The Pill Hill chaos continues
Another wheel has come off the out-of-control bus known as Oregon Health & Science University. The doc who's been the head of the Knight Cancer Institute has quit, and it's not because he's dying to spend more time with his family. He simply can't deal with the way OHSU is being run.
Dr. Brian Druker, who built the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute into a world class cancer research center, on Tuesday announced his resignation, saying that the institution has "lost sight of what is crucial and forgotten (its) mission."
Druker, who confirmed his resignation, served 17 years as KCI’s director. In May, he announced he was taking on a new role and the title of CEO so he could focus on long-term vision and strategic planning, fundraising, donor engagement and clinical research.
And just like that, he's gone back to teaching and clinical and lab work.
"I always believed at this institution, in this beautiful, under the radar spot of the world, we could do things that no one else could." But, Druker added, his goals as an administrator for advancing cancer research and improving patient care were "no longer achievable at OHSU."
So much has gone haywire at OHSU the past few years that it's hard to read between the lines of what's pushed Dr. Druker out. The president of the university recently resigned, with few tears shed over it by anyone but the nimrod trustees who hired and enriched him. And at the governor's insistence, they've brought in as temporary president a former OHSU suit who recently spent many years running other cancer institutes.
Amidst all this chaos, they're still talking about having OHSU take over the ailing private Legacy health system. The docs and other workers at Legacy don't seem too happy about it. And can you blame them? What a dumb move. So dumb that this being Oregon, it appears unstoppable.
Look, the problem has been there for some time. The legislature created it with two steps: 1. They not only allowed, but encouraged, OHSU to become a "public corporation", based upon their differential from other state institutions of higher education...a hospital which generated revenue. Lots of revenue. To get this designation, they had to agree to be the state's 'care of last resort' public hospital (while muscling all the privates to carry a bit of the load); and, 2. Giving OHSU and it's associated practitioners relative "tort immunity". It takes beaucoup bucks to sue when something goes bad and it rarely happens because they and their risk aversion program hide behind the legislated tort protections. This gives them a 'competitive advantage' in the health care market. So, it's making each and every patient who uses their facilities, or their staff, an unwitting (if not unwilling) medical experimentation patient by virtue of the state laws protecting them as a 'teaching hospital'. I assume this protection will be extended to all the practitioners who are enfolded by the Legacy acquisition.
ReplyDeleteAnd... They got a billion dollar trust fund to stamp out cancer. Has anybody done an audit on that fund recently?
There is also the tendency to delude themselves with the notion that an MD and PhD, alone or together, qualifies one as the administrator of a multi-million dollar public institution. Thus, it promotes feathering of nests with a proliferation of underlings to insulate the 'scientists' from having to get their brains dirty with piffle like labor relations, maintenance, and parking. Empires are built and fall on the competence of underlings.
ReplyDeleteQ: If OHSU absorbs Legacy, as they have already done with Adventist, does that leave the region with just three providers? OHSU, Providence, and Kaiser? That's it? That looks like a oligopoly to me. I don't know how they are all strung together by insurance agreements, but that's pretty grim. Makes 'price leadership' something of a waltz.
ReplyDeleteIf any are looking for an example of a amazingly well managed and operated hospital, you need look no farther than Salem and it's Memorial Hospital and its policies. This a complete reversal from what it was in the nineties nightmare.
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