Once again, for those new to this blog site, at present there are 41 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. Feel free to comment should you wish. No email address is required to make a comment so anonymity is strong. Due to some previous abuse of this right to anonymously comment, I have had to include an approval option, but I try to approve within 24 hours. 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. Finally, for those just looking for a good summary of the Dr. Kearney case, simply scroll down three posts to the 12/10/2016 post. For social media developments on the Dr. Kearney situation I would encourage you to also visit the excellent "Save Dr. Kearney Facebook Page":
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=save%20dr%20kearney
The comment section of the previous blog post ended with discussions of the poor performance of UK hospital in the 2016 Press Ganey Physician Engagement Survey (see the blog posts on 6/6/2016: Press-Ganey Employee and Physician Engagement Survey, and on 6/29/2016: “Spinning the Press-Ganey Survey”). You will remember, in this survey of the over 1,200 hospitals and 63,000 physicians, UK ranked in the bottom 1% for administration engagement with physicians and faculty (See Survey). Following these horrible results and the leaking of the results to the UKHC community, EVPHA Dr. Karpf, on June 8, 2016, sent a broadcast email to the UK physicians claiming, "We've Heard You" and "we need to understand the issues."
Well a year has passed, and you guessed it, the 2017 survey results have surfaced. Unfortunately, I do not have the complete survey results, but Dr. Davy Jones has forwarded an email on this subject matter that he has sent to the College of Medicine Faculty Council, as well as a variety of other university administrators. This email discusses some of these results, and Dr. Jones has been kind enough to okay the posting of the email on the blog.
Dr. Jones' Email
From: Jones, Davy
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 11:56 PM
To: Jicha, Gregory A; Erickson, Deborah R; Kiessling, Stefan; Peterson, Martha L; Kilgore, Michael W; Bailey, Paula D; Martin, Julia E; Kelly, Thomas; Sloan, Paul; Iocono, Joseph; Sullivan, Patrick G
Cc: DiPaola, Robert S; Rowland, Michael L; Huddleston, Alyssa A; Tracy, Tim; Karpf, Michael; Capilouto, Eli
Subject: RE: FC agenda 6-20-17 re: Implications of Press Ganey Survey Results
Greg,
May I please recommend that an item expressly shown on the College Faculty Council agenda be something to the effect ‘Press-Ganey Survey Results.’ Dean DiPaola has (refreshingly) candidly presented at an open forum last week, and to the Board of Trustees HealthCare retreat today, the (again) dismal results for the faculty ‘satisfaction’ survey part (bottom 6% nationally) and for the survey part on the faculty’s view of lack of administrative engagement with faculty (for the second year in a row, bottom 1% nationally, both down from the previous bottom 2% national ranking). However, as far as the COM faculty-at-large can tell (most of whom could not attend the forum last week or the retreat today out at Keeneland), there continues to be a hopeless disconnect of the in-a-bubble mid/higher administration to the in-the-trenches faculty. To wit,
(1) the announcement (senior signed by Dr. Cofield) for the forum last week had the disingenuity to characterize the miserable bottom 6%/1% results as “we saw a slight improvement in both the employee engagement survey and the physician engagement survey”
and
(2) the email we just received from EVPHA Karpf, whose spin control could only say “Key insights on employee and physician engagement survey results were shared by Cofield and Dean Bob DiPaola, MD, which have already been shared within UK HealthCare and the College of Medicine.”
Given that our College Faculty Council minutes circulate to all basic science and clinical faculty, I would like for our minutes to show (untarnished by (1) and (2) above) what Dean DiPaola has candidly described publicly about these survey results and what his plans are to move the college beyond the ‘bottom 1%’ administrative ambiance he inherited.
Tx.
Davy
Cc: Board of Trustees
Davy Jones, Professor
Dept. of Toxicology and Cancer Biology
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
________________________________________________________________________________
Well as this email suggests, it would seem that perhaps Dr. Karpf and the senior administration did not “hear you”, nor did they apparently “understand the issues”. It’s either this, or they really do not give a hoot, view it all as “fake news” and simply make these overture statements to sound good.
In the comment conversations with Mole on the previous blog post, he/she asks the important question: “We all know the faculty engagement is horrible but aside from sacking everyone in a management position what can be done to improve it?” I attempted to respond to this question by first looking at factors that might have contributed to this low morale scenario. Some I came up with included:
Potential Morale Impactors:
1. The Dr. Paul Kearney vendetta that has been festering for the past 3 years: This extremely abusive treatment of a tenured faculty member, talented trauma surgeon and respected teacher reflects an administration that does not believe in due process or faculty rights. Furthermore, it suggests an administration that not only doesn’t listen, but also one that doesn’t want to hear and one that punishes those who speak out.
2. Restructuring of Performance Evaluations: These dictates that minimized teaching and service credit while emphasizing the importance of RVUs, clearly frustrated many.
3. Staff Restructuring: The $500,000 Price-Waterhouse-Cooper restructuring/reduction of the staffing in the hospital, with its creation of the I.B.Useless clearly had its impact on staff morale.
4. KMSF Secrecy: The denial of open records requests, the many lawsuits against open records requesters and the refusal of a detailed public audit of KMSF suggests potential mismanagement of UKHC revenue.
5. Faculty Exodus: The large number of talented physician faculty that have left over the past 5 years not only stresses the workload of those that have to cover their loss, but also involves the time consuming and expensive job of replacing these people.
6. Administrative Overload: There are 20 or more individuals in the College of Medicine with the word Dean in their title. With this many people barking out orders and creating new burdens, it again becomes difficult to do what one needs to do.
These are just a few of the ones that I can think of. Not being a physician trying to balance a patient workload while at the same time teaching interns, residents and fellows, I feel certain there are others that folks out there might wish to add. Please feel free to do so in the comment section.
The next obvious question is "what possible solutions might these contributing factors point to?"
Possible Solutions?
1. Changing of the Guard: As mentioned in the comment section, the replacement of the College of Medicine Chair and the EVPHA might be a good start. As the saying goes, respect is earned. Unfortunately, very few hospital workers and faculty respected the former CoM Chair and EVPHA. I believe this was simply because these two were both very poor listeners. Furthermore, if you view the buildings as much more important than the people occupying them, you can’t expect the people in them to respect you. Some view respect as something that comes with the position, but it is not. Furthermore respect is a central component of morale and therefore “engagement”. From what I read in Dr. Jone’s email, it at least appears that the new Dean is a bit more open and perhaps responsive to this survey than our previous Dean. Hopefully the new EVPHA might likewise view these survey results with concern rather than complacency.
2. Resolving the Dr. Kearney Case: This thing has been going on for 3 years now and it is nothing but a festering wound. The UK lawyers are dragging everything out in an attempt to drain time and treasure from Dr. Kearney and win the case by perhaps the only way they can. As mentioned multiple times before, a vast majority of Faculty, Residents, Fellows, Staff and the public have voiced support of Dr. Kearney. For me it has never been a question of liking or disliking Dr. Kearney, but rather the simple truth that the the lawyers and administration of this university have conspiratorially tried to fire someone for a behavior they have endorsed for over 25 years. Many of the conspirators that created this monster have moved out, or soon will be moving out. It is time to resolve this thing. Some have expressed the opinion that the only resolution is the returning of patient privileges, rescinding the sanctions imposed on Dr. Kearney and restitution of the financial losses incurred by this drawn out legal battle. I am not sure all of that is totally necessary. I know the university lawyers tried to threaten and lowball Dr. Kearney into “taking the deal or we will ruin your career”. Maybe an acceptable deal might be worked out if they brought in some less arrogant, threatening and biased lawyers. Have they ever really asked Dr. Kearney what it would take to settle this?
3. Ask the People: If the new Dean really wants to know the mood of his people and what might be causing discontent and morale problems, ask your faculty, physicians and staff. One possibility is Surveys (e.g. hire an outside group to do it, start a personal blog like this one, etc.) in which folks can comment on issues or even raise issues of concern in an anonymous fashion.
4. Review Administrators: Under the former EVPHA and Dean, 3 and 6-year administrator reviews were basically rubberstamped. Here again, if the new Dean really wishes to know what’s happening, afford the faculty and staff the opportunity to anonymously voice their perspectives with regard to how the various Deanlets, Chairs and Division Chiefs are performing.
5. A Public Audit of KMSF: Silence all of those KMSF critics by having that detailed public audit. This might also help resolve some of the open record lawsuits.
Well once again, these are my limited suggestions and thoughts on the matter. Feel free to offer constructive ideas that I may have overlooked.
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=save%20dr%20kearney
The comment section of the previous blog post ended with discussions of the poor performance of UK hospital in the 2016 Press Ganey Physician Engagement Survey (see the blog posts on 6/6/2016: Press-Ganey Employee and Physician Engagement Survey, and on 6/29/2016: “Spinning the Press-Ganey Survey”). You will remember, in this survey of the over 1,200 hospitals and 63,000 physicians, UK ranked in the bottom 1% for administration engagement with physicians and faculty (See Survey). Following these horrible results and the leaking of the results to the UKHC community, EVPHA Dr. Karpf, on June 8, 2016, sent a broadcast email to the UK physicians claiming, "We've Heard You" and "we need to understand the issues."
Well a year has passed, and you guessed it, the 2017 survey results have surfaced. Unfortunately, I do not have the complete survey results, but Dr. Davy Jones has forwarded an email on this subject matter that he has sent to the College of Medicine Faculty Council, as well as a variety of other university administrators. This email discusses some of these results, and Dr. Jones has been kind enough to okay the posting of the email on the blog.
Dr. Jones' Email
From: Jones, Davy
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 11:56 PM
To: Jicha, Gregory A; Erickson, Deborah R; Kiessling, Stefan; Peterson, Martha L; Kilgore, Michael W; Bailey, Paula D; Martin, Julia E; Kelly, Thomas; Sloan, Paul; Iocono, Joseph; Sullivan, Patrick G
Cc: DiPaola, Robert S; Rowland, Michael L; Huddleston, Alyssa A; Tracy, Tim; Karpf, Michael; Capilouto, Eli
Subject: RE: FC agenda 6-20-17 re: Implications of Press Ganey Survey Results
Greg,
May I please recommend that an item expressly shown on the College Faculty Council agenda be something to the effect ‘Press-Ganey Survey Results.’ Dean DiPaola has (refreshingly) candidly presented at an open forum last week, and to the Board of Trustees HealthCare retreat today, the (again) dismal results for the faculty ‘satisfaction’ survey part (bottom 6% nationally) and for the survey part on the faculty’s view of lack of administrative engagement with faculty (for the second year in a row, bottom 1% nationally, both down from the previous bottom 2% national ranking). However, as far as the COM faculty-at-large can tell (most of whom could not attend the forum last week or the retreat today out at Keeneland), there continues to be a hopeless disconnect of the in-a-bubble mid/higher administration to the in-the-trenches faculty. To wit,
(1) the announcement (senior signed by Dr. Cofield) for the forum last week had the disingenuity to characterize the miserable bottom 6%/1% results as “we saw a slight improvement in both the employee engagement survey and the physician engagement survey”
and
(2) the email we just received from EVPHA Karpf, whose spin control could only say “Key insights on employee and physician engagement survey results were shared by Cofield and Dean Bob DiPaola, MD, which have already been shared within UK HealthCare and the College of Medicine.”
Given that our College Faculty Council minutes circulate to all basic science and clinical faculty, I would like for our minutes to show (untarnished by (1) and (2) above) what Dean DiPaola has candidly described publicly about these survey results and what his plans are to move the college beyond the ‘bottom 1%’ administrative ambiance he inherited.
Tx.
Davy
Cc: Board of Trustees
Davy Jones, Professor
Dept. of Toxicology and Cancer Biology
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
________________________________________________________________________________
Well as this email suggests, it would seem that perhaps Dr. Karpf and the senior administration did not “hear you”, nor did they apparently “understand the issues”. It’s either this, or they really do not give a hoot, view it all as “fake news” and simply make these overture statements to sound good.
In the comment conversations with Mole on the previous blog post, he/she asks the important question: “We all know the faculty engagement is horrible but aside from sacking everyone in a management position what can be done to improve it?” I attempted to respond to this question by first looking at factors that might have contributed to this low morale scenario. Some I came up with included:
Potential Morale Impactors:
1. The Dr. Paul Kearney vendetta that has been festering for the past 3 years: This extremely abusive treatment of a tenured faculty member, talented trauma surgeon and respected teacher reflects an administration that does not believe in due process or faculty rights. Furthermore, it suggests an administration that not only doesn’t listen, but also one that doesn’t want to hear and one that punishes those who speak out.
2. Restructuring of Performance Evaluations: These dictates that minimized teaching and service credit while emphasizing the importance of RVUs, clearly frustrated many.
3. Staff Restructuring: The $500,000 Price-Waterhouse-Cooper restructuring/reduction of the staffing in the hospital, with its creation of the I.B.Useless clearly had its impact on staff morale.
4. KMSF Secrecy: The denial of open records requests, the many lawsuits against open records requesters and the refusal of a detailed public audit of KMSF suggests potential mismanagement of UKHC revenue.
5. Faculty Exodus: The large number of talented physician faculty that have left over the past 5 years not only stresses the workload of those that have to cover their loss, but also involves the time consuming and expensive job of replacing these people.
6. Administrative Overload: There are 20 or more individuals in the College of Medicine with the word Dean in their title. With this many people barking out orders and creating new burdens, it again becomes difficult to do what one needs to do.
These are just a few of the ones that I can think of. Not being a physician trying to balance a patient workload while at the same time teaching interns, residents and fellows, I feel certain there are others that folks out there might wish to add. Please feel free to do so in the comment section.
The next obvious question is "what possible solutions might these contributing factors point to?"
Possible Solutions?
1. Changing of the Guard: As mentioned in the comment section, the replacement of the College of Medicine Chair and the EVPHA might be a good start. As the saying goes, respect is earned. Unfortunately, very few hospital workers and faculty respected the former CoM Chair and EVPHA. I believe this was simply because these two were both very poor listeners. Furthermore, if you view the buildings as much more important than the people occupying them, you can’t expect the people in them to respect you. Some view respect as something that comes with the position, but it is not. Furthermore respect is a central component of morale and therefore “engagement”. From what I read in Dr. Jone’s email, it at least appears that the new Dean is a bit more open and perhaps responsive to this survey than our previous Dean. Hopefully the new EVPHA might likewise view these survey results with concern rather than complacency.
2. Resolving the Dr. Kearney Case: This thing has been going on for 3 years now and it is nothing but a festering wound. The UK lawyers are dragging everything out in an attempt to drain time and treasure from Dr. Kearney and win the case by perhaps the only way they can. As mentioned multiple times before, a vast majority of Faculty, Residents, Fellows, Staff and the public have voiced support of Dr. Kearney. For me it has never been a question of liking or disliking Dr. Kearney, but rather the simple truth that the the lawyers and administration of this university have conspiratorially tried to fire someone for a behavior they have endorsed for over 25 years. Many of the conspirators that created this monster have moved out, or soon will be moving out. It is time to resolve this thing. Some have expressed the opinion that the only resolution is the returning of patient privileges, rescinding the sanctions imposed on Dr. Kearney and restitution of the financial losses incurred by this drawn out legal battle. I am not sure all of that is totally necessary. I know the university lawyers tried to threaten and lowball Dr. Kearney into “taking the deal or we will ruin your career”. Maybe an acceptable deal might be worked out if they brought in some less arrogant, threatening and biased lawyers. Have they ever really asked Dr. Kearney what it would take to settle this?
3. Ask the People: If the new Dean really wants to know the mood of his people and what might be causing discontent and morale problems, ask your faculty, physicians and staff. One possibility is Surveys (e.g. hire an outside group to do it, start a personal blog like this one, etc.) in which folks can comment on issues or even raise issues of concern in an anonymous fashion.
4. Review Administrators: Under the former EVPHA and Dean, 3 and 6-year administrator reviews were basically rubberstamped. Here again, if the new Dean really wishes to know what’s happening, afford the faculty and staff the opportunity to anonymously voice their perspectives with regard to how the various Deanlets, Chairs and Division Chiefs are performing.
5. A Public Audit of KMSF: Silence all of those KMSF critics by having that detailed public audit. This might also help resolve some of the open record lawsuits.
Well once again, these are my limited suggestions and thoughts on the matter. Feel free to offer constructive ideas that I may have overlooked.