Being a Health Care CEO Means Never Having to Say You Are Sorry - (Michael) Covert Edition

Physicians and other health care professionals are increasingly subject to various measures of their quality, productivity, and "value," and beholden to administrators, managers and bureaucrats.  The notion of health professionals being primarily accountable to patients and to professional standards has become old school.  Instead, the business school dogma of  "pay for performance" reigns. There is little evidence that putting health care under the control of administrators, managers and bureaucrats has been good for anyone but administrators, managers, and bureaucrats, but the burdens they have imposed seem to be a major reasons for increasing professional burn-out.

While health care professionals are thus subject to increasingly burdensome oversight by managers and administrators, it is not clear that those managers and administrators are taking their own medicine.  At best, they seem only accountable to each other.  And thus, their pay and power seem disconnected from any rational notion of their performance.

I recently stumbled upon a story illustrating how top health care managers can repeatedly get hired again and again despite major questions about previous performance.

A New CEO Position for Michael Covert

In June, 2014, the Houston Chronicle announced Mr Michael Covert as the new CEO of the Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) St Luke's Hospital System,  and a new Senior Vice President of CHI.  It included the typical praise from top CHI leaders and stewards.

'Michael has the qualities, skill and professional background to help lead CHI through the many dramatic changes occurring today in health care,' Michael Rowan, Catholic Health Initiatives' president of health systems delivery and CEO, said in a written statement.

Leonard Tallerine, [apparently the former CEO of GoldKing Energy, which is currently in bankruptcy] chairman of the CHI St. Luke's Health board of directors, agreed.

'Michael's depth of experience has honed two key skills: communication and collaboration,' Tallerine said in a written statement.

I confess I missed that article, but I did see an article from mid-September, 2014, in the Chronicle documenting a rather uncritical interview with Mr Covert.  He did manage to boast of his previous success:

Q. What makes you the right guy ...?

A. It's because of my past experience. I've worked in an academic setting. I've worked in a Catholic hospital setting. I have run systems. I've worked for physicians. I've been doing it for a while. And I've had the fortune of some good success.

He also decried excess regulation in California ("we were so regulated");  promised to "develop relationships with our physicians that are strong"; promised "It's not going to be all about buildings"; boasted about "teams I've created"; and proclaimed "it's important for us to be strong on our quality, our finance, our patient engagement, our employee engagement."


So far, here we have yet another new top hospital system manager who seems to be a fount of excellence, at least according to those to whom he is supposed to be accountable.

However, the name Michael Covert rang a bell, and quick search of Health Care Renewal, plus Google revealed that his record is not quite as pristine as portrayed above. 


The Covert Record

Million Dollar Plus Compensation  Questionable Celebrity Endorsements, Quality Problems

Mr Covert first lit up the Health Care Renewal radar screen in 2010 because of his relatively large compensation, greater than $1 million per year, for the CEO of a not very large, nominally public hospital system, Palomar Pomerado.  At the time, the usual explanations were provided by the hospital district chairman, who happened to be a former hospital executive.  It later turned out that Mr Covert was the second most highly paid public official in the state of California.


As Mr Covert's pay became the subject of wider discussion, the hospital nurses' union weighed in with charges that Mr Covert had irresponsibly spent money on celebrity endorsements, particularly from a well known athlete who soon left California for New York. (Look here.)


Also, in 2011 the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the two hospitals Mr Covert lead had been fined for significant errors/ quality problems in 2010, and had been fined before for such problems.

These facts did not seem aligned with the claims by the district hospital board that Mr Covert was a "phenomenal," "excellent" or "top" leader.  They also seemed to belie Mr Covert's recent discussion of being responsible about finance, employee engagement, or quality.  On the other hand, one can see why he dislikes regulation.

Alleged Obstructed Investigation of Murderous Fake Doctor in the 1980s

Later in 2011, a little big of digging on the internet suggested that Mr Covert had a long history of issues.  In 2008, the local Community Paper did an extensive investigation into his past.  We summarized it here.  First, the article charged that in the 1980s, as a top manager at the Ohio State University Hospital System, Mr Covert impeded the investigation into Michael Swango, a fake doctor working at that institution, who was ultimately convicted of murdering three patients.

At that time, Mr Covert seemed not so interest not merely in regulation, but in the laws of the land.

Illegally Revoked a Physician's Hospital Privileges in the 1990s

The Community Paper also found that the Sarasota Memorial Hospital illegally revoked a physician's privileges.  At the time, Mr Covert was CEO of that hospital.  The Community Hospital also alleged that Mr Covert's testimony at that trial was "thoroughly impeached."

What was that about strong relationships with physicians?  

Alleged Misrepresentation of Facts About Hospital Bond Issue

The Community Paper reported in 2007 that Mr Covert misrepresented facts in his advocacy for a large bond issue to support building a new hospital for the Palomar Pomerado Health District.

Responsible about finance? 

Dictatorial Management Style

The Community Paper interviewed multiple health professionals at Palomar Pomerado uncovering multiple charges that Mr Covert was a manipulative, egotistical and dictatorial leader.

Was this a way to develop wonderful teams? 

Another Lawsuit Claiming Improper Termination of a Physician's Privileges

Later in 2008, the Community Paper noted a lawsuit filed against Palomar Pomerado by a staff physician who also alleged that the hospital had improperly terminated his privileges.  I cannot find any record of how this was resolved.

Again, what was that about relationships with physicians? 

Palomar Pomerado Left in Debt

Mr Covert resigned from Palomar Pomerado in mid-2014 to head to his new position as CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives St Luke's Health System in Houston.  At that time, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that after building an expensive new facility, Mr Covert would be leaving a hospital system deep in debt and with substantially worsening financial results.

Moody’s Investors Service, the bond rating agency that warned twice in two years of Palomar’s declining financial health, most recently in March. 'PH’s debt measures are among the weakest in Moody’s portfolio of rated public and not-for-profit health care organizations (debt measures exclude GO debt),' the agency said.

Palomar Health’s hospitals and clinics run at a loss; operating margin was negative 4.2 percent in the first half of fiscal year 2014, an improvement from minus 12.2 percent in the same period in 2013.

Worse, the district has cash problems. While improving, it’s still violating a bond covenant to keep enough cash for 80 days.

Didn't Mr Covert say something like it's not about the buildings?  Again, what happened to that emphasis on strong finance? 

And in general, looking at the whole section above, what did Mr Covert think was his "good success?"

Summary

The bureaucrats and managers to whom Mr Covert reported as CEO of Palomar Pomderado, and those to whom he will report as CEO of CHI St. Luke's thought he was brilliant.  Mr Covert proclaimed that he would engage employees, collaborate with physicians, and focus on quality and responsible finance, among other issues.  Yet Mr Covert seemed to leave in his wake as former leader of multiple hospital systems allegations of dictatorial leadership, irresponsible management of finances, deceptions, and opacity (even in the face of investigations of criminal behavior).  Mr Covert's previous hospitals paid fines for quality violations, went into severe debt, terminated physicians' privileges once allegedly improperly, and once illegally as found by a jury, and in one early case harbored a homicidal fake doctor.

Were the people who recruited and vetted Mr Covert bamboozled by his charm, to the point that they did not even bother to check the public record of his past performance?  Or were they, as managers and administrators, not apt to question a fellow member of their guild?

By the way, why did no one in the Houston media think to actually ask some hard questions about the latest star on the local health care management scene?

So why should we as health care professionals, or members of the public ever believe the managers and administrators who have taken over health care? Especially when they promise to improve quality and control costs by making everyone else responsible to them?

True health care reform would make health care leaders accountable for putting patients' and the public's health ahead of personal gain.  Generic managers following business dogma may not be the people to do this. 

ADDENDUM (29 September, 2014) - Thanks to the comment by Dr Howard Brody below, I corrected the statements about that Michael Swango was a fake doctor.  He did in fact have a real MD degree.