The Battle for KMSF Open Records

3/31/2016

Once again, for those new to this blog site, at present there are 13 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 files cited in this post simply click on the underlined segment
As everyone reading this blog and/or the Herald Leader know, all attempts to attain public records concerning KMSF and the proceedings of the UK Healthcare Faculty Compensation Committee meetings have encountered complete resistance by the university lawyers. The issues were brought to light back in late 2015 in an appeal filed with the attorney general’s office by Dr. Lachin Hatemi, a former student at UK. As noted in the Herald Leader article, Jack Conway, the Attorney General at that time ruled:

“The Kentucky Medical Services Foundation — a nonprofit entity that pays all UK doctors — was created by UK and remains under its control, the ruling says, and therefore is a public agency that is subject to the state's Open Records Act.

Dr. Paul Kearney, a long-time surgeon at UK, lost his clinical privileges in August for unprofessional behavior. He alleged that UK administrators decided to pursue the revocation only after he started asking questions about how the foundation was spending money.”
 
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article44685831.html#storylink=cpy

The university lawyers, probably knowing that Mr. Conway was being replaced by, what they hoped would be, an administration favorable candidate, Andy Beshear, decided to fight this decision (see attached PDF UK Appeal 1). Unfortunately for the university, they lost this battle also (see attached PDF AG Response 2). As might be expected for an administration that obviously fears any revelation of how they are handling the money coming into the university through UK Healthcare,

Today Dr. Hatemi sent out the following email message to the University Senate Rules and Election Committee members along with the University appeal PDF file attached above:

Dear Members of the Senate Council and the Senate Rules and Elections Committee,

I have recently requested the meeting minutes of the UK Healthcare Faculty Compensation Planning Committee which is an official advisory body on the making of new agency policy for at least two public policy areas: (1) the performance metrics for evaluation of public employee (faculty) faculty performance and (2) how the salary of public employees (faculty) should be determined.

UK Healthcare Compensation Committee advises the Dean of College of Medicine on issues such as how much and how to pay clinical faculty members at UK.

Please note in the attached the entire tenor of the UK administration’s information philosophy, including even at footnote 4 refusing to provide the Attorney General the documentation the AG requested concerning the establishment, charge and role of the College of Medicine/UK Healthcare Faculty Compensation Committee.

Sincerely,

Lachin Hatemi M.D.

Interestingly, I think all should notice that the PDF file declaring arguments why KMSF is not a part of the university and therefore not subject to open records laws was written and signed off by the University’s own General Council, Bill Thro. I think everybody remembers ole “take the deal or we will destroy your career" professor/instructor/councilor Thro. The point being, if KMSF is “not” a part of the university, why is the university’s General Council replying to the attorney general’s decision?

Yesterday the Attorney General's office responded (see PDF file AG Response 3). Basically, the Attorney General once again denied all aspects of the University’s appeal.

I think recognizing the error in their approach, the university decided to invest more hard earned UK Healthcare money into this and legitimize the whole thing by hiring an outside lawyer, Mr. Harry L. Dadds. Mr. Dadds appears to have attempted to summarize the Thro litany and somewhat insulting document, and today sent in the following appeal to the attorney general’s office (see PDF file UK Appeal 2).

So that appears to be where we are currently at in this drama. It is clear that KMSF, the University and the hospital administrations all have something they are willing to invest a lot of money and time into, for both destroying a faculty members career and preventing the public from reviewing their financial activities. Are you not just a little curious as to what that might be? I know I am.

* One more update: The Office of the Attorney General responded to the UK Appeal 2 with this (AG Response 4). Basically it says that KMSF is subject to open records laws and that Dr. Hatemi's request is neither unreasonable or burdensome, and therefore the requested information must be provided.

57 Comments

Mrs LT

4/1/2016 04:26:07 am

I think there are some legitimate points of law here. UK are arguing that the compensation committee isn't an open meeting so it doesn't have to maintain records and they make the point that this would be the case for hundreds of advisory committees that are convened by many components of the institution. I think this is a useful summary of the statute:
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/lrcpubs/openmtgsrecords.pdf

If you look at the enforcement section and the penalties for non compliance its not clear to me what can be done to force UK to produce records it claims don't exist and the financial penalties are paltry.

The bottom line is that if you are hoping to see Moliterno, Karpf and DeBeer carted off to jail by the State Police for violating the open meetings/open records statute you are going to be disappointed.

M&M

4/1/2016 12:51:24 pm

Mrs LT, this is only one facet of the request. They either never held a meeting or more probably deleted any records of the meetings when the request came in. I personally enjoyed the excuses presented by university lawyers that Hatemi was harassing them and that the request was too burdensome. Get real. These guys are clearly hiding something.

I mean, did you read Thro's litany of BS. Where did this guy get his degree? What arrogance, to basically attempt to intimidate and then insult the office of the attorney general, and expect a favorable response. Like Dr. Noonan mentioned, it sure blows their argument that KMSF is independent of the university, when the university's general council appeals the AG's decision. Being the brilliant leaders they think themselves to be, they finally figured this one out and said, "Duh, maybe we need to get an outside lawyer to at least give the impression that KMSF is independent from the university."

Personally I don't need to see these guys go to jail. I would like it determined that this chronic behavior problem is unacceptable and they are told their patient privileges are taken away, their teaching privileges are taken away, they can't speak to anyone in the hospital, they can't enter the hospital, the doors on their offices are locked, their computers are confiscated, their UK email privileges are revoked, their email is monitored, they are given closet offices over in the Pharmacy building, their salary is reduced to the bare minimum for a basic sciences professor, they are required to produce a basic sciences research project by the end of the year and they are given all ones on their performance evaluation for not doing any teaching or physician work. Did I miss anything?

4/1/2016 12:59:01 pm

Oh yeh, their office staff are told that they are dangerous individuals and the Board of Licensure is contacted to try to get their medical licenses revoked.

Rufus link

6/5/2016 09:44:01 am

To a layman, this seems a lot of obfuscation to escape the real question raised by the multimillion-dollar payments to Medicaid, Medicare and the hired-gun lawyer. The question is, of course, who in Hazard (or Lexington) was over-billing Medicare and Medicaid by millions and why are they being protected? How long has this been going on and who's gotten rich off of it? A couple years ago, King's Daughters' Medical Center in Ashland got caught overbilling Medicare by $40 million, but its CEO at the time resigned just before it all hit the fan and bailed with a million-dollar golden parachute. Is that really what's going on here? Or what?

Dan Noonan

4/1/2016 02:39:30 pm

Thanks for the comments Mrs LT and M&M. Like M&M, I suspect this refrain of "those records do not exist" has become a mantra for the university's legal department. The important question being, did they ever exist? I guess they better hope that all board members are onboard with this, because lying about these requests I suspect could be more than a slap on the hand. It does appear that the university is spending a whole lot of money fighting this small matter of public records requests. But I guess when you are talking about the management or mismanagement of something like 200 million dollars, it might not be a small matter.

I likewise am not looking to send anyone to jail that does not belong there. The primary objective of the blog is to expose the true motivations behind the obvious injustice that is being mediated by the university and hospital administrations in their attempt to destroy a university faculty member's career.

4/2/2016 06:04:43 am

Well M&M none of that is going to happen but what I am trying to understand is how this will all play out. It seems as though UK/KMSF want to defer to the Hatemi court case which presumably can be appealed so it seems unlikely to me that there will be a rapid resolution to this even after the case goes to trial. Also, does Hatemi represent himself- all of the correspondence is addressed to him personally, not to his counsel. That sounds a bit strange to me. Is he doing this as a hobby? Whats his motivation? If I discuss that will you delete my post again?

Anyway, again, its not clear to me that the KMSF committee meetings were open or had to keep records or indeed if records of absolutely every "meeting" at UK or UKHealthcare has to keep minutes that can be made available to anyone or what actually constitutes a meeting. If I talk to a colleague about anything is that a meeting?

4/2/2016 06:12:13 am

Also, as further evidence of the way things are falling apart in the COM rumors are circulating that Jay Ambati who has been one of the most productive/successful/high profile researchers and to boot is a rare (for UK) physician scientist is leaving. And I am personally aware of 3 other well established faculty researchers who are negotiating positions at other institutions. I wonder if this is part of the "sense of stability" that Provost Tracy's email said DeBeer was providing during his disastrous time as Dean? Perhaps destroying the basis sciences departments and promoting all of his cronies and/or weaklings into "leadership" positions in the college wasn't such a good idea after all?

4/3/2016 07:23:54 am

Check this out:

http://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/powerof/

Its UK Healthcare's new "power of" advertising campaign.

As best as I can determine the picture (which is also on a large billboard on New Circle near Nicholasville) is of someone pipetting a small volume of a colorless liquid into a petri dish that contains an autoradiograph of a sequencing gel. WTF is that all about?

Maybe this is a metaphor for how out of touch with cutting edge research technologies UKHealthcare actually are?

Drive by.

4/3/2016 06:33:58 pm

What a waste of money that billboard is. I only gave it two seconds because I left UK years ago and I am continually amazed by the amount they spend on advertising. What struck me is that 99% of people won't have a damn clue what is being advertised. It wasn't immediately clear that it was an ad for UKHealthcare. Isn't clearly displaying the logo graphics arts 101.

When I left UK I was looking forward to establishing a medical practice that cut out the bureaucracy and enabled me to provide better care to my patients. I found that exactly, but I am continually disheartened by the fact that UKHealthcare is pumping out so much propaganda to fool the public. What's so advanced about a 2nd year resident taking out your gallbladder? The more successful they are, the more Kentuckians can settle for UK's sub par care.

4/4/2016 03:24:43 am

For the non scientists out there the billboard image is akin to advertising UK athletics with an image of someone shooting a basketball into a swimming pool containing an underwater football field. Maybe they should call the campaign "the power of bullshit"..?

4/4/2016 12:11:03 pm

Thanks for the comments Mrs LT and Drive by. Jay Ambati leaving would be definitely a significant blow to the COM research efforts. Unfortunately, I don’t think this concerns the administration that much. Like I mentioned earlier, I truly believe these administrators view the buildings as much more important than the people occupying them. It’s the old, if you build it they will come attitude. Therefore, you can rule like a tyrant or at least through intimidation, because everyone is replaceable. I mean, can’t you see the Nobel Laureates knocking down our doors to get here.

I was hoping (and still am) that the new Dean will turn out to be a leader of the faculty and not a crony of the administration, but I see they have put him into an office right near the EVPHA’s over in the Wethington Building. If I was him the first thing I would do would be to make sure my office wasn’t bugged and that my email wasn’t being monitored. We already know how the law office has a tendency to monitor emails. I think the new Dean could really make a statement if he wanted to by simply reinstating Dr. Kearney with his patient privileges, his teaching privileges, his old office, his computer and his original salary. Then simply let the dice fall where they may with respect to the lawsuit.

I guess they are trying to make the statement in this photo that UK is a world leader in genetic engineering. From the autorad it looks like we are still doing Maxim and Gilbert sequencing. That really puts us on the cutting edge. This has sort of become our motto, “Who cares about being good, just as long as we look good.”

4/5/2016 03:12:21 am

Ambati is definitely going to the University of Virginia. Someone showed me that he has an email account there already and he has apparently told his lab about it. The other person who left and was a great loss is Guo-Min Li- not himself a Nobel Prize winner but he authored some of the prize winning work with Paul Modrich who won it last year. And Karen Esser was a solid person who left as well. And the Pexuian Guo departure from Pharmacy after 4 years and goodness knows hoe much start up money was a huge debacle (but no great scientific loss) And thats just the tip of the iceberg- more departures are inevitable in the summer. DeBeer's mismanagement chickens are all coming home to roost and the poor old New Dean is going to have to try to right the sinking ship. Can someone remind me why we need that new research building again?

4/5/2016 07:21:38 am

I am curious to know why Dr. DiPaola accepted this UK COM Dean position? It really appears to be more or less a lateral move for him. I do not see the Dean of the COM to be much of a stepping stone, although Jay Perman managed to elevate himself to president of the University of Maryland through it.

I doubt it is location, because he went to undergraduate and med school at Utah and did his residency at Duke (meaning it also can't be for those basketball tickets). Maybe he heard about the million dollar KMSF bonuses the administrators get just for showing up for work (of course that's all hush hush, because these public records are either unavailable or "do not exist"). I don't believe he has a research program of his own, so it can't be for that prestigious "Wethington Award". Perhaps it is because of all of the ground breaking research being performed here. Alternatively, perhaps he recognizes that within the next few years, a majority of the successful researchers in the COM will have departed, providing him with an opportunity to fill these new research buildings with whomever he may wish to. Whatever the reason, like you Dr. Noonan, I sure hope he turns out to be something more than a puppet.

4/5/2016 09:03:42 am

Rutgers hired someone else to be Dean last year and I suspect that DiPaolo wanted that job and may have left because he was miffed about being overlooked.

http://rbhs.rutgers.edu/message_20150402.shtml

He has done OK as cancer center director at Rutgers but their "success" is largely because that's where Arnold J. Levine went after he left Rockefeller taking several reasonably good cancer focussed investigators with him. I assume the attraction of UK was that he can shepherd UK's efforts to become a comprehensive cancer center.

Other than that, its not clear to me what the basis of the mutual attraction might have been and it remains to be seen if he can do a better job of selectively recruiting qualified people for specific needs than the essentially random process that has been operating here for years.

As for Perman, its a complete mystery to me that anyone would find anything impressive about that strange little man.

John

4/5/2016 09:09:40 am

Dan, I think at least a few in the COM or hospital administration are reading the blog, because Mrs LT's comment about Kearney running for the faculty representative opening on the Board of Trustees has generated same concern. I heard the latest strategy for controlling COM faculty voices and opinions (especially those associated with the Dr. Kearney case) is to get a COM junior administrator (one of their guys) voted into the open faculty slot on the Board of Trustees.

4/5/2016 01:08:48 pm

Voting for the BOT slot is open and Kearney is not a candidate.
Which of the four candidates do you think might be a UKHealthcare stooge?
Lee X. Blonder (Medicine)
Terry Conners (Agriculture)
Glen Mays (Public Health)
Patrick McGrath (Medicine)

4/5/2016 02:36:52 pm

Well let's see now, it has to be one of the College of Medicine candidates, a physician and I would not be surprised to hear he is on the KMSF governing body. I'll let you figure it out from these cryptic clues.

4/5/2016 03:24:19 pm

Interesting. Of course, the only reason that Kearney hasn't been on the BOT for the past two years is that DeBeer and his stooge Biochemistry Chair Andres encouraged long suffering and highly respected faculty member Sidney "Wally" Whiteheart to run, splitting the COM vote and ensuring that the non COM candidate, Grossman, won the election.

4/5/2016 05:01:02 pm

Wow, it's been a busy place while I was gone. Thanks Mrs LT, M&M and John. I think it is a wait and see proposition with respect to the new Dean. I agree Mrs LT, the new Dean is walking into a challenging situation. Recruiting and retention go hand in hand. It is as one physician recently said to me, the major problem they are currently having in recruiting talented trauma surgeons to replace some of those leaving, is simply that one of the first things candidates do is call Dr. Kearney to get his take on the job. I remember many years ago when I was on the interview trail I interviewed for a position at a department up at Ohio State. They were obviously having some sort of internal problems and when I finished my interview I told the guy who invited me that he really needed to be more selective in the folks he chose to talk with his candidates. His reply was, “unfortunately my choices are limited”. In this day and age of Internet and social media communication, that becomes an even greater challenge.

I notice Dr. DiPaola was on (and may have even headed) the search committee for this new Dean. If he was miffed about not being asked to take the job, it is definitely his fault. Again, just my opinion.

That is interesting news about the faculty opening on the BoT John. I am not at all surprised though. This tactic has history in our College and with our former Dean. I remember in my last years at the university our department Chair, who was another of the de Beer appointees, sent out an email to the faculty noting in it that Faculty Council and University Senate elections are coming up and the Dean would like to see us getting some of "our people" onto these regulatory bodies. What that meant I am not certain, because the COM already had numerous members on the Senate. I will note that Dave Watt ultimately ended up running and being elected to the Senate.

If I had to vote from the candidates you listed, I would be voting for former Senate Chair and COM Faculty Council member, Lee Blonder. From my experiences with her on these committees, she always seemed to be a good listener and a strong advocate of the faculty. The faculty member leaving the BoT, John Wilson, is a COM faculty member and he was likewise a good listener and strong advocate of the faculty. A very important consideration when contemplating a candidate for this job (at least for me) is that of dedication to the responsibilities of this position. You really want someone who has the time and is willing to invest that time in the work that is involved. I can't envision where a division Chief who also puts in very long days seeing patients would have that.

Although I can't say much for Bob Grossman (always seemed more than willing to voice his opinion, but I am not sure if he really attempted to hear anyone else's), I do think that the 2 faculty representatives on the BoT should not be from the same college.

4/7/2016 04:14:44 am

Dan, I hope you are not naïve enough to believe that the administration is in any way looking to put a faculty advocate into this faculty representative position on the BoT. In spite of the fact that they have an entire committee to represent them (University Health Care Committee), on which sit a cadre of Ex Officio Members composed of the university president and senior administrators from the hospital, these hospital administrators feel they need to have another puppet on the BoT that they can use to further control the activities of the BoT and suppress any faculty voices. I have to wonder what they offered or threatened Pat McGrath with to get him to fall in line and take up this cause for them. I can’t see him all of a sudden saying; “Gee, seeing patients, doing surgeries and running the division leaves me with so much free time on my hands, I think I will run for the faculty representative position on the BoT.” It is this attempt to control everything, suppress faculty opinions and threaten faculty through word of mouth and emails that is destroying the college and even the hospital. When are they going to learn, they can build all the research and hospital buildings they want, but if they don’t start treating the people working in these facilities with respect, they will always be a second class college and a second class hospital.

4/7/2016 07:43:01 am

I suspect the tactic BG is not so much to get a COM administration advocate like McGrath elected into this position, but rather to prevent a COM faculty advocate like Blonder from getting there by diluting the COM/hospital voting contingent. This Kearney legal battle may eventually spill over to some decision making situations for the BoT, and they really can't have someone on the Board that might remind the Board there are actually governing regulations that provide certain rights to tenured faculty. Especially faculty that are being harassed by college, hospital and university administrators and lawyers.

4/7/2016 12:49:41 pm

Running more than one COM candidate so that neither of them gets elected certainly worked for the administration last time so why not try it again. Reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWAQ8rTBLUk&nohtml5=False

4/8/2016 04:22:01 am

More contributions, thanks BG, John and Mrs LT. I guess that in spite of the fact that most of these administrators do not teach or do much research anymore, they still are faculty, and although their actions don’t always support this, as faculty their rights need to be respected. Dr. McGrath is a well-respected surgeon and faculty member. I would hope if elected as a “faculty representative” to the BoT he would make an honest effort to represent what he feels is in the best interest of the faculty. My preference for Dr. Blonder has nothing to do with any sentiments towards Dr. McGrath or the administration, but rather the superior qualifications of Dr. Blonder. Keep in mind this faculty representative does not merely represent the COM faculty, but rather all university faculty. Dr. Blonder has not only served on the University Senate, but has chaired it. She is an excellent listener and is not afraid to speak up, therefore would be an active rather than passive faculty voice at BoT meetings. Finally, her days are not packed with seeing patients, doing surgeries, managing a division or taking call, meaning she has more time to dedicate to the work associated with this responsibility. Hopefully many other faculty, not just in the CoM but throughout the university, feel and vote this way also.

4/8/2016 07:18:46 am

Its interesting (to me at least) that McGrath doesn't appear to have sent out a personal statement in support of his candidacy for the BOT election. Am I wrong about this? I wonder why?

4/8/2016 11:25:13 am

I couldn't tell you if any of the candidates sent out a personal statement. I'm not on many mailing lists coming out of the university, especially out of the College of Medicine. Furthermore, I don't communicate through my university email account nor monitor it that frequently. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not after me.

4/12/2016 11:13:25 am

Members of the University Faculty:

This email notification is being sent to all members of the University Faculty eligible to vote in Faculty Trustee elections. The initial round of voting in the Faculty Trustee election has completed. The number of votes received by each candidate is shown below.

275 – Patrick McGrath (Medicine)
265 – Lee Blonder (Medicine)
179 – Terry Conners (Agriculture)
95 – Glen Mays (Public Health)

No candidate received more than 50% of the vote. Under the University Senate Rules, the candidates with the three highest vote totals (Patrick McGrath, Lee Blonder, Terry Conners) will advance to a final voting round. It is tentatively planned for the second round of voting to commence about this time next week.

Thank you for your participation in this important event in faculty decision-making.

Connie Wood, Chair
Senate Rules and Elections Committee

4/13/2016 03:27:00 am

Thanks for the update Mrs LT. Looks like the administration's campaign is working well. Hopefully they have the best interests of the university faculty in mind here. No matter the outcome, we will keep plugging along here on the blog as important topics or information surface.

4/13/2016 06:09:48 am

As I understand it there will now be another round of voting in which Mays will drop out. Lets hope the non-COM faculty do the right thing and don't vote for UKHealthcare stooge McGrath.

4/16/2016 02:42:27 am

UKHealthcare stooge candidate McGrath actually generated the following statement for the next round of the election. I wonder if one of these "complex issues" is the secret operations of UKHealthcare/KMSF?

I would like to thank all those who voted for me in the first round. I have been a faculty member here for more than 28 years. During that time I have served on most major committees of the University. I believe that I am well suited to address the challenges that we face and look out for the interest of all faculty. I know that I will be able to work well with the Board and influence their understanding of the complexity of the issues facing our University faculty. I am enthusiastic about this opportunity to represent the faculty and will commit the time necessary to be an effective representative. I encourage your participation in this process and value your support – Pat McGrath

Patrick C. McGrath, M.D., F.A.C.S.

4/16/2016 10:06:22 am

I think everyone needs to reflect on the fact that Pat McGrath was Paul Kearney's division chief and good friend throughout the vendetta instituted by the hospital administration. He therefore had to sign off on all of the measures taken by the administration in their attempts to drive this tenured faculty member out of the university, which means he signed off on the total disregard for a tenured faculty member's legal and university rights. It is clear where Pat McGrath's alliances will be if elected to the BoT to represent the faculty of this university. With friends like this, who needs enemies.

4/16/2016 11:56:55 am

Exactly.

Anyone who takes on a "leadership" (i.e. puppet administrator) position in any UKHealthcare/COM unit has to be willing to go along with this kind of BS. Otherwise they wouldn't have the job in the first place. And anyone who doesn't like working for these kinds of people can just leave or get forced out.

And, in cases where DeBeer has run out of stooges to put in these positions we just have some people doing 5 or 6 of these jobs at once. Like Alan Daugherty who is Cardiovascular Center Director, Physiology Chair, Senior Associate Dean for research (with mini-stooge/deanlet Geddes as his sidekick) and in case these jobs don't use up all of his leadership/administrative mojo ve's also associate Vice President for Research. Why not just focus on doing one of these jobs properly?

Take a look at all of the people DeBeer appointed as department chairs and division chiefs. McGrath actually looks relatively credible and authentic in comparison to some of these "hand picked" signature DeBeer selections.

If I was the new dean I wouldn't even know where to start with the job of fixing this mess.

4/16/2016 12:15:34 pm

Of course the person who should have had Kearney's back but didn't was odious overpaid waste of money Jay Zwischenberger.

4/16/2016 03:47:44 pm

Pat McGrath is one of the best breast cancer surgeons in the state. I have to believe that, if elected to this faculty representative position he will have to significantly reduce his workload not as an administrator, but as a surgeon. I am sure the administration knew this when they twisted his arm to run, and I am saddened that this administration would place their personal priorities directed at manipulation of the governance of college and hospital faculty over the quality of healthcare at the hospital. It is amazing that these people claim to be religious.

4/21/2016 04:05:59 am

Thanks Mrs LT, BG and AD for keeping the blog going in my absence. Not much to report at this time from this end. With respect to the BoT election, I tend to agree that although Dr. McGrath's statement suggests he will make the necessary commitment to representing faculty voices if elected to the BoT, I am not certain that either his commitment to patient care or the pressures from above will permit him to do this. I guess what really draws my curiosity is, what are the real motives of the hospital administration in this desire to put some administrator as faculty representative onto the BoT. Beyond the Kearney thing, several other thoughts come to mind including: how about trying to get the hospital or at least KMSF in some way further dissociated from the university? Or what about trying to either remove tenure altogether or reduce it to next to nothing? Or how about reorganization of the College of Medicine that was such a hotly contested issue a few years ago? All of these would need to be passed through the BoT and I am sure a faculty representative not part of the administration might have some issues with these. Although these BoT meetings are suppose to be open meetings, as we have seen with the Kearney issues, they have found ways of either suppressing this or working around it. Just some things to think about. I welcome your thoughts and opinions.

4/21/2016 04:58:43 pm

Just sort of an update. I was chatting with some colleagues and they advised me that in the near future it might be safer not to ask for UK Hospital if you or your loved ones require trauma care. With the departure or imminent departure of the majority of their experienced trauma surgeons you might be relegated to residents for your care. Maybe if they invested a little less time attempting to define the faculty representative on the BoT and a little more time resolving this serious faulty retention problem surfacing in the hospital, they might be able to save a few lives. Unfortunately, I am not sure that this even worries them. I guess when you are an administrator and an annual performance evaluation is not required to get your big bonus, why should you.

Blue

4/21/2016 06:48:54 pm

UK trauma is/was by far the strongest thing going at UK. Not according to UKHealthcare advertising, of course. You can't increase acute trauma volume with ads or Karpf would certainly have spent a tremendous load of money on it already.

The unfortunate thing about John's post is that there isn't another option in Central Kentucky. UK is the only available Level 1 trauma center. CB and St. Joe will rightfully deny you because that's how the trauma system is designed. Someone might be willing to manage you head injury at CB, but you can't count on a person on call to repair your ruptured spleen. A Level 1 trauma center insures that all services are available 24 hours.

Good luck out there. Buckle up tight and drive carefully.

4/22/2016 06:54:18 am

Thanks John and Blue for your comments. Unfortunately this faculty retention problem, as Mrs LT noted earlier, is not restricted to trauma, but as Blue noted, trauma is unique to UK and a reduction in quality of trauma care can have serious repercussions throughout the city and state.

Personally I think this problem of faculty and staff retention all boils down to one word, and that is "respect". You just can't lead highly educated populations using intimidation and threatening approaches. Those that can leave will, and they are generally the ones you would most likely want to retain. Those that, for whatever reason, have to stay, may fall in line and let their strings be pulled, but the majority will lack any respect for their leadership and this lack of respect will permeate the working environment and ultimately impact recruiting.

So what's the solution? Respect has to be earned and can't be solved by parties and publicity, but rather by a change in attitudes and approaches at the top. Unfortunately at the university hospital this may require some changes in personnel at these senior management positions. The new Dean is a start, so for me it's a wait and see if he can earn the respect of the college faculty, and ultimately have what it takes to lead as opposed to follow.

4/24/2016 08:34:50 am

This is interesting.

https://www.uky.edu/Legal/OtherDocuments.htm

4/24/2016 02:59:46 pm

Thanks Mrs LT for this addition. I have seen most if not all of these documents, because most if not all of these are documents the legal office sent to the Board of Licensure in an attempt to get Dr. Kearney's medical license revoked. As opposed to this university Legal Office site, the problem the university had with the Board of Licensure was that Dr. Kearney was able to respond to these documents. The Board then assigned a medical investigator (Kevin Payne). 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 was quite lengthy and included something like 15 consecutive years of outstanding performance evaluations signed off on by the division head, the department chair and the college dean at that time), 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”.

I obtained all of this information through a public records request, and you can do it too. These data helped to convince me that this is truly a vendetta and appears to have degenerated into a legal office that is willing to do anything (including threaten, smear, disregard faculty rights, etc.) in their effort to drive this faculty member out of the university. This has clearly become way too personal for the General Council for this university, as is illustrated in the UK Appeal 1 document above in which the university’s General Council, Professor/Instructor Thro, took it upon himself to write the appeal of the state’s Attorney General’s decision on the public records matter. Again, he was writing this for KMSF, a company he was attempting to claim was not a part of the university. If you read the response (a 5 page letter) and compare it to that of UK Appeal 2, a revised 2 page response sent in by a non-university affiliated lawyer, it becomes clear that our General Council has become so self-absorbed in taking down Dr. Kearney (and yes this really is all about Dr. Kearney in spite of the fact the records request was made by Dr. Hatemi) he is willing to seemingly insult the office of the state’s Attorney General.

With this in mind, I am in no way surprised to see a site in the Legal Office basically dedicated to smearing Dr. Paul Kearney. I personally think this site provides great support for Dr. Kearney’s Whistleblower lawsuit, in that there is a clear attempt here to smear the name of an individual following his filing of a Whistleblower lawsuit. Keep going Professor/Instructor Thro, you’re doing a bang-up job. Once again it just begs the questions: “What are they afraid of and what are they hiding”?

4/25/2016 03:27:55 am

Interesting stuff. It really does look like the General Council is trying to publicly litigate this Kearney thing on a website. They really must be worried about something. Maybe the hospital administration can talk them into putting this stuff on one of their billboards with a title something like: "This is a warning to any employee contemplating Whistleblowing".

Talk about a chronic behavior problem. It appears that it is the administrators that signed off on these performance evaluations that are the ones with the chronic behavior problem, or at least that is what that Michael Karpf appointed committee is inadvertently suggesting in their report. Maybe the law offices could set up a special site and publicly litigate the administrators for lying on Paul Kearney's performance evaluations. It is clear there must not be much to do in the General Council's office. I mean who wants to deal with the trivial stuff like trying to keep the newly elected governor's attempt to massively cut funding to higher education from happening.

By the way, what's with the Professor/Instructor title anyway? Did I miss something?

4/25/2016 03:08:47 pm

Thanks for the comments MJ. It does look like the legal office is trying to litigate this Dr. Kearney case through their website. Not only that, it looks like it is being done in a rather prejudicial manor. Beyond not mentioning the above discussed attempt to revoke Dr. Kearney's medical license that failed miserably, I see there is no mention of the final BoT ruling in which Dr. Kearney's rights and privileges as a tenured full professor were restored. The lengths they are going to try to destroy Dr. Kearney's career is scary. I can only guess that whatever it is that they are trying to hide is much bigger than I originally thought. If not, then they are simply arrogant and believe they are untouchable. Again I ask, where is the university president hiding?

The Mole

4/26/2016 12:29:51 pm

Yay!

To: Dr. Eli Capilouto, Chair of the University Senate
From: Connie Wood, Chair, Senate Rules and Elections Committee

The final round of voting for the election of a Faculty Trustee is now complete. There was a strong voter turn-out, with 44.4% of the eligible voters casting votes. Of the 1002 votes cast, the number of votes cast for each candidate is shown below.

Candidate Number of First Place Votes % First Place Votes Number of Second Place Votes By Voters for Third Ranking Candidate
Lee X. Blonder 419 41.8 106
Terry Conners 240 24.0
Patrick McGrath 343 34.2 28

According to the University Senate Rule 1.5.2.C

“any candidate who receives a majority of votes will be elected.”

No candidate received a majority of the votes cast. In such case, according to University Senate Rule 1.5.2.C

"The second choice votes on the ballots whose first choice candidate or candidates have been eliminated will be added to the first choice votes received by the top two (2) candidates, and the person with the larger number of total votes will be elected."

Using this calculation, candidate Lee X. Blonder received a majority of the votes cast (525 vs 371), and therefore Dr. Blonder is declared as being elected as Faculty Trustee, to fill the seat that is opening July 1, 2016 for a three year term that ends June 30, 2019.

I ask that you on behalf of the University Faculty please inform the Chair of the UK Board of Trustees of this election result. I will be soon forwarding a copy of this announcement to the University Faculty.

4/26/2016 04:15:13 pm

Thanks The Mole for the update. Congratulations to Dr. Blonder. I am sure she will be a good faculty representative on the BoT.

5/2/2016 04:34:09 am

Not much happening on the blog here recently, but don't give up on us. Please continue to check the blog daily because you never know when some new development may arise.

I see where I failed to answer MJ's question:

"By the way, what's with the Professor/Instructor title anyway? Did I miss something?"

That answer can be found in the comment section of the previous post, "Another Dr. Kearney Update". A commenter (JK) noted in a university public records request he/she made looking into background information on the university's General Council Mr. Thro, he/she received the following response from the Public Records Office:

"RESPONSE: Although Mr. Thro does not hold the formal academic rank of Professor (Adjunct Title Series), his use of "Adjunct Professor of Law" in biographical materials to describe his role is consistent with the College of Law's custom and norms of the legal academy."

I can only interpret this to mean that, although Mr. Thro's official status in the College of Law is that of "Adjunct Instructor", he prefers to refer to himself as Professor Thro, and that the use of this title according to the Legal Office is an accepted practice in the College of Law. This is perhaps a small thing, but I suspect some who had to battle their way to this Professor title might take offense. To others, it may not be the offense itself that bothers them, but rather the willingness to bend the accepted rules and regulations, an issue germane to this blog focus.

5/3/2016 11:44:06 am

I was listening to the news last night and their report on the fire truck that collided with the car. The man was taken to UK hospital trauma where he eventually was pronounced dead. Although perhaps nothing could have been done to save this person's life, the fair question could be asked, "How many lives have been lost due to the loss of experienced trauma personnel (starting with Paul Kearney) here at UK hospital?" I see where Dr. Noonan brought up this point to President Capilouto in an earlier blog post, only to receive a veiled threat from the Pres. I personally think the hospital administration and the university legal office really does not care how many lives or how much money this Dr. Kearney vendetta costs, as long as they win the legal battle. Hiding the mismanagement of the hospital revenue takes top priority.

5/4/2016 03:46:25 am

Aside from Kearney and Boulanger (who didn't do much surgery) who else has left UK Trauma Surgery?

5/5/2016 04:06:48 pm

Well there is Phillip Chang who no longer will be working in trauma. Then there are Levi Procter and Cherry Song who are officially leaving, and at least 2 more that look to be leaving.

Bingo

5/3/2016 04:44:20 pm

Here is hypocrisy at its finest:

Office of the President
May 3, 2016

Members, Board of Trustees:

WILLIAM T. YOUNG FOUNDATION, INC. PLEDGE

Recommendation: that the Board of Trustees accept a five-year pledge of $1,500,000 from the William T. Young Foundation, Inc. of Lexington, Kentucky, to establish and endow the Dr. Michael Karpf Endowed Chair in Precision Medicine at the Markey Cancer Center.

Background: This gift commitment of $1,500,000 will establish an endowed chair in recognition of Dr. Karpf’s outstanding service as Executive Vice President for Health Affairs at the University of Kentucky.

PooPooChooChoo

5/4/2016 03:49:24 am

$1.5M isn't really that much in the scale of what would be needed to hire someone good for this chairm particularly since its being given over 5 years.
But other people have given less and had departments and buildings named so I suppose thats progress

5/4/2016 03:58:06 am

Thanks for the update Bingo. I am curious as to who the new endowed chair will be. In other words, who are they trying not to lose or who is being rewarded for their commitment to the EVPHA's causes? My only hope is that this might be a sign that the EVPHA is on his way out. You know, one of those let's send him out in style in spite of the situation. By the way, didn't the College of Medicine get a new Dean, or was that just a figment of my imagination? Has anyone even seen him? Not a real good sign.

5/4/2016 07:29:24 am

PooPoo, do you really think they would try to recruit a chair? That would be a shocker to me, because it would be a very rare bird for the College of Medicine and/or the hospital. If they did though, I suspect the only people that would be allowed to interview and/or have any say in the hiring of this chair would be the "inner circle". It was clear to me when I retired that unless you are part of this "inner circle", faculty have little to no voice in the decision making processes currently ongoing in the COM and the hospital. In fact, as Dr. Kearney and others have so painfully found out, voicing an opinion can have serious consequences. Democracy and questioning and challenging authority are impediments to the agenda and must be eliminated. As everyone should know and understand, the agenda is perfect because it is their agenda and they are perfect.

5/4/2016 10:23:48 am

"Precision Medicine" is supposedly one of the areas of focus for the New Dean (but of course as usual UK is already 10-15 years behind the times on this). My guess is that this chair is for someone he wants or is going to try to recruit.

Alley Oop

5/4/2016 10:25:11 am

Rumor has it that there is a move afoot to reduce all College of Medicine basic sciences faculty to 9 month appointments. Anything beyond that would have to be paid through grant revenue. If so, that should really help out with both recruiting and retention, not to mention postgraduate education. In other words, if you happen to be struggling with your funding expect them to throw you an anchor.

5/4/2016 12:27:06 pm

I'm not sure they have got it down to 9 months (or 75% of the actual salary) but apparently the departments are only getting 89% of the salaries now so they don't have far to go.
And in terms of recruiting/retention 89 or 75% salary support are still much better than most places.
I think the issue is that if UK want basic sciences faculty to generate large amounts of salary support from grants then they need to provide the infrastructure and opportunities for the sorts of programmatic and collaborative reserach that can generate this level of funding.

5/4/2016 12:47:47 pm

Of course the other way to get your salary increased and get paid more without having to generate the money from grants is to get into the administrator track. One of the younger COM basic sciences faculty who was roped into undergraduate teaching told me that the department had received no financial benefits from running these courses but his hefty colleague who became a deanlet to oversee undergraduate teaching in the COM definitely got a hefty salary increase as did their hand-picked DeBeer stooge department chair.

Inquiring Mind

5/4/2016 10:48:58 am

Congratulations to Lee Blonder's successful election to the BoT as one of our faculty representatives. Perhaps the true expense of this campaign against Paul Kearney can be brought to light as a result of the BoT meetings. In the wake of looming budget cuts, I would like to know how the President's continued support of what is clearly retaliation against a notable faculty member is an acceptable expense in terms of money, morale, and depth of talent in the eyes of the BoTs. What will it take to move the BoT to protect the reputation of this university and minimize fiscal waste?

Too Big To Fail

5/4/2016 07:13:30 pm

I would offer this brief summary of what Karpf has done with the "enterprise." He has created, in his word, a system "too bid to fail." He has constructed an incredibly expensive physical plant, added layers upon layers of hospital administrations and increased physician salaries with the RVU based model. Unfortunately, we are in a time of great turbulence in healthcare. It's not going to take much of a downturn for Karpf's bets to fail. This could come sooner than later with large insurers recent warnings about Obamacare. Many are expected to drop out or triple premiums in late summer. All the while, despite the propaganda reporting otherwise, the quality of care remains mediocre. All Kentuckians will shoulder this debt. I'm sure they'll blame it all on Bevins.

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The Battle for KMSF Open Records

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