Who Owns, and Who is Accountable for the New US For-Profit Medical Schools?

Mysteries still abound in the not so wonderful world of health care dysfunction, so once again, quick, the game's afoot...

The current mysteries involve beneficial ownership.  Beneficial ownership questions are important to anti-corruption campaigners.  Beneficial ownership simply refers to "anyone who enjoys the benefits of ownership of a security or property, without being on the record as being the owner." (per Wikipedia). Concealing who really owns a company enables concealing sources of funds (as in money laundering), market power (when the owner also owns competitors), and sources of political influence, and enables those benefiting from the actions of the company to escape responsibility for their consequences.

We recently discussed the mystery of the beneficial ownership of a local pharmaceutical company, an issue that became more interesting when it was revealed it was owned by the Sackler family, the owners of the now somewhat infamous Purdue Pharma.  A while back we discussed the mysteries surrounding the ownership of several offshore medical schools (look here and here).

I was recently involved in a conversation about the rise of onshore, that is US based for-profit medical schools, four of which are now known to exist.  It turns out that their ownership is also rather unclear.

That for-profit medical schools now exist in the US is not widely known.  The best, and nearly only public discussion of the topic appeared in a 2017 article in JAMA [Adashi EY, Krishna GR, Grappuso PA. For-profit medical schools - a Flexnerian legacy upended.  JAMA 2017; 317: 1209-10.  Link here.]  It listed four such schools that were operating or in development.

Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Rocky Vista was the first for-profit to open.  Its President is Clinton E Adams DO.  The university website is silent on its ownership.  Some searching reveals, however, that it, along with St Georges University in Grenada, is owned by Medforth Global Healthcare Education, whose CEO is Dr Andrew Sussman, who was "most recently Executive Vice President of Clinical Services at CVS Health."

However, who owns Medforth, and hence to whom Dr Sussman reports, is unclear.  We do know that in 2014, "Canadian private equity firm Altas Partners LP and pan Asia firm Baring Private Equity Asia have acquired a substantial stake in St George’s University," per Reuters.  A reference on the financial website Mergr suggested that Atlas and Baring targeted Medforth per se.  Who, in turn, actually owns Atlas and Baring, and to whom at those firms the leadership of Medforth, and thus ultimately the leadership of Rocky Vista report, is unclear.


Ponce Health Sciences University

The President of Ponce Health Sciences University is Dr David Lenihan.  According to his welcome statement,

Ponce was acquired by University Ventures Corporation in September 2014, to operate Ponce Health Sciences University and appoints Dr. David Lenihan. Dr. David Lenihan is used to taking risks. It is evidenced by his academic training in neuroscience, chiropractic and law. Also, his foray into the administrative side of science education. Recently, the greatest risk it has taken is the acquisition and transformation, through Arist Medical Sciences University, of the Ponce Health Sciences University. As the main academic officer of Arist, Lenihan guided the process of purchase and evolution of the School, a widely recognized institution with around 40 years of training professionals of excellence in the field of health in the south of Puerto Rico.

According to Bloomberg,

Arist Medical Sciences University, Public Benefit Corporation was founded in 2014. The company's line of business includes the operation of colleges and universities.

Arist Medical Sciences University is apparently part of Arist Education System.  Its website states

Arist Education System is an investment of Bertelsmann — a global media, services and education company.

Furthermore, it claims

Bertelsmann stands for entrepreneurship and creativity. This combination promotes first-class media content and innovative service solutions that inspire customers around the world. Bertelsmann’s supply of capital will support innovative graduate and professional health and human sciences programs that are making a positive impact.

So it appears that Ponce is now owned by Bertelsmann.  What a diversified global media company is doing running a medical school is not clear.

Nor is the identity to the person at Bertelsmann to whom the leadership of Arist, including Dr Lenihan, reports.  Although the Bertelsmann website lists the company's top executives, and the top managers of the Bertlesmann Education Group, the chain of command for the US for-profit medical school is not apparent.


California Northstate University College of Medicine

According to the university website, the president is Alvin Cheung, Pharm D.  The university has a board of trustees, but does not provide their biographies or explain their role.

The website provides no information about the ownership of the university, although a 2016 Sacramento Bee article stated "Backers raised more than $50 million to fund the school." I can find business listings for a California Northstate University LLC, eg here, stating it is a privately held business, but containing no information about ownership or if the business leadership is the same as the listed medical school leadership. Thus the ownership of California Northstate University LLC, and thus presumably of the medical school, is entirely opaque.


Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine

The President is John Hummer MHA.  There is a board of trustees, chaired by Robert V Wingo, with biographies provided but whose role is not explained.

An article in the Las Cruces Sun-News from 2016 called it "a first-of-its-kind, privately funded U.S. medical school."  An Albuquerque Journal article from 2015 stated.

Burrell is entirely financed by private investors, led by Santa Fe businessman Dan Burrell in partnership with the Rice Management Co., which oversees Rice University’s $5.6 billion endowment fund. Although most public attention has centered on Burrell, a well-known real estate mogul, Rice Management is actually the majority investor in the project, estimated to cost a total of $105 million,

Other investors were not named.  Thus only some of the investors in, presumably therefore the owners of Burrell are known.  The rest are anonymous.

Discussion

The ownership of three of the four new US for-profit medical schools is unclear.  One is a private LLC whose ownership is entirely opaque.  One is partially owned by two private equity firms, whose investors are anonymous.  It may also have other, again anonymous owners.  One is owned by a group of investors, some local, some named, and some anonymous.

Anti-corruption campaigners have pushed to reveal the beneficial ownership of all corporate entities.  Transparency International's report on the problem of anonymous beneficial ownership (look here) states:

In the vast majority of countries, it remains legal for companies to hide the identity of their beneficial owners. Embezzlers use anonymously owned companies to move, launder and spend tainted money in the global financial system without being detected. Documents in the Panama Papers, for example, show how kleptocrats and their families used anonymous companies to secretly control state assets and purchase global real estate. Criminals including terrorists, human traffickers, sanctions-busters, drug dealers and tax evaders also use anonymous companies for the same reasons.

Thus anonymous ownership of any US medical school is highly troubling.  Physicians swear oaths to practice with honesty and integrity.  The institutions they train in should be above suspicion of wrong doing and corruption.  Hence medical schools should avoid practices associated with money laundering, fraud, and corruption.

Medical students, faculty, patients and accrediting boards should not trust medical schools who keep their ownership secret.

The people accountable for all four new for-profit medical schools' conduct and operations are likewise unclear. While the schools' hired managers cannot escape responsibility, it is the owners who are ultimately accountable.  But since some of the owners of three of the four new for-profit US medical schools are anonymous, some of the people actually accountable for those schools are also anonymous.


Maybe Sherlock Holmes could help...

but in his absence, medical students, faculty, patients and accrediting boards should not trust medical schools who keep the identity of those accountable for them secret.

Finally, a note about the one school which is apparently now a subsidiary of a publicly held German-based corporation.  Ultimately, the board of directors and top management of that corporation should be held accountable for that school.  However, even in this case, it would inspire more confidence of the exact lines of reporting from medical school to corporate leadership were more clear.

As Adashi et al noted, "the very notion of a for-profit medical school, anathema to generations of medical educators, is still the subject of mixed reviews."  The authors were optimistic that the higher standards for medical schools put in since the Flexner report led to the abolition of proprietary medical schools, and perhaps the supposed greater transparency of the modern era would make it possible for the new proprietary medical schools to educate students well.

However, the current for-profit schools' opacity should lead to great skepticism.  Flexner wrote:

[I]t is universally conceded that medical education cannot be conducted on proper lines at a profit, - or even at cost

His words may very well still be right.

Finally, what we now know about the new for-profit US medical schools suggests we must reexamine our fascination for "market based" approaches to health care, when almost nothing about any part of health care resembles, or could resemble a free market (see this post).  We need to make health care more transparent, and shine more sunshine on the nooks and crannies, like for-profit, anonymously owned US medical schools. 

ADDENDUM (14 January, 2020) - This post was re-posted on the Naked Capitalism blog here.

The Perils of CEO Worship - What Happens When the Leader Becomes Demented?

Introduction: the Cult of the CEO

Although the US and most developed countries are nominally democratic, many of us seem to be again yearning for a man on a white horse, and in the current era, the horse ridden is corporate.
On Health Care Renewal, we having been talking about this pheonomenon for a long time. We have written about it in terms of the messianic (or visionary, or charistmatic) CEO, CEO disease, and the imperial CEO.

These concerns are diffusing into the broader media.  For example, from the introduction to a revent Vox article entitled "The Problem with CEO Worship"

Society has always had heroes, be those of war or art or politics. But entrepreneurs are particularly suited for our current moment, in which success in business is our primary marker of achievement. Business acumen doesn’t just get you money anymore; it can make you the most powerful man in the world.

The signs of CEO worship are everywhere: unprecedented venture capital funding for founders, media overemphasis on company leaders, and to use the most extreme and obvious example, the election of Donald Trump.

That article noted that CEO worship may overestimate the importance of leaders; create "secular fundamentalists" out of individuals; perpetuate destructive neoliberal ideologies; encourage CEOs to make worse decisions; and be bad for business

Those are not the only consequences.  CEO worship makes it possible for a progressively impaired leader to go unconstrained. Unfortunately, we may be seeing the ultimate example of this in the US.

Incoherent Verbal Utterances

Even before he was elected, we noted that Donald Trump sometimes was completely incoherent when describing his health policy ideas.  In early 2016 we raised questions about Donald Trump's cognition.  At that time, a conservative columnist labelled as "word salad" Trump's attempts to sketch a position on health care, specifically the "mandate" provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  We found other examples of his utterances on health care policy that could be characterized as gibberish.  This one was short, if not sweet

I want to keep pre-existing conditions. I think we need it. I think it’s a modern age. And I think we have to have it.

How could anyone understand this while listening in real time? A close reading suggests that maybe this was meant to suggest that some people ought to have  insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions. However, Trump seemed to befuddled by that concept.  Furthermore,  note that pre-existing conditions are not desireable, so that one would not want to "keep" them, nor can one choose not to.  To what the word "it" in the second sentence and again in the fourth refers is unclear.  The third sentence seems to be a complete non sequitur. 


We found additional examples of incoherent verbal responses about health care in 2017, and early 2018.  In the last six months, things have only gotten worse.  Examples of verbal incoherence have multiplied, although most were not related to health care. 

In July, 2018, MediaIte reported Trump's incoherent comments at a political rally,

I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

Perhaps this was meant to suggest that the president drew a larger crowd to an arena than did Elton John.  However, note the non-sequiturs: from "Elton has an organ" to "lots of other people helping" to "we've broken a lot of records," "They need much more room, for basketball, for hockey..." Who are the people helping whom are they helping, and to do what? What records were broken by whom, and how is this relevant to Elton John, etc.  To whom does they refer, and why do they need a lot of room? Etc, Etc.  Again, in real time this would have made no sense at all

In September, 2018, CNBC reported that speaking at a meeting about preparations for Hurricane Florence, Trump said

This is going to be a very large one ... It's tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amounts of water

Maybe he meant to say this will be a very large hurricane, bringing a tremendous amount of rain.  However, he seemed to be unable to convey the concept of rain.

In September, 2017, the Hill had reported that Trump had defended difficulties in providing relief for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria thus,

This is an island, surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water

Again, to be charitable, he seemed to handle the concept of an island in a vast ocean as would a three-year old.

Media articles also suggested that normal people cannot follow or understand what Trump says in real time.  For example,  on November 8, 2018, a Bloomberg op-ed said this about a recent Trump news conference,

In fact, the president was difficult to follow because he simply doesn’t make any sense half the time.

More specifically,

Trump was asked one specific question about health care, and good luck to anyone who tries to figure out what his answer meant. He pretty clearly has just as little idea what he’s talking about on most major policy issues as he did when he first started running for president. On Jamal Khashoggi, waivers on Iranian sanctions, North Korea and Russia, he either ducked the questions with non sequiturs or just babbled.

On November 11, 2018, an article in Slate noted that Trump confused Baltic states with Balkan states in a way that could have foreign policy repercussions,

When President Donald Trump met with Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania, Kersti Kaljulaid of Estonia and Raimonds Vējonis of Latvia earlier this year, he started with a criticism. At the White House in April, Trump opened by chastising the Baltic leaders for starting the war in the 1990s that ended with the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The Baltic leaders were apparently very confused and it took them 'a moment' to realize that the commander in chief was confusing Baltic states with the Balkans

this case is particularly notable considering Melania Trump is originally from the Balkans. The first lady was born in Slovenia, which gained independence in 1991 at the start of the Balkan wars. As Le Monde wrote, Trump remained 'apparently uneducated in the matter by his wife, Melania, originally from the former Yugoslavia.'

This suggests at best that at times Trump may be unable to distinguish words that sound vaguely alike but have quite different meanings. 

A November 28, 2018, Vox summary article about Trump's recent interview with the Washington Post provided this quote from Trump about economics,

And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing, number one. Number two, a positive note, we’re doing very well on trade, we’re doing very well — our companies are very strong. Don’t forget we’re still up from when I came in 38 percent or something. You know, it’s a tremendous — it’s not like we’re up — and we’re much stronger. And we’re much more liquid. And the banks are now much more liquid during my tenure. And I’m not doing – I’m not playing by the same rules as Obama. Obama had zero interest to worry about; we’re paying interest, a lot of interest. He wasn’t paying down — we’re talking about $50 billion lots of different times, paying down and knocking out liquidity. Well, Obama didn’t do that. And just so you understand, I’m playing a normalization economy whereas he’s playing a free economy. It’s easy to make money when you’re paying no interest. It’s easy to make money when you’re not doing any pay-downs, so you can’t — and despite that, the numbers we have are phenomenal numbers.

The author of the article stated,

I have basically no idea what Trump is talking about here, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either.

On repeated close reading, I still do not have any idea what Trump meant.  I would add the following questions:  38 percent of what? Who is much more liquid, and how is liquid defined?  Who is paying a lot of interest? What does "paying down and knocking out liquidity" mean? What is a "normalization economy?"  Note that this was coming from someone who claims to be a brilliant business manager.

Furthermore, consider what Trumps aid about the climate,

And when you’re talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with.

Oceans are "small?" What "blows over and sails over?" Over what? What "flows?" What "takes many people?"

In 2017, StatNews published an article describing how 

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. 

To summarize the conclusions.

The differences are striking and unmistakable.

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

In 2018, Trump's verbal communications at times are even more garbled.  Parts of the passages above suggest the word salad produced by somebody with fluent aphasia versus the nonsensical responses produced by patients suffering from acute delusional states. That Trump is capable of producing this sort of word salad at times, without realizing he is making no sense, suggests the intermittent symptoms seen early in progressive dementia.  


Lack of Insight About Cognition

Furthermore, Trump appears to lack insight about his difficulties commicating.  

In July, 2018, after the NATO conference,  Politico reported, that Trump seemed to have no insight about why much of what he says appears unbelievable to others.  The article noted

leaders who spent the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency thinking there might be a method to his chaos creation — and struggling to discern what it might be — now seem to have concluded that it’s just chaos, and that Trump himself may not understand what he’s doing.

More specifically, European officials commented on what Trump was saying:

A senior NATO official said leaders had concluded that they simply could not rely on anything Trump said.

'You know the way he speaks, you cannot take him literally,' the official said.

Another EU official echoed the point. 'He speaks a language that doesn’t match with diplomacy,' the second official said. 'We were used to the Brits, who speak a more frank diplomatic language, but this is another thing.'

These officials again seemed to be stating that Trump's verbiage can be completely incoherent, albeit they were doing so diplomatically.  After the conference, however, when confronted with a question about the inconsistency of his remarks,

When a Croatian journalist confronted Trump about his inconsistencies, the president flatly denied there were any, and he repeated a defense of his own sanity that he had made when previously questioned about his fitness for the presidency.

'We understand your message, but some people ask themselves, will you be tweeting differently once you board the Air Force One?' the reporter said.

Trump, speaking at his news conference before leaving the summit, replied: 'No, that's other people that do that. I don’t. I’m very consistent. I’m a very stable genius.'

Not to belabor the point, but the examples noted above suggest neither consistency nor stability.  And true geniuses almost never boast about their intellect.

In September, 2018, The Hill reported an interview with Trump in which he said his personal health and management style were reasons that Republicans might do better than expected in the 2018 elections,

'You know, I took that test when I got my last physical, and the doctor said that’s one of the highest scores we’ve ever seen,' Trump said. 'I did that not because I wanted but I did it, I was always good at testing.'

He continued: 'But if there’s anything great about me it’s stability, and I’m a good manager. Always been a good manager, but you know, I have a vision,'

Note that above Trump was presumably referring to the screening test for dementia he took during his official physical examination.  High scores on the test are common, and do not signify great intelligence, just the probable absence of dementia.

In addition, this interpretation assumes that the test was administered in an unbiased way.  However,  there are reasons to question whether Trump's physical was unbiased.  In retrospect, we now know that soon after taking the test, Trump nominated the physician who administered it to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  Later the physician withdrew his name after allegations of his questionable personal behavior appeared (look here).  

At least Trump's boast about having "a vision" does correspond to the language often used by public relations spokespeople to justify their CEOs' lack of accountability and high compensation (look here)


Similarly, in the Vox summary of the November, 2018, Washington Post interview (see above for link), Trump stated

a lot of people like myself - we have very high levels of intelligence

Finally, a November 18, 2018 article in MediaIte described this interchange between Trump and interviewer Chris Wallace on Fox News, starting with his response to a question about how he makes decisions

'I don’t think about them,' Trump replied. 'I don’t think about, you know, how I make them....'

However, he responded to a question about Federal Reserve policy

They're making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me

This suggests that Trump has lost insight into his own thinking. 

External Observers Suggested Trump Is Cogitively Impaired

In August, Vanity Fair reported:

More than ever, Trump is acting by feeling and instinct.  'Trump is nuts,' said one former West Wing official. 'This time really feels different.' Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine has privately expressed concern, a source said, telling a friend that Trump’s emotional state is 'very tender.' Even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are unsettled that Trump is so gleefully acting on his most self-destructive impulses as his legal peril grows.

In September, 2018, Newsweek reported two instances in which apparent Trump insiders sought psychiatric or medical help for Trump's perceived cognitive problems

[Dr] Lee told Salon that two Trump administration officials approached her after the book was published to express their concern about the president’s mental health, saying he was 'scaring' them because he was 'unraveling.'

In comments to Newsweek over email, Lee said 'it appeared that the officials (if they were officials at all) were at least frequently in [Trump’s] presence.

She continued, 'They were definitely calling from within the White House, which I confirmed by calling back their number. However, I did not ask about their rank. There was no reason for me to doubt they were high-ranking enough to have regular access to the president.'

Lee also said that a 'person [who] was a friend of his entire family, since his childhood” had also been in touch with her at the same time in October 2017, as people in the White House were “stating concern about the president (this was an observation from afar).'

Also in September, 2018, a Politico review of the new book by Robert Woodward based on numerous White House interviews suggested that Trump's inner circle called him a "dope," "idiot," or "moron."

Summary

Donald Trump is the chief executive officer of arguably the most powerful country in the world.  Starting during his campaign for the US presidency, we noted that his utterances about health care were at times so incoherent as to suggest cognitive dysfunction.  In the two years since then, especially in the last six months, he has increasingly been noted to be verbally incoherent or confused, has seemed to lack insight about these episodes, and has been observed by close allies and associates to be cognitively impaired.

However, there have ben few, at best, public attempts to link these suggestions of cognitive impairment together, nor to discuss their implications.  The most recent of those that I have found was in January, 2018 (look here and here).  Yet the problems appear to have been getting worse since then.  

While patients with worsening cognitve impairment deserve accurate diagnosis, compassionate care, and access to what few effective, safe treatments may be available for their condition, they obviously should not be in a position to make consequential decisions.  They certainly should not be in charge of large organizations, particularly powerful countries with nuclear weapons.

Yet President Trump's apparent cognitive decline remains anechoic.

For this we may blame CEO worship, which we have too often seen in health care. We have seen many health care leaders praised for their brilliance and paid royally despite leadership resulting in financial distress, threats to the organizations' health care missions, poor patient care, unethical behavior, or even crime. Yet health care CEOs, like other corporate CEOs, and like politicians are just people, sometimes smart, but almost never brilliant.  Promoting them as messianic to bewitch key constituencies, justify the remuneration of other top managers, and the hiring of more public relations flacks is likely to lead to the sort of organizational disasters and system-wide dysfunction we discuss on Health Care Renewal.  The rise of the falsely messianic leader may allow the entry of the most dangerous false messiahs, the psychopathic ones.  (We discussed the likelihood that some health care leaders are actually psychopaths here.)

We must get quickly past our worship of CEOs.  We may not long survive in a world where leaders of nuclear armed nations have no cognitive clothes.

. 

The Combating Corruption in Health Care and Pharmaceuticals Symposium

Health Care Corruption

Corruption is now a term that has become much more prevalent in the US media, particularly as a description of the actions of our new president elect, for example look here, here and here.  So it is fitting that health care corruption may become a less taboo topic.  

As we have discussed before, Transparency International (TI) defines corruption as

Abuse of entrusted power for private gain

In 2006, TI published a report on health care corruption, which asserted that corruption is widespread throughout the world, serious, and causes severe harm to patients and society.

the scale of corruption is vast in both rich and poor countries.

Also,

Corruption might mean the difference between life and death for those in need of urgent care. It is invariably the poor in society who are affected most by corruption because they often cannot afford bribes or private health care. But corruption in the richest parts of the world also has its costs.

The report did not get much attention.  Since then, health care corruption has been nearly a taboo topic in the US.  When health care corruption is discussed in English speaking developed countries, it is almost always in terms of a problem that affects benighted less developed countries.  On Health Care Renewal, we have repeatedly asserted that health care corruption is a big problem in all countries, including the US, but the topic remains anechoic.

Yet somehow, a substantial minority of US citizens, 43%, seemed to believe that corruption is an important problem in US health care, according to a TI survey published in 2013 (look here).  But that survey was largely ignored in the media and health care and medical scholarly literature in the developed world, and when it was discussed, it was again in terms of results in less developed countries.  Health Care Renewal was practically the only source of coverage in the US of the survey's results.

But the message that health care corruption is an important problem is gradually leaking past the barriers meant to contain such uppity talk.  Earlier this year, Transparency International's new Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Programme came out with two reports, one on corruption in the pharmaceutical sector, and one on diagnosing health care corruption.  

The Symposium on Combating Corruption in Health Care and Pharmaceuticals

This week, I was fortunate to be able to attend a symposium on Combating Corruption in Health Care and Pharmaceuticals (look here) put on by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector.  That was the first meeting expressly and exclusively on health care corruption that I had ever heard about (although the center did put on an earlier meeting on Corruption in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Sector: Global Policy and Structural Issues, look here, which I missed.) 

The slides from the meeting presentations will hopefully soon be available online, but let me present a few important ideas from some of the speakers that relate to some things we have posted here, but enlarge upon them.

Jillian Clare Kohler, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre, provided a brief introduction to the field.  She noted, as we have, that health care corruption has largely been a taboo topic.  In fact, those at the WHO who are concerned about corruption found that public discussion of the solutions to corruption, particularly, the notions of good governance (a term used somewhat differently in global health circles than it is here in the US, look here), particularly including transparency and accountability may be allowable as long as corruption as the need for these solutions is just implied.

Marc-Andre Gagnon addressed "Tackling the Corruption of Pharmaceutical Markets," and made the following points:

-  Markets, which are systems (socially, politically) constructed rules may not align with the public good.

-  Markets are distorted by ghost management, which is meant to shape narratives to increase corporate revenue, even as it encourages the production of ignorance.

-  Pharmaceutical, and by implication, other health care corporations do better when they promote the "right" medical discourse rather than the (often minimal) effectiveness of their products.

-  Health care markets are subject to various kinds of "capture," not just regulatory capture, but scientific, professional, technological, market, media, and civil society capture.

Conclusions

As I have said before, and now once more with feeling... if we really want to reform health care, in the very little time we may have before our health care bubble bursts (which appears imminent in the US), we will need to take strong action against health care corruption.  Such action will really disturb the insiders within large health care organizations who have gotten rich from their organizations' misbehavior, and thus taking such action will require some courage.  Yet such action cannot begin until we acknowledge and freely discuss the problem.  The first step against health care corruption is to be able to say or write the words, health care corruption.

ADDENDUM (12 December, 2016) - the slides from most of the presentations are now available.  Specifically, the slides for the presentation by Prof Gagnon as discussed above are available here. 

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. 

The Continuing Mystery of the Fugitive Founder and Missing Money - What it Says About the Opacity of Offshore Medical Schools

The next chapter in the bizarre tale of the fugitive founder of an off-shore (from the US and Canada) Caribbean medical school, and his now convicted spouse, do not solve any mysteries, but raise larger concerns about the accountability, or lack thereof, of leaders of important health care organizations.

Introduction: the Fugitive Founder and Convicted Spouse

As we posted in October, 2013, drawing an amazing for us number of comments, the couple who founded two Caribbean medical schools which catered almost entirely to US and Canadian students ran into significant legal trouble.  Founder David Leon Fredrick and his wife, Dr Patricia Lynn Hough were indicted for tax evasion for failing to report income from the two medical schools they allegedly owned, and later sold.

The schools were Saba University School of Medicine, on Saba, and the Medical University of the Americas, on Nevis.  The initial legal proceedings revealed that while Saba University School of Medicine was apparently first set up by a non-profit foundation (or NGO) run by the couple, somehow it became for-profit owned by Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough, and Saba and the Medical University of the Americas were subsequently sold to a private equity group, Equinox Capital.

Before jury selection started, Mr Fredrick disappeared.  Dr Hough was eventually convicted of defrauding the US Internal Revenue Service, and income tax evasion, after trial testimony to the effect that the couple concealed money in a Swiss bank, got $36 million from the sale of the schools, and bought an airplane, two houses, and a condominium.

Left mysterious at that time were Mr Fredrick's whereabouts, where the money that the couple derived from the sale of the medical schools went, and how a school that began as a non-profit organization became a for-profit corporation owned by the couple.  The case should have lead to some concerns about the leadership and governance of the off-shore medical schools that now train increasing numbers of would be US and Canadian physicians.

However, after Dr Hough was convicted, there was little public discussion of these issues, at least until Dr Hough's recent sentencing.  (There were some interesting comments made on our blog post, many from anonymous erswhile defenders of Saba University and/or Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough.  While they expressed some interesting opinions, in my humble opinion they did not add any substantive facts to the discussion.)

Latest Developments in the Case

In the past few weeks the case got a little more public notice in terms of reporting of the legal proceedings leading to the sentencing of Dr Hough   They brought to light some additional contentions by the prosecution, which deserve some attention because after all, they won their case.

The Amount of Money the Couple Made


As reported by the Sarasota (FL) Herald-Tribune,  Dr Hough was sentenced to two years in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and to repay $15 million to the IRS.  In addition,

 Prosecutors say Hough and Fredrick sold the schools and associated real estate in April 2007 for more than $35 million. An IRS agent testified last Thursday that Hough also made more than $12 million in income from the two schools from 2003 until 2007.

How much Mr Fredrick made was not discussed since it was not relevant to Dr Hough's sentencing. 

The Effort that Went into the Plot

According to Bloomberg,

'Hough’s crimes were neither impulsive nor isolated but required sophisticated transactions, coordination with foreign bankers, annual lies to the federal government, and by her own admissions, trips to Switzerland,' prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo on April 14. 'Hough made calculated decisions to cheat, over and over again.'

Also,

Prosecutors accused the couple of crafting their scheme with UBS AG (UBSN) banker Dieter Luetolf and Swiss financial adviser Beda Singenberger, both unindicted co-conspirators.

Singenberger, who was separately charged with helping 60 U.S. clients hide $184 million in offshore accounts, hasn’t responded in federal court in New York.

In more detail,

Prosecutors said the couple used an array of accounts in the names of businesses to hide their money and employed 'e-mails, telephone calls and in-person meetings to instruct Swiss bankers and asset managers to make investments and transfer funds from their undeclared accounts at UBS.'

The Mysteries Remain



Where Did the Money Go?

As noted above, the sale of the two medical schools netted Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough about $35 million.  Where that went is still unclear.

How Did Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough Become Owners of a Previously Non-Profit Medical School?

As noted above and in our previous post, Saba University School of Medicine began as a non-profit managed by Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough.  Somewhere along the way, the couple assumed ownership of the school.  There seems to be no record and no discussion of how this happened.  In the US, a conversion of a substantial non-profit, like a medical school, to a for-profit, ordinarily would require some regulatory approval and public discussion.  Furthermore, in most cases, non-profit conversions to for-profit would require some sort of protection of the assets of the former non-profit, often leading to a spin-off of a new non-profit foundation.   None of this apparently happened in this case (which admittedly did not occur in the US.)  How did Mr Fredrick and Dr Hough just take over a non-profit, sell it, and keep all the money involved?

Where is Mr Fredrick and Why did He Flee?

We need Sherlock Holmes for this. 


What Does This Case Say About the Leadership and Governance of Offshore Medical Schools?

So the latest details revealed suggest a fairly intricate plot by the American couple who founded two Caribbean medical schools.  The plot allegedly netted them millions, and now resulted in one of the couple remaining a fugitive, and the other convicted of federal crimes.

The biggest issue raised by this case, in my humble opinion, is not about financial crimes, tax-evasion, or the hiding of assets in Swiss banks.  It is about the leadership and governance of offshore Caribbean medical schools, and by extension, of academic medicine and health care.  In 2010, Eckhert documented that the number of offshore medical schools, "for-profit institutions whose purpose is to train U.S. and Canadian students who intend to return home to practice," but not to train physicians to practice in the countries in which these schools are located, was rapidly growing.(1)  By 2010, there were 33 such schools, 20 of which were new since 2000.

These offshore medical schools are not accredited in the US or Canada, and such accreditation is currently not required for individual graduates of such schools to be admitted to US house-staff programs or for US licensure.  So perhaps it is not surprising that little is known about these schools.

How they choose students, the qualifications, or even names of their faculty, their curriculum, how they supervise clinical training (which is mostly done by affiliated North American hospitals), and what happens to their graduates are boscure.  Eckhert attempted to describe what is known, but noted "variability exists in the availability of information on faculty; where data exists, it is noted that most of the permanent on-site basic science faculty are internationally trained, many have no documented medical education experience in the United States, and it is not uncommon for them to be OMS [offshore medical school] alumni."

Even less is known about who leads these schools, who if anyone is responsible for their stewardship, and even who owns them.  The current case suggests that Saba University School of Medicine was run by couple who mysteriously assumed ownership of the school after leading it as a non-profit organization, then sold it to private equity for millions in a transaction that eventually left one a convicted criminal and the other a fugitive.  Yet none of this came to light until the federal government launched an investigation not of offshore medical schools, but of offshore money laundering and happened to catch the couple in the investigational web. No regulatory process, no watchdog organization in the US or Canada, or on Saba apparently found this out until it was revealed in an investigation by the US federal government that had nothing specifically to do with health care or offshore medical schools.  This suggests that offshore medical schools now can be lead and run by anyone, qualified or not, honest or criminal, without any oversight or accountability.  

For example, even today little is known about the leadership of Saba University School of Medicine.  The school currently provides only minimal biographical information on its administration.  Its President is listed as Joseph Chu MD MPH, who appears to have the same educational credentials (MD from Georgetown, MPH from University as Washington) as one Joseph Chu who is apparently a Clinical Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Washington.   Dr Chu's specialty and previous experience are not apparent.  Whether the Dr Chu at University of Washington is the same as the President of Saba is unclear.  If they are the same, how Dr Chu holds down these two jobs is not clear.

For comparison, most US schools provide extensive information about their leadership.  Just as an example, see the introductory page on the Dean of the University Washington medical school.

Even less is known about the stewardship or governance of Saba University School of Medicine.  Many US medical schools have their own boards of trustees who are supposed to provide stewardship. For example, the UW board is here.  Their membership is generally known.  Furthermore, most US medical schools report to university leadership, again whose identity is known, and are subject to governance by a university board of trustees.  We have certainly criticized the leadership and governance of US academic medicine.  At least, however, it is possible to find out the names of the people responsible. 

However, while Saba University School of Medicine is still apparently owned by Equinox Capital according to the latter's website, to whom Dr Chu reports at Equinox Capital is unclear.  Whether Saba has a board of trustees, or any such similar stewardship mechanism, is unclear.  So who is ultimately accountable for Saba is unclear.  Probably just as unclear is who leads, who stewards, and who is accountable for the leadership of most other offshore medical schools.

While Eckhert wrote in 2010 that the increasing presence of offshore medical graduates in the US "obligates U.S. medicine to take a closer look at these educational programs," no such scrutiny has occurred since then.  While offshore medical schools account for the training of an increasing proportion of US (and presumably Canadian) physicians, we know next to nothing about their leadership and governance.  This seems to be just another part of the decreasing accountability of the leadership of US health care, and the increasing opacity of the governance and stewardship of US health care organizations.  True US health care reform would make leadership transparent and accountable.         

Reference
 1.  Eckhert NL.  Private schools of the Caribbean: outsourcing medical education.  Acad Med 1010; 85: 622-630.  Link here. 

The Adventures of the Purloined Bequest, the Resident Heiress, and the Hidden Hospital System

The game is afoot again.  A series of recent articles in the media described a series of cases whose mysterious interrelationships Sherlock Holmes might have appreciated.

The Purloined Bequest

A singular article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Judge Rules in Case of Fortune Tied to Buffett," first made this case explicit, but some background is required to understand it.

The story focused on Long Island College Hospital, in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, New York.  [Full disclosure: this story got my attention particularly because I grew up nearby in Brooklyn, and was born at that hospital, which was also the local hospital my parents often used.]   LICH has long been the major community hospital for downtown Brooklyn.

The story appeared to begin in 2011, per the WSJ,

 In 2011, Judge [Carolyn] Demarest approved the merger of LICH and SUNY Downstate on the condition it would keep the charitable hospital going. As part of the deal, the hospital transferred properties to Downstate estimated to be worth as much as $1 billion collectively, according to a previous court order.

The merger was supposed to keep LICH in operation as a community hospital and provider of acute care to the poor.  However, things did not work out.

 This year, however, Downstate announced plans to shut the hospital, leading to protests from Brooklyn residents and local politicians.

'It is clear that the premise upon which this Court authorized the transfer of assets has been defeated,' Justice Demarest wrote in her Aug. 20 decision, adding that Downstate had breached its contractual obligations. She cited a 'legal and moral responsibility' to correct her earlier error in approving the merger.

She directed Downstate to return all assets to the hospital's previous owner, Continuum Health Partners Inc., which subsequently said it couldn't take the reins. The court is expected to review other proposals.

The judge also discovered that hospital management had been raiding an large endowment fund intended for other purposes,

A New York state judge ruled this week that a struggling Brooklyn hospital must repay tens of millions of dollars it borrowed from an endowment set up by early investors with billionaire Warren Buffett.

The ruling aims to rectify the previous use of the money by Long Island College Hospital, which is hurting financially and was scheduled to close. Mr. Buffett in July told The Wall Street Journal that his late friends, Donald and Mildred Othmer, would have felt 'betrayed' at the way the funds were spent.

Apparently,

 The Othmers, natives of Omaha, Neb., who later lived in Brooklyn, were longtime friends of Mr. Buffett's, and each invested $25,000 with the billionaire in 1961.

When they died—he in 1995 and she in 1998—they gave away a fortune estimated at $780 million, including the $135 million permanent endowment for the hospital. The Othmer wills stipulated the interest on the endowment could be used for operating expenses but the principal should be held 'in perpetuity.'

In a series of court-approved transactions that began in 2000, the hospital borrowed from the funds repeatedly to meet short-term obligations and cover debts.

The hospital argued that the money was necessary to keep the hospital afloat, which it said the Othmers would have wanted. The transfers depleted most of the endowment, a result that came to light after the Journal wrote about the situation in July.

New York Times and Brooklyn Daily Eagle articles focused on the question of whether SUNY/ Downstate intended to close the hospital so it could sell its apparently valuable real estate assets in a now fashionable neighborhood, but not on how the hospital fell into these dire straits.


There seem to be some lingering questions -

-  If the losses and borrowing began in 2000, or earlier, who was responsible for them, given the current owners have only been in place since 2011?

Note that the phrasing in the article above ("the hospital argued that the money was necessary to keep the hospital afloat") suggested that before SUNY took over, the hospital was independent.  However, the article mentioned, albeit only briefly in passing, that the hospital had a previous owner, Continuum Health Partners Inc.

-  How were the losses explained when they occurred, and what was the rationale for  borrowing from restricted endowment as a response, instead of, for example, direct efforts to minimize losses or increase capital and revenue?

Note that the article implied that when SUNY acquired LICH, it acquired some very valuable real estate.  Why did the previous management of LICH not consider selling off some of this real estate to resolve its debts?

-  Did mismanagement of the hospital lead to excess losses, and did borrowing funds from the principle of the hospital's endowment to offset these losses amounted to more mismanagement?
 

Meanwhile, a second even more bizarre story about another New York City hospital almost simultaneously got media attention.

The Resident Heiress

The case first made it into the media in 2012, when the tabloid New York Post reported,

Beth Israel Medical Center milked reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark for more than $13 million in fees, donations and even a priceless painting during her 20-year stay as a patient — and greedy executives angled for $125 million more, her relatives allege in shocking new court filings over Clark’s estate.

The alleged shakedown was illuminated in an e-mail in which hospital board member and former CEO Dr. Robert Newman referred to Clark as 'the biggest bucks contributing potential we’ve ever had,' according to court papers.
He told a colleague her 'potential has been overwhelming[ly] unrealized.'

At one point, he suggested to Clark that she pay nearly one-third of her estimated $400 million fortune to keep the now-shuttered Beth Israel North on the Upper East Side open so she could keep living in the room she had refused to leave for 15 years despite being in good physical health, the papers allege.

But instead of addressing Clark’s crippling anxiety, hospital honchos played on her fears, engaging in 'a concentrated effort, orchestrated at the highest board and executive levels,' to get her money, court documents obtained by The Post allege.

Clark’s death last year at age 104 set off a battle over her estate. Her distant relatives claim lawyer Wallace Bock, accountant Irving Kamsler, private-duty nurse Hadassah Peri and the Beth Israel administrators manipulated the feeble Clark for her money.

The nurse, who received cash and gifts from Clark, stands to inherit nearly $34 million and Clark’s priceless doll collection in the now-disputed will. Beth Israel is to get $1 million.

The Paris-born Clark inherited her money from her father, William, a rail and mining baron and former US senator whose wealth rivaled the Rockefellers’.

She went to Beth Israel North in 1991, when she was 85, after a doctor found her emaciated and ill in one of her three sprawling Fifth Avenue apartments.

She spent the last two decades of her life in dismal hospital rooms with the shades drawn and door shut even though there was 'no medical basis for keeping her' past the first few months, documents show.

Clark was 'the perfect patient' for the hospital, her relatives charge, noting, 'She required no medical care, possessed enormous wealth, paid over $800 a day for her room, and became progressively more dependent on the hospital.'

'Beth Israel had a plan to subtly, but ever so persistently, court Huguette for the purpose of garnering gifts and ultimately do a will in favor of the hospital,' court papers claim.

This case also seems to be about wealthy donors and hospital executives.  Yet what makes it most bizarre are the circumstance of Ms Clark's hospital stay.  As a former intern, resident, fellow, and teaching hospital attending, I can attest that most hospital administrators are concerned, if not obsessed, with discharging patients quickly.  Hospital stays are currently paid by most insurers according to the patients' diagnoses, but not their length of stay.  Long stays cost hospitals money.  Furthermore, unnecessarily long stays use up resources that could better serve acutely ill and injured patients.  Yet Ms Clark stayed an astounding 20 plus years, without any obvious medical rationale.  No hospital official contested the fact that Ms Clark stayed that long in the NY Post article.

Furthermore, in a 2013 New York Times article, the hospital's lawyer, defending a parallel attempt to recover the money donated to the hospital, wrote

 Beth Israel had provided Mrs. Clark with 'a well-attended home where she was able to live out her days in security, relative good health and comfort, and with the pleasures of human company.' Besides, he said, the amount of money she gave to Beth Israel was “not very large considering her vast wealth.”

Furthermore, a member of the Beth Israel fund-raising staff wrote in a memo disclosed during litigation,

 She was well enough by then to go home to her spacious apartment at Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street, overlooking Central Park, Ms. [Cynthia L] Cromer said, but 'she asked if she might stay in the hospital longer: she feels comfortable and safe, and her apartment is being renovated.'

Never mind that the fundamental mission of the hospital is to provide acute care for the sick and injured, not to provide comfortable retirement housing. But hospital managers are apparently on record acknowledging that the hospital was basically providing Ms Clark with services that are normally available in a retirement community, not services that acute care hospitals normally provide anyone   There is no evidence that the hospital ever provided similar services to any other patients. 

The obvious mystery, then, is

- why no one at the hospital, no doctor, nurse, or manager, or no visitor, regulator, accrediting agency, insurer ever questioned why the hospital was providing a long-term residence to a former patient?

No answer to the question has appeared in any coverage I have seen of this case, including a September, 2013,.NY Times followup article on the occasion of the case nearing trial. 

In the absence of a creditable explanation for this strange distortion of the hospital mission,

- is there any other conclusion than that its purpose was to extract a large amount of money from a vulnerable, rich, but no longer acutely ill former patient?

This would suggest an unusual but monumentally unethical kind of hospital mismanagement.

So we have two recent stories about major, unusual, apparently severe mismanagement by hospital executives.  These stories were reported as if they were independent.

However, buried in the original NY Post article, but unmentioned in either of the major NY Times articles, however, was a hint of how this case and that above of the purloined inheritance appeared to be linked.

The Hidden Hospital System

The NY Post article referred thus to the Beth Israel CEO who allegedly pushed Ms Clark for contributions,

 Newman, former CEO of Continuum Health Partners, Beth Israel’s parent organization, took the unusual step of offering to help Clark complete a will so 'some faceless bureaucrat of the government' wouldn’t get his hands on her estate, court papers say.

Quick Watson, did you see that?

Continuum Health Partners was the "parent organization" of Beth Israel Hospital during at least some of the time Ms Clark was in residence there.  Continuum Health Partners also was the "previous owner" of Long Island College Hospital during at least some of the time it apparently was suffering large losses and its endowment was being depleted.  So were both these stories really about the same organization, the same hospital system?

Digging a little further, per its own LinkedIn page,

 Continuum Health Partners, Inc. was formed in 1997 as a partnership of three venerable institutions — Beth Israel Medical Center, St. Luke's Hospital, and Roosevelt Hospital.

So while the hospital system did not exist when Ms Clark first entered Beth Israel Hospital, the heiress' "care" was under the control of the organization apparently from 1997 to the day she died.

Furthermore, as noted in a 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education article, available from Innovative Resources Group Inc,

 If there was a honeymoon after the merger of Long Island College Hospital, in Brooklyn, with Continuum Health Partners, in New York in 1998, few remember it. The bickering began early and dragged on for years, but divorce didn’t seem inevitable until the doctors went public.

So the hospital system called Continuum Health Partners took over Long Island College Hospital in 1998 and held it for 13 years.  Furthermore, apparently LICH was part of Continuum Health Partners during the time when its losses rose and the Othmer bequest was depleted.  For example, from the CHE article,

  Several physicians told a crowd gathered outside the hospital’s entrance in 2008 that Continuum had withheld money from the 150-year-old institution, needlessly cutting patient services and endangering the hospital’s future.

Also in 2008, the Brooklyn Heights Blog reported this response to a question about finances from the Continuum Health Partners CEO, Stanley Bazenoff,

 LICH faces an immediate fiscal crisis. Unless action is taken quickly, he said, LICH will not have cash on hand to meet payrolls and other current expenses. He ascribed LICH’s problem to three factors. First, the hospital carries a heavy debt burden–approximately $150 million in long-term bonds financed through the New York State Dormitory Authority and $25 million in short-term commercial paper–which results in annual debt service (including interest and amortization) cost of approximately $22 million. Second, LICH has an operating deficit, presently about $40 million on an annual basis,...

Denis Hamill, a columnist for the New York Daily News, made this accusation in a February, 2013, editorial:

Under Continuum, the once-profitable LICH ran up $300 million in debt from pure administrative malpractice. And then Brezenoff brokered the smelly SUNY Downstate merger, with state taxpayers absorbing the $300 million debt.

So it certainly looks like there is an argument that Continuum Health Partners, under its CEO, Stanley Bazenoff, was responsible for the manipulation of pseudo-patient and rich heiress Hughette Clark to secure a large donation, and the nearly simultaneous depletion of Long Island College Hospital's finances, including a large bequest that was supposed to be untouchable.

Not surprisingly, Mr Bazenoff, described by Mr Hamill as

a ruthless powerbroker ... whose nickname at LICH is Darth Vader 

and

a quintessential member of what muckraker Jack Newfield called The Permanent Government of New York  

also seems to have gotten rich in his position as leader of Continuum Health Partners, along with his other top managers.   The blog LICH Watch found these results from the system's 2009 IRS 990 report,

here are some highlights, figures for Continuum employees who, hm, earned more than a million dollars for the year:

Chandra Sen, MD, $2,109,204
Stanley Brezenoff, $2,014,413
Kathryn C. Meyer, Esq. $1,049,807
John Collura, $1,307,556
Gail Donovan, $1,365,354

 A 2011 New York Post article stated,

 Stan Brezenoff, CEO of Continuum Health Partners, overseeing such hospitals as Beth Israel, St. Luke’s and Roosevelt, pulled in about $3.5 million. 

 So this leads to yet more mysteries, first about the individual cases when viewed as occurring within one large hospital system:

-  Why were Long Island College Hospital's finances addressed as if it were an independent entity, when it was in fact just a subsidiary of Continuum Health Partners? 

-  Why was Continuum Health Partners role in the hospital's enlarging debt and depleting endowment not discussed?

Similarly,

-  Why was the bizarre treatment of Hughette Clark attributed to "Beth Israel executives," but not Continuum Health Executives, when Beth Israel was also just a subsidiary of Continuum Health? 

Then there is the larger mystery,

-  Why have these two cases been discussed as completely independent, when they appear to be part of a pattern of conduct by Continuum Health Partners management?

Summary

While we continue to see cases, some amazingly bizarre, suggesting mismanagement and unethical management of hospitals and hospital systems, there seems to be an amazing lack of curiosity about how they occurred and what their implications may be.  This lack of curiosity is so profound that no one seems to have noticed that two vivid and strange cases getting prominent media notice in the same city and the same time involved the same large hospital system. 

Health care organizations seem to become ever larger.  Such enlarging organizations can concentrate their power, dominate their "markets," and hence increase their revenues and the compensation of their top hired managers.  Without any countervailing force, they push seemingly inexorably towards oligopoly and then monopoly.

Furthermore, the cases of the purloined bequest and the resident heiress show that ever larger organizations with ever more complex structures are ever better at hiding the accountability of their top hired managers.  We have previously noted, e.g. a case in which a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline pleaded guilty to crimes involving production of adulterated drugs, thus shielding GSK and its management from responsibility, how subsidiaries of large corporations may plead guilty to crimes, thus absolving their parent organizations and its managers of any blame.

In the current cases, it seems that somehow a large health care system was able to avoid accountability by letting its component hospitals appear to be independent.  Yet it is the larger system that was booking the revenue and making millionaires out of its hired managers.  This seems to show how concentration of power into ever more complex organizations can be used to enhance the anechoic effect, making mismanagement and those accountable for it ever more obscure.

As we have said until blue in our collective faces, if we do not hold the real leaders of health care accountable for their actions and the actions of their organizations on their watches, we can expect continued misbehavior, and hence continued health care dysfunction.  

It's appropriate to conclude with this, a video of Jeremy Brett in A Scandal in Bohemia, from the first season of the show as first shown on PBS.