* Note: To see PDF Documents cited in this post simply click on the underlined segment
Some interesting comments on the previous post (might be worth the short investment of time to read) as well as some new information, appear to merit a new post.
One of the more interesting comments in the previous post is this one made by “The Mole”.
“Apparently UKHealthcare physicians participated in a Press-Ganey Physician/faculty engagement survey. The results are in and UK/UkHealthcare scored in the lowest percentile group of this survey in the entire country. My sources tell me that the administration (Karpf) are thinking about what to do with this information and how to avoid releasing it. Maybe a good start would be to take the survey seriously and think about why faculty are so disengaged.
And, of all of the units at UK that participated the absolute worst was surgery and I'm sure this has something to do with the awful leadership and the Kearney stuff that’s being discussed here.”
Unless you do not work in UK hospital or UK College of Medicine, these findings are probably of no big surprise. The real disappointment is the lengths to which the administrations (College, hospital and University) have been willing to go to make this happen. As has been stated multiple times on the blog, these administrations view the buildings as much more important than the people occupying them. The question is, when will they learn that true respect is earned in academic institutions and not bought or coerced.
The new information consists of last Thursday’s decision handed down by the Attorney General’s office with respect to Dr. Hatemi’s open records request for University of Kentucky Healthcare Compensation Planning Committee meeting minutes. Bill Swinford, the University of Kentucky’s Official Records Custodian and President Capilouto’s Chief of Staff, basically denied Dr. Hatemi's request informing him that "the Office of the Executive Vice President for Health Affairs has advised that there are no documents responsive to the request." Upon receipt of the committee and Mr. Swinford’s denial of the request, Dr. Hatemi initiated an appeal to the Attorney General’s office.
You can access that 8-page decision here (Document 1B) but the summary states:
“Summary: The Attorney General has the authority to request additional documents in deciding Open Records or Open Meetings appeals. The record before the Attorney General shows that the University of Kentucky Healthcare Compensation Planning
Committee is a public agency and failed to meet its statutorily assigned burden of proving that it conducted an adequate search for requested meeting minutes.”
As you might garner from the wording of this summary, one approach used by Mr. Swinford in his response to the appeal was to simply declare that the Attorney General does not have the authority to request these documents. To which the Attorney General’s office proceeded to provide precedents for its authority.
Along these same lines, Mr. Swinford then tried to declare that although membership consists of the eighteen clinical department chairs as well as a small number of other members selected by KMSF, this committee was not part of the university (keeping in mind that KMSF was previously declared by this office to be part of the University). The Attorney General’s Office once again wasn’t buying this excuse.
Finally, Mr. Swinford suggested that no meeting minutes existed. But considering things like salary compensation, bonuses and other decision-making agendas were part of these meetings; the Attorney General’s office wasn’t buying this either. If you read the document you can almost feel the frustration the Attorney General’s Office was experiencing trying to pry information out of these guys.
The most logical interpretation for the above unwillingness of the administration to provide these documents is simply that they want to keep the information from these meetings “secret”. Something is rotten in Denmark, or Lexington for that matter, when the administration at a public institution feels it needs to hide from the public its financial data and financial management practices.