End of Year Summary

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.