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Graduation Celebrations

6/22/2016

13 Comments

 
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Once again, for those new to this blog site, at present there are 19 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.
* Note: To see PDF Documents cited in this post simply click on the underlined segment​

A commenter at the end of the previous Press-Ganey Survey Post noted that at a recent party held for the Acute Care Surgery Faculty and graduating Trauma Fellows, UK Marketing was employed to do a photo shoot. This was, as I am told, not for any commercial purpose, but simply for commemoration of the event and to provide these graduating students with something to take away from the party. As was noted by the blog commenter, the graduating students chose to invite their recently ostracized physician instructor, Dr. Kearney. This unfortunately seemed to irritate the Department of Surgery Chair, Dr. Jay Zwischenberger, who then in an attempt to exert his authority over the students and presumably punish them, to quote the blog commenter: “opted to deprive the attending Fellows of their final physical memories of their shared experiences in UK Trauma, and chose to confiscate the photos from this photo shoot.”
 
One can only presume that this was done out of malice towards Dr. Kearney, a physician faculty member in the Department of Surgery. This would appear to be just a continuation of the never-ending harassment regimen implemented by the College of Surgery administration, the hospital administration, the university administration and the university lawyers in their attempt to minimally silence but preferably eliminate this tenured faculty member from the university.  I can only guess what bothers Dr. Zwischenberger in this picture confiscation tactic, is the simple fact that the vast majority of students, along with a majority of hospital physicians, a majority of hospital staff, a majority of College faculty and even a majority of university faculty are not buying into this contrived vendetta.
 
Therefore, as a simple service to those students who worked and learned under Dr. Kearney (in spite of the administration’s earlier declaration that he is “a dangerous person”), I have posted below a photo from the 2016 Chief Surgical Resident Roast that many of you attended. This photo can also be downloaded should you wish here (Kearney's Kids). Lastly, if anyone else should have personal photos that they may wish to share from the earlier celebration at which Dr. Zwischenberger chose to confiscate the UK Marketing photos, simply email them to me (dnoonan48@gmail.com) and I will add them to the download. 


In the big picture, this attitude of the Chair of the Department of Surgery is totally consistent with the results of the Press-Ganey Employee and Physician Engagement Survey discussed in the previous post, wherein UK Healthcare ranked the worst in physician satisfaction and the Department of Surgery ranked the worst of the worst. I remind you this is out of 1200 hospitals and over 60,000 physicians.  Finally, this attitude also helps to explain why the Division of General Surgery alone has lost more physician faculty in the past 4 years than in the previous 25 years. This would include:
 
David Vargas MD - Colorectal -Now at Ochsner Clinic New Orleans
Heather Wright MD - Breast Surgeon -Now in private practice Florida
Shaun Mckenzie MD - Oncology -Now is Austin Texas
Shane O’Keefe  MD -Vascular -Private Practice Bowling Green Kentucky
Dan Kenady MD - Oncology - Hazard Kentucky
Ehab Sorial MD - Vascular -San Francisco
Ching-Wie Tzeng MD - Oncology -Leaving for MD Anderson
Levi Procter MD - Trauma/Critical Care - Leaving for VCU
Jesse Goddard MD - Trauma - Leaving for Penn State York PA
Cherry Song MD - Trauma - Leaving for Private Practice Trauma
Paul A Kearney MD - Trauma – Driven out by the administration
 
As one surgeon put it, “physicians speak with their feet”.  When a hospital administration fails to treat its physicians with respect, what more can you expect. Word gets out and recruitment also becomes very challenging
.

Late addition of a photo anonymously sent to me of the group picture celebrating Trauma Fellow Dr. Cherry Song's graduation from the program (see here also).

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13 Comments
Mortar
6/22/2016 07:43:06 pm

Easy to see that Dan Noonan is not a physician and thereby has no clue about why physicians leave an institution. Many physicians over the years have used UK as a stepping stone...no matter how great UK seeks to become, it will still be a hospital in a college town in a state many people do not want to live. So, it is bad that physicians have come to UK and can get a job at a better institution like Ochsner or MD Anderson? Actually most people would say that speaks very well of UK. Come here, and if you do a good job, other places will seek your services...

Several of the physicians you mentioned left to go to private practice. Sorry, but that means nothing. Academics isn't for everybody. A physician leaves UK and goes to Hazard?? Obviously dollar signs are the motivation there...

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Dan Noonan
6/23/2016 03:41:13 am

Hmmm, 11 from one division over the past 4 years, yes that sounds normal, and we are not even including people like Jerry Martin, Chand Ramaiah, Ramakrishna Venkatesh, Jay Ambati, etc. Let the parade begin. I’ll grant you, people leave for different reasons, but even an administrator advocate like yourself would have to grant that a mass exodus like this along with one of the worst national rankings in physician satisfaction are not just coincidental. Furthermore, many physicians come to UK not as a steppingstone but rather because they view Lexington as a place that they might want to live and raise a family. The administration must also believe that or they would not require physicians to sign a non-compete clause that would prevent them from simply setting up a practice in Lexington. So make all the excuses you wish for this recent exodus and morale problem here at UK hospital and its College of Medicine, unfortunately, the survey says that most everyone else are not buying them.

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Dan Noonan
6/23/2016 03:56:43 am

Ooops, where are my manners, Thanks for the comment Mortar.

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GiGi
6/24/2016 12:11:28 pm

I see where Davy Jones sent this picture to Zwisch, as well as the BoT. Coooool, maybe someone should send Zwisch one of those Kearney T-Shirts. I think he would look good in that while he played that silly harmonica.

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Bill
6/25/2016 12:57:52 pm

Well here is more good press for the UK administration to deal with. We have made the Courier Journal.

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/06/24/comment-uks-woes-no-different-than-uofls/86335176/

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Dan Noonan
6/25/2016 01:04:09 pm

Thanks for the comment GiGi and the information Bill.

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Bob
6/26/2016 06:45:30 am

http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article85821417.html

Isn't anybody going to comment on this. This is pretty much the equivalent of the UK administration sticking their middle finger up at the entire state. This comes a week after the announcement of a 5% tuition hike.

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Mole Sauce
6/26/2016 08:14:31 am

Its not just the massive salary increase for Capilouto, its the huge amount of money being spent on new construction around the campus.

This is why Capilouto wants to have more control over UKHC/KMSF- they are going to need to tap into the money to pay for all of the construction (whatever they claim, someone will have to pay for it).

What is going on here is that Capilouto tried to use Provost Riodan to get control over UKHC. That didn't work so they went to plan B which was to get rid of DeBeer and appoint their own Dean. I think the good news for all of you is that Karpf will not be around for much longer, possibly he will be gone within the year. DiPaola is already being taken around the state to "get to know" people in preparation for him taking over the "business".

But the bad news is that I don't see this restoring the COM/UKHC to the caring academic utopia that apparently existed pre-Karpf. If anything the need to generate funds from the healthcare enterprise to pay for Capilouto's efforts to pimp out the campus and improve the academic standing of the institution (to attract more high paying out of state students) is going to make things worse than they are now.

What I see as being strange is that at other places I have worked with an incoming Dean it was standard practice for all of the deanlets to tender their resignations so that the new dean could select his team. But this hasn't happened at UK, mainly because most of these appointments were made to "reward" people (literally by paying them more money) for loyalty to DeBeer, not on the basis of merit or ability.

So far DiPaola has made no major changes to the Dean's office although he has not been willing to rubber stamp several questionable recruitments that I am aware of and is apparently also not impressed with some of the candidates for the vacant basic sciences chairs. If/when he does start making changes it will be very interesting to see what he does.

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Dan Noonan
6/26/2016 05:35:04 pm

Thank you Bob and Mole Sauce for your constructive contributions. Although I see nothing that President Capilouto has done this last year that merits a nearly 50% hike in his base salary, I suspect he is still making less than the basketball and football head coaches. Also, as noted previously, even with this raise he still makes less than the Chair of the Department of Surgery, Dr. Zwischenberger and I am sure Dr. Karpf. I wonder what sort of raise they will be giving themselves this year for their outstanding performances. On the other hand, they do not need to give themselves raises because they have KMSF and their secret bonus system to compensate for any serious inequities.

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Mole Sauce (The Mole's Spicy Mexican Cousin)
6/27/2016 03:18:30 am

Zwischenberger needs to go. One strategy to engage the surgery faculty and provide better care is to organize them into "service lines" so that they work together with their colleagues in other departments/divisions to integrate post operative care and rehab. This is basically how CV surgery operates now- most of the faculty don't really report to Zwischenberger and his even more ridiculous chief of CV surgery Sibu Saha. I am not sure about these "secret bonuses". Does anyone have evidence for this or is it just something you want to throw out there in case it might be true?

The main issue with the salaries in the COM is that they have to pay "market" rates for people who actually do the work but for some unfathomable reason people in "leadership" positions who don't actually do any clinical work have to be paid more than the workers and this is what has led to these eye wateringly high salaries. Apparently this is also something that Dean Dipaola is looking into.

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Dan Noonan
6/27/2016 03:14:39 pm

Thanks again for the comments Mole Sauce. I tend to agree, administrators, especially in the hospital, unfortunately are generally the highest paid employees/physicians and most no longer see patients.

The "secret bonuses" is simply my categorization of the KMSF open records requests in this area that the hospital administrators (i.e. KMSF head and Board members) so fervently wish to hide. See previous posts.

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The Green Mole Sauce with Extra Habanero
6/29/2016 05:02:08 am

Wanted to make sure everyone saw UK Healthcare's latest "Voluntary Nonprofit" statistics.

They reported a $192,033,000 profit.

Yes, that's $192 million. A truly incredible profit for a "nonprofit" hospital. If that's what they report publicly on the surface I wonder what lies underneath?

https://www.ahd.com/free_profile.php?hcfa_id=cddd343d7bfb79150a3be9d7fc8f58ea&ek=a73d15db1e099a65a31ebb415c3b7809

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Dan Noonan
6/29/2016 07:23:44 am

Thanks The Green Mole Sauce for this information. It is quite impressive, although when they charge (meaning insurance companies) many of these patients something like a $350.00 Facility Fee just to see a physician, I am not totally surprised. Still, a 192 million dollar profit does beg the question of what is this nonprofit doing with this profit to remain nonprofit? I can only guess that by definition this "profit" is over and above the costs associated with salaries, bonuses and other expenses associated with running the hospital. As Atre Johnson use to say on Laugh In, "Very Interesting". I guess it looses its impact without the German accent.

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