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End of Year Summary

12/15/2015

22 Comments

 
Once again, for those new to this blog site, at present there are 7 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.

So as we close out this 2015-year I would like to overview the content thus far in this Dr. Paul Kearney blog and the events that precipitated it. * Item 14 added 12/27.
  1. Twice in 2014 Dr. Paul Kearney suggested, in the presence of Dr. Michael Karpf, an audit of KMSF finances.  Both occasions resulted in verbal threats.
  2. In early 2015 Dr. Kearney was cited for fowl language in the trauma ward, in essence using swear words while performing medical procedures on a patient.
  3. This incident resulted in Dr. Karpf’s assembly of a committee defined by Dr. Bernard Boulanger, that: a) revoked Dr. Kearney’s patient privileges, b) revoked Dr. Kearney’s tenured faculty member and teaching privileges, c) barred Dr. Kearney from entering the UK campus d) barred Dr. Kearney from talking with anyone on the UK campus, e) declared to Dr. Kearney’s associates that he was a dangerous man, f) removed Dr. Kearney’s computer and personal hard drive from his office, g) changed the locks on Dr. Kearney"s office door, and h) blocked Dr. Kearney’s university email while at the same time monitoring all incoming private emails to this address.
  4. Dr. Kearney filed a Whistleblowers lawsuit against the university.
  5. The University lawyers met with Dr. Kearney, offered him some financial deal that required him to leave the university and told him to either take the deal or they would destroy his career.
  6. In an apparent attempt to both carry out this plan to destroy his career and to sanction the actions taken in 3 above, a 3 person committee of the Board of Trustees met in an open meeting (that I attended) in the smallest conference room they could find in Patterson Office tower (filled past standing room only with Dr. Kearney supporters) to “hear” the charges. The meeting consisted of 20-minute presentations by lawyers for the university and Dr. Kearney. No one else was allowed to utter a word.  The committee members recessed for 5 minutes, returned and one of the committee members read from what was clearly a prescripted affidavit that in essence stated they were siding with the university lawyers and removing Dr. Kearney’s patient privileges. To avoid questions they immediately adjourned and ran out of the room with their bodyguards. Of interest was the observation that some of the residents who attended this meeting received emails stating that if they spoke up during the meeting they could lose their job.
  7. During all of the above President Capilouto received over 120 letters of support for Dr. Kearney, many from colleagues who have worked with him, colleagues who were trained by him and patients whose lives he had saved. Beyond this, the resident students showed their confidence and support of Dr. Kearney by awarding him a Lifetime Achievement Award, his physician colleagues showed their support by voting him to represent them on the University HealthCare Colleges Council and his faculty colleagues showed their support by voting him to represent them on the University Senate.
  8. In a subsequent Board of Trustees Health Care Committee meeting (of which Michael Karpf and Bernard Boulanger are non voting Ex Officio members) the committee voted to uphold the revoking of Dr. Kearney’s patient privileges, but due most probably to the arguments presented by our faculty trustees who were able to attend the private discussion session, restored all of Dr. Kearney’s tenured faculty member privileges. 
  9. In complete defiance with the Board of Trustees edicts, President Capilouto supposedly convened a separate committee that decided that Dr. Kearney may not talk to medical students or residents and may not attend any public lectures or go to any clinical areas of the university. His office was moved out of Chandler Hospital and his salary was put under review. Furthermore, he was told that if he wishes to consult or work outside of UK, he would have to get approval from the medical school dean.
  10. Then in an attempt to cover his you know what, President Capilouto tells his side of the story in a Herald Leader article, in a presentation to the University Senate and in an email to the faculty. In these documents he attempts to justify his actions citing some lawyer’s definition of academic freedom. Unfortunately somehow it seems disingenuous to speak of mutual respect and at the same time do everything you can to destroy the career of a tenured faculty member and outstanding and highly respected trauma surgeon. This becomes especially relevant in an academic community when one takes into consideration that the charges and punishments were defined by a committee personally selected by Michael Karpf, and arrived at in the absence of the accused tenured faculty member. It would be interesting to know what President Capilouto’s lawyer friend thinks of this system of jurisprudence.
  11. Then in early November the hospital administration took a minor hit when the Attorney General Jack Conway ruled that KMSF is a part of the university and therefore a public institution and subject to open records law. Of course UK decided to appeal this decision. Mark Randall, the current head of KMSF, when attempting to justify UK’s decision to appeal, pulled out the old “UK always appeals Attorney General opinions that state that the university should disclose records concerning patient privacy and patient safety”. To begin with, Mr. Randall makes it sound like this is a common occurrence, but in reality the only other UK appeal that comes to mind of an Attorney General decision that concerned patient records was the recent embarrassing child mortality statistics that the university knew it would not win and therefore provided. Secondly, almost everyone knows that individual patient records are automatically protected by HIPPA regulations and therefore protected from the open records laws. Probably knowing this Mr. Randall then pulled out the old ‘disclosure of trade secrets’ line as another excuse for not releasing public records. This sort of interested me, because personally I would like to know how many of these ‘trade secret financial practices’ that they have been using are in fact legal and how many are not? Well anyway, as one blogger posted, it will be interesting to see what becomes of this.
  12. In a related topic, as released by one of our bloggers, it now appears that KMSF is attempting to do some rapid fence mending and politicking. Mark Randall is forming a “Faculty Communications Advisory Committee” in this supposedly not public entity at our public university. Two things that I thought interesting in this announcement were the attempt to distinguish the KMSF  “Corporation” from the University (not too obvious what is happening here), and secondly the suggestion that this committee will be composed of primarily KMSF Board members (did I hear someone say sanctioning committee).
  13. Finally, these issues with Dr. Kearney were brought before the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, probably in an effort to see if they could destroy his career by getting his medical license revoked. A medical investigator (Kevin Payne) working for the KY Board of Medical Licensure was assigned to the case. After reviewing any and all damning files that the university lawyers could produce dating as far back as 1990, as well as any information Dr. Kearney wished to add (which included 15 consecutive outstanding yearly faculty performance evaluations signed off on by his Chairman and Dean), he sent his report to the Board.  After receiving all the information and Mr. Payne's report, the panel met and discussed it. On December 3, 2015 the Chairman of the Inquiry Panel, Randel C. Gibson, sent a letter to the university lawyers that had the concluding statement:"Having all of the information available and being sufficiently advised, the panel found that there is insufficient evidence of a violation to warrant the issuance of a complaint, but there is evidence of a practice or activity that requires modification". I obtained the letter through public records but am unfamiliar with how to attach it to the blog. If anyone would care to see the entire letter I would gladly send it to them in an email (dnoonan48@gmail.com). Sorry UK lawyers, it looks like you will have to find another avenue for destroying Dr. Kearney's career. 
  14. It was officially announced in an email from Dr. Michael Karpf that Dr. Bernard Boulanger, the Chief Medical officer for the hospital and the physician responsible for the assembly of the committee that initially took away Dr. Paul Kearney's hospital and academic privileges (see #3 above), is leaving the university and heading to Cleveland to, ahem, be closer to Oh Canada (I'm suddenly getting flashbacks to the Vietnam war).    
 
Well these are simply the highlights of the blog. I encourage the readers to look at some of the conversations that occurred in the comments section of each post, because they add nuances not covered here.
 
I thank everyone who contributed to the blog and wish all of the readers a joyous and safe Holiday Season. Hopefully 2016 will bring a willingness to accept our responsibilities to the taxpayers that support this university. I firmly believe our university can and should stand up to the truth, whatever it might be. I might be in the minority with respect to this sentiment, but hopefully not. 

22 Comments
Bill C
12/18/2015 11:41:37 am

Thanks for the summary and update. The last item on your list is interesting. This Board of Licensure committee, in their closing statement, almost seems to be asking, “what is going on here?” What’s your take?

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Dan Noonan
12/18/2015 02:07:32 pm

Thanks for the post Bill C. I tend to agree with you. It had to be a challenge for the committee to balance out the university lawyer's attempt to present a case for this chronic issue of Dr. Kearney's behavior over his entire career at UK, against the 15 years of outstanding faculty performance evaluations (signed off by many of these same administrators making the claims); many teaching awards; many letters of praise from coworkers, students and patients and even an endowment in his name. Add to this the recent documented threats from UK lawyers and Dr. Karpf over Dr. Kearney's questioning the financial practices of KMSF as well as Dr. Kearney's embarrassment of the administration with respect to changes in the Practice Plan by a committee that hadn't met in 4 years. It is no wonder that they had trouble sanctioning this attempt to get his license revoked. One can't help but ask, what is really going on here? Hopefully we will find out in the New Year.

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John
12/19/2015 08:22:43 am

Dr. Noonan, My reading of your blog gives me the feeling that you view Dr. Kearney as some innocent victim in these proceedings. I have seen some of the transcripts from the offended and he is anything but that. His documented behavior has been crude and offensive. The sad part is that it is repetitive. Perhaps not as repetitive as the university would like everyone to believe, but all the same it appears to be something he has no intent on changing. I get where you are coming from, but still it appears to be a situation of choosing between the worst of two evils.

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Dan Noonan
12/19/2015 04:57:02 pm

Thanks for the post John. Believe it or not I tend to agree with most everything you say in this post, other than your opening statement. I in no way would categorize Dr. Kearney as a totally innocent victim here. The charges presented by the administration appear to be documented, and he himself has admitted to making mistakes in his career, as we all have. In many respects this blog is not about Dr. Kearney’s chronic behavior problems but rather the potential chronic behavior problems of the hospital and college administration, and the abuse of power that these people are using to silence anyone attempting to expose it.

With respect to Dr. Kearney, it is my belief that the hospital administration has earned the dilemma they are currently in. The administrators spent all those years signing off on outstanding performance evaluations and in essence sanctioning the behavior. In the current situation I don’t think anyone is denying the crime, it’s just that the punishment imposed clearly far outweighs the crime. That being the case one has to ask why and why now?

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Mrs LT
12/19/2015 04:19:05 pm

My sources from deep within the UKHealthcare tell me that Karpf henchman and sometime Kearney harasser Bernie "The Baker" Boulanger is leaving for what looks to me to be a fairly unimpressive job as an executive with the (distant) third place healthcare system in Cleveland OH. Maybe he knows something we don't?

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Dan Noonan
12/19/2015 05:07:36 pm

Thanks for the update Mrs LT. If true this would be a very surprising piece of information. Although it would suggest something big might be coming down, I think I will simply wait and see.

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Mrs LT
12/20/2015 06:27:37 am

He is definitely leaving but how this all fits into the masterplan for the UK Healthcare Caliphate I'm not sure. I expect there are several people who are concerned their career advancement opportunities will be stymied by some of the outside hires (impending new Dean, Chief Clinical Operations Officer) and want to get out before they are marginalized. A bonus side effect of Boulanger leaving is that if the Kerney fightback prevails (which I don't think it will) Boulanger could be conveniently scapegoated for all of the victimization etc.

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Dan Noonan
12/20/2015 12:42:57 pm

Again, I leave to play golf and get multiple posts when I return. I will have to do that more often. Thanks again Mrs LT for the update and thoughts on how this might unfold. It should be interesting. I heard that they have made an offer to the new Dean position, but am not sure of the accuracy of that. Hopefully it is not an internal appointment. I am sure we have qualified candidates, but it would be nice to get some new perspectives from someone not ingrained in the existing politics.

I also read where three committees have been formed to review and analyze three critical issues facing the COM. According to the email sent out, the purpose of the committees is to develop a white paper that will assist faculty and administration to better understand the complexity of the issues we are facing and identify potential solutions. The three critical issues and committees are:
1. Clinical Title Series Faculty – Faculty Council Chair of this committee is Dr. Deborah Erickson
2. Faculty role in shared governance- Faculty Council Chair of this committee is Dr. Paula Bailey
3. Enhanced communication between faculty and administration- Faculty Council Co-Chair of this committee is Dr. Melinda Wilson and CFAS representative Dr. Lumy Sawaki

It sounds like a potentially good start, actually including the faculty in some of the decision making processes, but only time will tell.

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Follow the money.
12/20/2015 06:36:40 am

It's time for the Herald-Leader to look into the salaries of those closest to Karpf. These are on the public database. Amazingly, these salaries do not include incentives, bonuses or benefits. This is relevant, as Karpf has created a close circle that are working very hard to keep the status quo. No different than at UCLA.

Micheal Karpf $857,036
Bernard Boulanger $463,522
Marcus Randall $635,000
Phillip Tibbs $1,119,155
Joseph Zwischenberger $819,999
Colleen Swartz $303,189

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Dan Noonan
12/20/2015 12:57:09 pm

Thanks for the info Follow the Money. It is really worse than this. In the College of Medicine we have 23 people with Dean in their title, meaning they are getting some form of enhanced salary. Add to this 7 Basic sciences departments and 18 Clinical departments with Chairs and many of the Clinical departments with Divisions that of course have Division Chiefs, all of whom get supplemented salary, you can see where the administrative costs can be enormous.

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Mrs LT
12/21/2015 03:48:44 am

These faculty engagement plans are mainly focused on pandering to clinical title series faculty.

At UK, clinical title series faculty are people who are willing to give up the greater earning potential of private practice for the lower stress “academic” environment which provides more job security and requires them to work less. A “bonus” is that they can feel good about themselves because they are now “academics”- which for them largely consists of showing residents and fellows what they do. Its possible part of the motivation for this upgrade for the clinical faculty is to pave the way to getting rid of the “special title series” which is basically a way to give tenure to “special” clinical faculty who the administration wants to suck up to but who do not meet UK’s already very low standards for the regular title series.

This is a genius move by DeBeer and co because it will immediately dilute out the “academic” point of view held by some of the basic sciences people here who jumped on the Kearney bandwagon because they think having tenure guarantees academic freedom to get paid for doing very little. At UK there are only about 10 faculty who have both an MD degree and and NIH R01 grant so, if that’s the standard for being regular title series unless something drastic happens if they get rid of the “special” designation then all of UKHealthcare’s providers will be clinical title series faculty. Coming up with a way to involve this massive constituency just makes sense, particularly as a way to drown out the “academic” point of view.

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Dan Noonan
12/21/2015 09:24:48 am

Thanks again Mrs LT for contributing. I know that the Clinical vs. Regular title debate has been around for a while. I also know that in the COM there are many faculty that are, either by choice or circumstances, unidimensional. Meaning they are teachers, researchers or clinicians. Personally I think we have room, and perhaps even a need, for all types and feel no need to label them or criticize them for their choice or plight in life. Hopefully this committee will help communicate to the administration the importance and need for all of the various faculty types in the COM.

Secondly, I’m not sure that I would agree with the generalization that “having tenure guarantees academic freedom to get paid for doing very little”. I would agree that there are some tenured faculty at the university and in the COM that no longer pull their weight, but I think that generalizing this to all tenured faculty in the Basic Sciences department is a bit unfair. Furthermore, I am of the view that pulling ones weight does not necessarily require one to have a funded research program. Some instructors may present the valid argument that their teaching brings in more real revenue into the COM than most funded research programs. Their argument might included the fact that, for example, medical students pay anywhere from $35,000-$55,000 per year in tuition. With over 500 students (4 x ~ 125 students/class) paying this each year we are talking, on the average, about 15-20 million dollars in revenue coming into the COM from this source. The beauty of this revenue is that it has very little overhead in that it uses very few utilities and very little building space. The major expense is the salary of the instructors, and as much as some may disagree with this, the state pays for the majority of this. Furthermore, many of these students are themselves producing revenue for the hospital with their patient practices.

Research on the other hand is much less cost effective. The COM may bring in 60-70 million dollars per year in funded research, but that money is already spent in that it is targeted to the research being performed. The only money the COM receives out of the deal are in the indirect costs area, which for NIH grants would be 48% and for most other grants is much less. Unfortunately this money is targeted to the university and not strictly to the COM. It also pays for administrator salaries, grant management, utilities, building maintenance etc. for research programs throughout the university. Finally the space, equipment and utilities needs are massive compared to teaching because each researcher has to have his/her own space. I am sure some may present the argument that these research programs have the potential of identifying new patentable products that will bring in mucho dinero, but that argument, at least to me, is pie in the sky.

Finally, I think simply because there are a few people out there that abuse tenure it is no reason or excuse to get rid of tenure. Tenure is the only protection faculty have against administrative abuse and whims. Furthermore, if you eliminate tenure from a state university like UK (as many of our administrators would like to see happen) I suspect both faculty retention and faculty recruitment will surface as major issues.

Mrs LT, I may be wrong here but your comments suggest that you believe funded research faculty and programs are most important, and should be the top priority for the COM. Personally, I do not agree with this. As I mentioned earlier, I am all for promoting research programs, just not at the expense of our education obligations. I really like some of the things Mark Evers is doing to try to stimulate research and even resuscitate faltering research programs, but again, my prejudice is that we are an education facility first and a research facility second. If the COM wants to prioritize research first and have a cadre of faculty that do nothing but great research, they should develop a research institute wherein the faculty there do not have to pretend that they are both teachers and researchers. These people would not have to worry about tenure and could pay their salaries out of their grants. Promotions could be under some research track title and some sort of internally funded program could be used for bridge funding. Expanding what I said above, I can see where there is room in the COM for teachers, teaching researchers, clinicians, clinician teachers, clinician teaching researchers and simply researchers. In fact we already have these, it is just a matter of recognizing and supporting the value of each of these.

Well anyway, thanks again Mrs LT for keeping the blog lively. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Holiday Season.

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JK
12/26/2015 10:47:13 am

Dan, Has anyone considered the possibility that the university hospital may be attempting to divest itself from the controls of the university and become a private hospital? I don’t know if this is possible, but it might be a way that they could try to get around the public records issues and consequences. I am not sure how it would work with the medical school connections, but it would sort of fit in with all of their expansion and reorganization efforts. I just thought I would throw it out there.

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Dan Noonan
12/26/2015 01:56:13 pm

Hi JK, Thanks for the post and I hope your Christmas (if you celebrate it) was a good one. Interesting thought, but like you I am not sure how they would be able to pull something like that off. Seems unlikely, but you never know. Avarice and fear can be powerful forces.

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JK
12/27/2015 09:22:17 am

Come to think of it I am not sure that they really need to go private to accomplish what they really want, because Mark Randall has made it clear with his addition of "Corporation" to the KMSF title that they are working hard on this avenue of hiding the financial practices of this public university hospital from the public.

Bill
12/27/2015 12:18:49 pm

Dan, with reference to item #14, also just in, the rumor is spreading fast that the COM Dean, Dr. Fred deBeer, is straddling a narrow fence between retirement and disciplinary proceedings for some form of mismanagement of grant funding.

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Dan Noonan
12/27/2015 03:23:14 pm

This golf thingy works every time. Thanks for the posts JK and Bill. You might be right JK. I think privatizing the hospital might be difficult and most probably a poor business move in that I have to believe there are financial advantages just being associated with this source of state revenue, especially when blocking anyone from monitoring how the hospital finances are used is all they really appear to want to do.

Interesting rumor Bill. I'll wait to hear the official word. Although someone told me that Michael Karpf stated in a meeting that Fred deBeer is Dean for as long as he wished to be, someone else emailed me that the Dean search committee has already made an offer to someone to fill this position. Therefore, in the end it may be a moot point.

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One jumps ship.
12/30/2015 11:34:50 am

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=e238db80e2deec85e5810008f&id=48c5eab35b&e=c69106049d



Boulanger accepts executive position at Cleveland health system

We are writing with mixed emotions to tell you that Chief Medical Officer Dr. Bernard Boulanger has accepted the role of executive vice president and chief clinical officer for The MetroHealth System in Cleveland, Ohio, effective March 1. Bernie will be partnered in a leadership dyad with that system’s chief operating officer (COO) to lead all aspects of the operations of MetroHealth.

MetroHealth is a mission-driven academic medical center committed to teaching and research in its hospital and its many health centers. Each of MetroHealth’s active physicians holds a faculty appointment in the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In the past year, MetroHealth provided more than one million patient visits in its hospital and health centers and has over 100,000 visits to its emergency department each year. Dr. Boulanger has long admired MetroHealth as an outstanding Level 1 trauma center and as the only adult and pediatric burn center in the state of Ohio.

Dr. Boulanger has admirably served UK HealthCare in several roles during his tenure here in Lexington: as a trauma and general surgeon; as the medical director of inpatient services; as the associate CMO for perioperative services; as the physician executive for UK Good Samaritan Hospital and the enterprise director for surgery, endoscopy and interventional services; and, finally, as enterprise chief medical officer, a position he assumed in June 2012.

As CMO, Bernie has provided leadership in the areas of clinical operations, clinical program development, physician leader development, physician compensation, enterprise goals, clinical service quality, transparency, clinical outcomes, patient experience, patient safety, efficient practice and risk management. Dr. Boulanger has been a champion in our transition to value-based care.

Throughout his 17+ years at the University of Kentucky, Bernie has maintained steadfast focus on ensuring quality care through collaborative decision-making among the faculty and staff of UK HealthCare in partnership with our health-related colleges. Those of you who have had the fortune to work with Bernie have surely recognized his strong personal commitment to each of you, to our patients and to the citizens of Kentucky. MetroHealth has certainly attracted a committed and experienced leader to its ranks!

With this change, Dr. Boulanger and his wife Jean will be moving closer to their parents. Bernie is a proud U.S. citizen but a native of Canada and his undergraduate education, medical degree and first surgery residency were at the University of Toronto.

We will certainly make time to celebrate Bernie’s accomplishments at UK HealthCare and the College of Medicine in the days and weeks before he departs UK HealthCare on February 29. Information about these celebrations and the effort to fill the enterprise chief medical officer position at UK HealthCare will be forthcoming. Again, please extend your congratulations and a personal “thank you” to Dr. Boulanger!

Regards,
Michael Karpf, MD
Executive VP for Health Affairs
UK HealthCare / University of Kentucky

Bo Cofield, DrPH
VP & Chief Clinical Operations Officer
UK HealthCare / University of Kentucky
859-218-6640 (office)
434-882-0417 (cell)

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Dan Noonan
12/30/2015 12:25:30 pm

Thanks One Jumps Ship for posting that letter I refer to in item 14 of the review. Yes, it is now official. I agree, the ship is listing and with rough waters ahead matey, there appears to perhaps be others hanging on the foremast.

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Mrs LT
12/31/2015 05:33:30 am

So I was right about the Boulanger bail-out.

I also know that the Dean job has been offered to this person and the negotiations are at an advanced stage:

http://www.cinj.org/about-cinj/director

He's probably an OK administrator but I'm not sure he is someone with the stature and gravitas needed to really elevate the standing of the institution but after the "feel good" DeBeer years it can only be an improvement. Of course this will just result in even more spending on the Cancer Center.

I do think DeBeer is going to retire but am skeptical that he has misused grant funds, simply because he hasn't had any for quite a while. But I can dream.

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Mrs LT
12/31/2015 06:38:50 am

Someone wondered if UK Healthcare wants to become “private”. This idea touches on the frequently expressed opinion here that UK is a public institution so its records should be public and its operations should be accountable to the taxpayers of the state. The counterpoint to this is that the now <10% of the university operating budget provided by the state shouldn’t buy this level of control (and of course a disproportionately small amount of that 10% finds its way to the College of Medicine and even less (if any) trickles down to UK Healthcare. I expect that this point (along with the disadvantages of having to open the books for their business negotiations) will be the basis of the upcoming appeal contesting the KMSF open records attorney general ruling. All of this is reminiscent of the arrangements made between the State of Virginia and The University of Virginia. In 2005 the governor of Virginia signed a charter providing the University with greater autonomy in return for accepting a decrease in state support to ~5%. I am sure greater autonomy means not having people suing to look at the university accounts. I wonder if a similar arrangement could be in the future for UK and UK Healthcare? Presumably Bo Cofield knows all about how this works because he came from Charlottesville.

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Dan Noonan
12/31/2015 11:32:48 am

Thanks Mrs LT for the informative update. I really hope Fred chooses to retire. He was always a very poor listener, not looking for advice but rather the creation of a puppet population that he could subjugate. Furthermore, his strong-arm approach to governance tended to alienate those he was supposed to be leading.

I know nothing about this new Dean candidate, and not knowing the composition of the Dean Search Committee, I can’t even predict what he might be like. You seem to know much more about this Mrs LT, and I am happy to read where you think him to be minimally better than our current Dean.

With regard to the public institution issues, I have to believe that no matter what they come up with for the future status of KMSF and the hospital, there is still the issue that the Attorney General has declared the current hospital and KMSF to be a public institution and therefore open to public records laws. Furthermore, I like many others, have serious concerns with the present and past extreme measures the administration have taken to prevent disclosure of the present and past hospital financial practices. This strongly suggests something to hide. Some feel the price of exposure of any mismanagement issues that may surface are too big a price to pay, but I (and I hope I am not in the minority here) feel that if you want to be a university with any integrity you need to be willing to face and deal with issues that might impact the public persona of the university, no matter how painful they may be.

Thanks again for posting and the best to you in the New Year.

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