school tuition, yes I do believe they get the revenue from that tuition. I was a part of the University Senate when they explained it, attended COM budget meetings when it was stated and have had long email discussions with Provost Tracy to clarify this issue that, in the new “value based model” the university has implemented for budgeting money to Colleges, tuition revenue goes back to the College generating it. This is the reason and only reason Dr. de Beer created the Associate Dean for Biomedical Education position, and so adamantly pushed the basic sciences departments to generate new undergraduate courses in basic sciences. It surely wasn’t because he was such a big fan of teaching, nor of basic sciences. It is the money! Approximately 500 (4 x 125) medical students paying anywhere from $25,000 to $55,000 per year comes close to 20 million dollars for medical school courses alone. Considering that the overhead is practically nothing other than teachers salaries, and many of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students are also assisting in the generation of patient revenue, the argument can be made that teaching generates much more real revenue than research. Research revenue is all targeted to the direct and indirect costs of doing it. Therefore, in reality the only real revenue research could make would be if someone identified some patentable product. Like I said before, this is all pie in the sky.

3/23/2016 01:05:16 pm

Oh, I don't know either. Here's a clue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j78wAt5BFyM

3/25/2016 12:54:51 pm

You'll have to take up the issue of when and how much biochemistry is needed by medical students with the USMLE.

The "value based model" was something the former provost was supposed to do but has never been implemented. I don't think anyone in the COM has got any money back for teaching all of the undergraduate courses that DeBeer wanted. Since you know so much about this can you point me to any documentation about this "value based budget model" and how it has been implemented and operates at UK?

3/25/2016 01:40:19 pm

Thanks again for your comments Mrs LT. With respect to how much biochemistry is needed, I guess we could just watch as they minimalize this subject area or eliminate altogether, and see how the accreditation goes, or better yet, how the students do on their boards. The bottom line for me is that if they ever do eliminate biochemistry from the curriculum, I never want to be diagnosed or treated by any of these physicians.

With respect to the documentation on the implementation of the “value based model”, I suggest you do as I did and contact the Provost (tim.tracy@uky.edu). The Provost also sent one of his associates over to one of the Faculty Council meetings when I served on it, and this young woman went into detail explaining the implementation of this model. Perhaps it would be helpful if you asked him to send over a representative to update your department on the implementation of the model. If he does, then you could update all of us. Alternatively, if you are on the University Senate, you might contact Dr. Capilouto (the supposed Senate Leader although he rarely attends) and ask him to update the Senate on the implementation of this model. I hope these suggestions are helpful.

3/25/2016 03:12:09 pm

Dan, this new model, whatever you want to call it, has never been implemented at UK. Nothing has changed significantly. And in any case, the value based model might value research over teaching and scupper all of your plans to generate fat stacks from all of the teaching opportunities for basic scientists :-). Just look at how upset you got when I told you that the basic sciences faculty salaries were now being valued at 90% of what they had been in the past!

Obviously when it comes to basic science requirements for physicians its the people who control the accreditation process (ie the USMLE who run the board exams) who think that the doctors in training can get all of the biochemistry they need at the undergraduate level.

3/25/2016 05:24:17 pm

Thank you again Mrs LT for your perspectives on this matter. I only know what I experienced while working at UK, and the information that was related to me by the Provost in emails, the President of the university while on Senate, and the person sent to overview this at Faculty Council. Sorry, but I am going to go with these folks until I hear different from them. Being the skeptic (generally based upon experience), I am more likely to believe that the hospital administration would prefer that everyone believe that they do not receive this revenue, because then they could use it or misuse it as they see fit.

With respect to basic sciences teaching, having worked as an independent researcher in a research institute and as a research scientist in industry, I personally believe that being an academic researcher trying to maintain a research program while at the same time teaching, is by far more challenging than any of these others. Along these same lines it is also the most rewarding occupation of the group. I believe researchers at a university who do very little to no teaching and diss the quality or quantity of research performed by those who do both are clearly shouting from the cheap seats. This is a "University" after all, and not a research institute. Being one of only 2 universities in the state offering the PhD degree, our primary function is both undergraduate and graduate education. This idea that we can climb the ladder of stardom as a research university by hiring in researchers will never happen until our endowments in this area reach a level that can make that possible. This of course will never happen until we get an administration that recognizes that this is their job and not that of the faculty.

3/26/2016 03:02:03 am

Nobody is "dissing" anyone. Your old department jumped on board with DeBeer's undergraduate teaching plan and, as far as I know, has not got any money back yet in return. Now I am sure that your hefty colleague who became Associate Deanlet for these programs got an equally hefty increase in her salary. In fact, I know that some of your younger colleagues are questioning why they were roped into this in the first place. Yet another idiotic thing DeBeer did (although in this case probably nobody was significantly harmed in the process).

Nobody is disputing the value of teaching. If somebody asked me to teach in a program that I felt was high quality and worthwhile I'd do it (even though all of my salary is paid for by grants). But, in all of the time I have been at UK I've not seen anything that I think is worth my time getting involved in so I have focused on training people in research and mentoring early career faculty. Which is just as challenging as whatever it is that you used to do.

Anyway, lets all get back to discussing Saint Kearney and his battle against the evil doers of UK Healthcare.

3/26/2016 05:09:15 pm

Just too pretty a day to monitor the blog. I fully agree Mrs LT, time to move on to the important stuff, that being the concerted effort of the administration to silence a very human individual who so audaciously had the nerve to investigate this administration's potentially unethical and perhaps illegal approaches to governing the body of employees they were given the privilege to lead.

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Another Dr. Kearney Update

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