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 Risks of Attending an Offshore Medical School: Students at Offshore Medical Schools Killed or Injured by Gas Explosions

US and Canadian medical education has a peculiar gray zone.  A substantial proportion of US and at least some Canadian doctors have received their medical degrees from offshore medical schools.  These are medical schools located in other countries, mainly the Caribbean, that exist only to train students for North American practice.  They are often owned by for-profit US or Canadian based companies, have little accountability to their host countries' governments, or to the US or Canada, and have generally flown under the radar despite being an important component of North American medical eduction..

Many questions have been raised by the quality of training received by students at such offshore schools.  We have recently discovered new risks to offshore medical students, in particular, that of dangerous living conditions.  We were alerted to two cases since 2018.


Gas Explosion Injured Two Medical University of the Americas (MUA) Students, Both Fatally, on Nevis in 2018

As reported by WINN FM on November 15, 2018

At around 8:00 pm on October 3, an explosion rocked the medical university and sent two American students to the hospital with severe burns across their bodies. The two students were subsequently flown to the United States for treatment.

On Wednesday (Nov 14) Acting Commissioner of Police, Hilroy Brandy disclosed that a faulty knob on the stove caused the explosion. He said one of the injured females was the actual occupant of the apartment and a female friend had come over to study. One of them lit a cigarette which ignited the gas.

That explosion eventually proved fatal to one medical student, as reported again by WINN FM on November 21, 2018:

One of the students who sustained major burns in an explosion and fire on Nevis in October has succumbed to her injuries.

28-year-old Nada Magdy Khalil of East Brunswick, New Jersey was one of two female students of the Medical University of the Americas (MUA) in Nevis inside the apartment when it exploded on Oct 3.

WINN FM confirmed that Khalil died on Sunday, November 18 in Florida where she had been receiving treatment.

The other student was very severely injured

The other victim is 31-year-old Gayane Borisovna Balasanyan from San Francisco; she is still hospitalized in Miami, Florida with burns across 90% of her body.

According to her GoFundMe page, Ms Balasanyan died in January, 2019.


There is no other publicly available  information on this explosion. Importantly, there has never been a public response from MUA, or its owners:

Since the explosion, the medical university has not issued a statement on the matter.

Gas Explosion Severely Injured Two Saba University School of Medicine (SUSOM) Students in 2019

There was an unnervingly similar case one year later, as reported by Saba News on October 15, 2019:

Saba’s emergency services were rushed to a dormitory building on Thais Hill Road in The Bottom around 7:30am Saturday, for a gas explosion that left one man severely burned.

A loud crack was heard throughout The Bottom that morning and a large plume of white smoke was seen coming out of the building and drifting into the sky. Several village residents also reported feeling the explosion’s aftershocks, which prompted them to call the Caribbean Netherlands Police Force KPCN and the Saba Fire Department.

Police, firefighters and the Ambulance Department were then dispatched to the building.

The dormitory is a privately-owned building that mainly houses students of Saba University School of Medicine (SUSOM).

Again, two students were injured:

One student was severely burned in the incident and was taken to A.M. Edwards Medical Center for treatment. He was later flown to Miami, Florida, for further medical attention.

A second victim was treated for smoke inhalation and was admitted at A.M. Edwards Medical Center for observation. She was released several hours later.

There is a GoFundMe page which is apparently for the student most seriously burned in this explosion.  It was created 3 days after the explosion, but I could find no other followup information on the explosion or the student.  Again, I could find no public response from SUSOM.

Who Should be Accountable?

These cases have been uncannily anechoic.  While the students injured were from the US, their fate has received no coverage in the US media.  Nor have the cases received recognition in the US health care literature, particularly the medical education literature.

The silence from the medical schools involved is quite unsettling.  That immediately leads to an obvious question.  Just who at these schools might be responsible for their students' physical safety?  Who currently runs and is accountable for both Caribbean schools is not glaringly obvious.

The website for the Medical University of the Americas lists an Executive Dean, but no President or CEO, or Board of Directors.  Its Wikipedia page states:

Medical University of the Americas (MUA) is a for-profit medical school in Saint James Windward Parish, Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Buried in the MUA 2018 catalog, however, is this statement:

Medical University of the Americas is a foreign profit corporation owned by R3 Education Inc. which is registered with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations to do business in Florida as Medical University of the Americas.

Saba University School of Medicine has a President, Dr Joseph Chu, according to its website. Its Wikipedia page does not state whether it is non-profit or for-profit.  However, like that  of MUA, the SUSOM 2018 catalog states

Saba University School of Medicine is a foreign profit corporation owned by R3 Education Inc.  which is registered with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations to do business in Florida as Saba University School of Medicine.

R3 Education Inc turns out to have a remarkable history, which we  discussed back in 2013.   To summarize what we found then...

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.  R3 Education Inc, owned by Equinox Capital, appears to have been given responsibility for running the schools, along with St Matthew University.

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 received from the sale of the medical schools went, and how a school that began as a non-profit organization run by the couple became a for-profit corporation owned by them.  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.

In 2014 we provided something of an update. Mr Fredrick and Ms Hough made more than $35 million from the sale of the schools.  Ms Hough eventually went to prison.  Mr Fredrick's whereabouts remained unknown.  My internet searching in 2019 failed to produce any new information about him.


Now in 2019 we do not know much more about who is really accountable for MUA and SUSOM.  According to the Bloomberg corporate information website,

R3 Education Inc. operates as a holding company that acquires and manages for-profit educational institutions such as Saba University School of Medicine, the Medical University of the Americas, and St. Matthew's University. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is based in Devens, Massachusetts.

According to his LinkedIn Profile, the CEO and Chairman of R3 Education is Steven Rodger, of Greenwich, CT. For 23 years he has also been Managing Partner, Equinox Capital.

The Equinox Capital website make it clear that it still owns three Caribbean medical schools:

Saba University: Since its founding in 1993, more than 1,500 physicians have earned their M.D. at Saba University (www.saba.edu). Saba University School of Medicine has been accredited by the Accreditation Commission on Colleges of Medicine (ACCM) and its program has received approvals from licensing boards in New York, California and Florida. The campus is on Saba, which is located very near St. Maarten.

Medical University of the Americas: Since its founding 1998, Medical University of the Americas (www.mua.edu) has awarded approximately 500 M.D.’s. The MUA program is accredited by the Accreditation Commission on Colleges of Medicine (ACCM) and its program has received approvals from the licensing board in New York. MUA is located on Nevis, near St. Kitts.

St. Matthew’s University (www.stmatthews.edu) offers both a medical and a veterinary program. Since 1997, almost 1,500 students have obtained their M.D. and D.V.M. degrees from St. Matthews. The program is accredited by the Accreditation Commission on Colleges of Medicine (ACCM). St. Matthews is located in the Cayman Islands.

Who are the leaders of MUA and SUSOM who are accountable for what happens to their students, including their physical safety?  What allegiance do they owe their for-profit, private equity owners?  Who is responsible for the governance of the schools?  What responsibility does the private equity firm that owns the schools bear? All these questions remain unanswered.

The Perils of Offshore Medical Schools

US and Canadian medical students are promised a lot on the flashy websites (eg for MUA and SUSOM) for offshore medical schools. They may depend more on their medical schools for basics like housing than would students at American and Canadian schools. Yet they end up in physical environments with which they may be unfamiliar, and which may expose them to unexpected perils.

We should not forget that the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 was rationalized by the physical risks to US medical students at St George's University School of Medicine. The school was then a private for-profit owned by its founder Dr Charles R Modica and partners (but now partially owned by a private equity firm, Atlas Partners, per their news release.)   As the New York Times reported at the time, some students

told of bullets crashing through their dormitory rooms, of fears of being taken hostage, of a week of campus confinement under the Government's 'shoot to kill' curfew, of soldiers pointing guns at them

In particular,

Many of the students said that supplies of food and water began running low Tuesday after a weeklong curfew had been imposed by Grenada's military leaders following the slaying of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop on Oct. 19. Under the terms of the curfew, people on the street were to be shot on sight, the students said.

'I saw soldiers with guns during the curfew,' said Miss Nelson, 'and while none of them ever threatened me, several of my friends told me guns had been aimed at them, and they were terrified.'

[US Department of Defense image, Grenada invasion, 1983, via WikiMedia]


In the 21st century, the risks may be of gas explosions in accommodations more basic. and risky than students may have expected.    Yet who is ultimately accountable for disclosing and mitigating the risks?  In the case of MUA and SUSOM I cannot tell.

For would-be medical students trying to cope with the vagaries of medical school admissions in the US and Canada, the apparently easier accessibility of off-shore medical schools may be attractive.  Yet such accessibility may come with costs, and risks.  Until more is known about the risks, caveat emptor.


While Eckhert wrote in 2010(1) 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 2010; 85: 622-630.  Link here.

The Mystery of the Ownership of the Trinity School of Medicine

Trinity School of Medicine Vice President Boasts that It Is "Not the Same" As Most Offshore Medical Schools

A post promoting the Trinity School of Medicine just appeared on the KevinMD blog. It was entitled "Addressing the 'ugly truth' about Caribbean medical schools: Why they’re not all the same." Its purpose seemed to be to persuade the reader in particular that the Trinity School of Medicine, (located conveniently in St Vincent and the Grenadines, "high on a hillside in the Ratho Mill district of Kingstown, the capital of St. Vincent and the Grenadines," conveniently near the Young Island Resort and "Living the Dream" sailboat cruises, per Google) is not the same as, and in fact is superior to other offshore medical schools.

In particular, Stacy Meyer, Vice President for Enrollment, asserted that the school would address the problem of huge attrition rates at offshore schools by embracing "a principle of mutual support," seek out faculty who would actually spend time with students, and would actually have "office hours," and provide tutoring and an "Academic Progress Committee." She promised to provide good housing with "privacy, a full kitchen, air conditioning and high speed internet."  She stated that the school would deal with the stress of medical training by providing "on-campus access to professional help and a culture of openness." She concluded with "better support, better quality of life for the students?  It will only mean better doctors."

It sounds nice, but her post was remarkable for what it left out.  Does that extras "support" translate into an attrition rate lower that other comparable schools?  Is there any data that the doctors produced are "better?" What about the school's curriculum, the quality of its faculty, and the accountability of its leadership?


In fact, review of the school's website provides little hard information.  While the school aims to attract US and Canadian students, I could not find a single member of its regular faculty who has a medical degree from a US or Canadian school.  Its faculty is tiny, 22 regular faculty members plus 3 deans and a chancellor, much smaller than the faculty of a conventional US or Canadian school.  Information about its curriculum is fragmentary.  The school claims an 85% match rate, but provides no information about attrition, and hence the denominator for that rate.

What Is Trinity School of Medicine?  Who Runs It?  Who Benefits From It?

Even more curious, I could find very little information, and that which I found was rather contradictory, about who actually is accountable for the operations of Trinith School of Medicine, and who, if anyone, owns it.

The school's website, including its "about" page, say nothing about the nature of its organization, basically whether it is a for-profit company, or not for profit organization. Wikipedia simply says the school is "private."  Although the school is located in St Vincent and the Grenadines, its website lists its address as 925 Woodstock Road, Suite 200, Roswell, GA 30075.  On the other hand, the Manta database says the school is located in Alpharetta, GA, and is a "single location business" with 10 employees.

The school's website"administration" page has a headline next to a picture of Steven R Wilson stating he is "CEO and President."  However, accompanying text states that he is the president and CEO of "Trinity LLC."  I can find no further explanation on the website of "Trinity LLC."  (Note that the website has no search function.)

There is a Hoover's profile on a Trinity LLC located in Atlanta GA, listed as a private company, but it appears to be a "site preparation contractor." 

Mr Wilson apparently is a businessman who

served as President and CEO of several highly regarded institutions over the past 22 years. Prior to Trinity School of Medicine, Mr. Wilson was President of TSYS Loyalty, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of TSYS, TSS on the NY stock exchange from 2003 until 2006 when he left to pursue the start-up of Trinity School of Medicine. Prior to TSYS, Mr. Wilson was President and CEO of Enhancement Services Corporation from 1998 to 2003, an institution that provided loyalty transaction processing and fulfillment services to the world's largest financial institutions. Mr. Wilson was also the President and CEO of Business Travel, Inc. from 1986 to 1997.

Although his background seems to have no relevance to biomedical science, medicine, or health care, his official profile states

Mr. Wilson's background and experience are a vital element in Trinity's success as it endeavors to become one of the finest Caribbean medical schools available to students from North America and around the globe.

The Trinity website includes a listing of the members of its "board of trustees." Non-profit institutions generally have boards of trustees whose role is be stewards of the organizations.  However, Trinity appears to be a privately held business.  Such businesses may have "boards of directors," but the power of such boards in closely held private businesses may be negligible. 

The website does not explain the actual relationship of the "board of trustees" to the school. The board has only four members, one of whom is a physician, and three of whom are business people.  There qualifications to be stewards of a medical school, if that in fact is their role, are not evident.

So what exactly is the Trinity School of Medicine?  Who is accountable for how it operates? Who, if anyone,exterts stewardship over it?  Who benefits from its operation?  Given its opacities, is it a shell company?  These are all mysteries.

We need Sherlock Holmes.

Why Should We Care?

As we have said a few times before, most recently here, this is not just about the leadership, governance and ownership of the Trinity School of Medicine.  It is about off-shore medical schools, and ultimately about the leadership and governance of health care in the US.

As we most recently noted here,

Admission to US medical schools is increasingly difficult.  So many who seek medical careers may be tempted to apply to schools outside the US.  In the last 30 years, American entrepreneurs have opened offshore medical schools, mostly in the Caribbean, that cater to US students.  They teach in English, and do not require immersion in an unfamiliar culture, so may be more attractive than medical schools in other countries whose mission is to educate physicians to practice in those countries. 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.

Such offshore medical schools exist in a grey area.  The small countries or colonies in which they are located usually do not seek to regulate them, since the physicians they produce are going to practice elsewhere. There is no requirement that these offshore medical schools be accredited in the US.  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 obscure.  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."

As we also noted, most recently here,

 Even less is known about who leads these schools, who if anyone is responsible for their stewardship, and even who owns them.

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.

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.

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.

This case also illustrates why 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 off-shore but US corporate owned medical schools. 

Finally, as an aside, in this day and age, the possibility that Trinity School of Medicine is actually owned by an anonymous LLC is particularly alarming.  Such anonymous shell companies have been implicated in global corruption.  Transparency International says this about shell companies

A shell company or corporation is a limited liability entity having no physical presence in their jurisdiction, no employees and no commercial activity. It is usually formed in a tax haven or secrecy jurisdiction and its main or sole purpose is to insulate the real beneficial owner from taxes, disclosure or both.

We really need Sherlock Holmes.

Who Guards the Guardians? - From DeVry at a Time of Alleged Fraud to Anti-Fraud Enforcement for the Department of Education

There seems to be another fox ready to guard the already flustered educational, including medical educational hen house.

Dr Julian Schmoke to Lead Student Aid Enforcement Unit

According to Politico on August 30, 2017, the new head of enforcement for the Department of Education will be one Dr Julian Schmoke Jr,

The Trump administration has tapped a former for-profit college official to lead the Education Department unit that polices fraud in higher education.

Julian Schmoke Jr., who previously directed campus operations at West Georgia Technical College and served as a dean at DeVry University, will be the department’s new chief enforcement officer, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO.

Schmoke will lead the Student Aid Enforcement Unit, which was established by the Obama administration to more aggressively combat fraud and deceptive practices at colleges and universities.

The unit has been without a permanent leader since the departure earlier this year of Robert Kaye, a former top consumer protection attorney at the Federal Trade Commission.

'Julian possesses over 16 years of experience in higher education leadership with extensive knowledge in the development and implementation of strategies for achieving student success, higher education policy and evaluation of academic programs,' the head of the Federal Student Aid Office A. Wayne Johnson wrote in an internal email last week.

Dr Schmoke's Work for DeVry University, and its Previous Fraud Settlements

Left unsaid by Department of Education officals was that Dr Schmoke had a significant role in DeVry University.  However, per Politico

Schmoke worked in various roles at DeVry University between October 2008 and April 2012, including as an associate program dean, according to his LinkedIn page.

DeVry’s parent company, which has since rebranded as Adtalem Global Education, last year agreed to pay $100 million to resolve allegations by the Federal Trade Commission that the for-profit college company misled students about their job and salary prospects.

The company also separately reached a settlement with the Education Department over similar allegations. Obama administration officials cited those cases against DeVry as they announced the formation of the Student Aid Unit last year.

The unit Schmoke will oversee is also responsible for processing debt relief claims filed by federal student loan borrowers who say they’ve been defrauded by their college. DeVry students had 1,872 'borrower defense to repayment' claims pending before the department, according to a July 7 letter from acting Undersecretary of Education James Manning.

A bit more about the fraud settlements made by DeVry appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

In December, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $100 million settlement with DeVry Education Group, parent of DeVry University. Under the settlement, DeVry will pay $49.4 million in cash to be distributed to qualifying students who were harmed by the deceptive ads, as well as $50.6 million in debt relief. The debt being forgiven includes the full balance owed —$30.35 million— on all private unpaid student loans that DeVry issued to undergraduates between September 2008 and September 2015, and $20.25 million in student debts for items such as tuition, books and lab fees, according to the FTC.

In 2016, we hadposted even more detail about the settlement here.

While Dr Schmoke had left DeVry by the time the settlement was made, he was there at the time DeVry was taking the actions that led to the lawsuits. Per the Wonkette blog,

Dr. Schmoke was a dean at DeVry between 2009 and 2012. During that time, the Federal Trade Commission sued the school for claiming that 90% of its graduates were employed in their field within six months of graduation. In fact, the real number dipped as low as 52%. Per WaPo,

According to the FTC lawsuit, DeVry counted graduates as working in their field when they were not, in order to boost its employment outcomes. A 2012 graduate who majored in business administration was working as a server at a restaurant, while another with a degree in technical management was working as a rural mail carrier.

Yet the creation of the unit of the Department of Education that Dr Schmoke is going to lead seems to have been inspired by the sorts of abuses that his former company, DeVry, was alleged to have committed, (see report by National Public Radio in 2016).

Discussion - In General

We could start a discussion of conflicts of interest, and even the revolving door, but,...

Thus, as an opinion piece in the Atlantic asserted, the appointment of Dr Schmoke "provoked complaints from critics who pointed out that DeVry recently settled several claims brought against it by regulators alleging it had engaged in some of the very abuses the unit is charged with eliminating."  A writer for Gizmodo put it  more bluntly,

the new student protection bureau of the federal government just hired a guy who worked at the same company whose malicious practices inspired the creation of that new student protection bureau. It’s like hiring one of Al Capone’s henchman to run the FBI!

Of course, the appointment was made by an administration headed by the man for whom Trump University was named, the same bogus university which also settled fraud allegations (see the New York Times story from November, 2016 here, and our post here).

The issue is no longer laxity or timidity in the protection of the public from fraud and deception.  The issue seems to be that the fraudsters are now to be in charge of the public's protection.  This has dire implications for the country.

Discussion - Implications for Off-Shore Medical Education

But we are focused on health care dysfunction, and this particular case also seems to have dire implications for medical eduction.

DeVry University, as we have posted, most recently here,  owns American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, and Ross University School  of Medicine. These are off-shore medical schools that cater to US and Canadian students who wish to go back to the US and Canada to practice. However, they are located in various small Caribbean countries, and since they do not train doctors to practice in those countries, essentially operate without much regulation.

As we have said before,

Admission to US medical schools is increasingly difficult.  So many who seek medical careers may be tempted to apply to schools outside the US.  In the last 30 years, American entrepreneurs have opened offshore medical schools, mostly in the Caribbean, that cater to US students.  They teach in English, and do not require immersion in an unfamiliar culture, so may be more attractive than medical schools in other countries whose mission is to educate physicians to practice in those countries. 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.(Eckhert NL.  Private schools of the Caribbean: outsourcing medical education.  Acad Med 2010; 85: 622-630.  Link here.)  By 2010, there were 33 such schools, 20 of which were new since 2000.

Such offshore medical schools exist in a grey area.  The small countries or colonies in which they are located usually do not seek to regulate them, since the physicians they produce are going to practice elsewhere. There is no requirement that these offshore medical schools be accredited in the US.  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 obscure.  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.'

Since I wrote that, several anecdotes about life as an off-shore medical student have appeared (in February, 2017, and in March, 2017, in KevinMD).  Both stressed that the modus operandi of these schools is to have relatively lax entry criteria, make a lot of money from the tuition of the students initially enrolled, and then ruthlessly weed out the weakest, who may nonetheless be left with tremendous debt.  Furthermore, the March, 2017 post noted further signs of poor quality, including "mandatory lectures are nearly pathetic. There are so many mistakes made by the inexperienced professors, and the lecture becomes confusing and muddled."  Further, students who have any "emotional distress/burnout/sickness" are left to sink or swim, as the "staff is disconnected and said either repeat the term after you seek medical attention or just quit."    

Given that there are no widely accepted ways to measure the quality of medical schools, there are thus even more reasons to worry about the quality of the education received in off-shore medical schools than in US and Canadian schools. 

Things are likely to get much worse, though, if those in charge of US government agencies that are supposed to protect the public in general, and patients' and the public's health in particular are run by people who previously were involved in predations upon the public. 

It seems silly for me to go on about true health care reform at a time when crooks can be recruited into the police department.  

Academic Medical Leaders as Directors of For-Profit Health Care Corporations: the Prevalence of This "New Species" of Conflict of Interest Documented in the BMJ

The important conflicts of interest generated when academic health care leaders also serve on the boards of directors of for-profit health care corporations is suddenly less anechoic, thanks to some intrepid researchers and the British Journal of Medicine.

Background: Academic Health Care Leaders Also Serving as Directors of For-Profit Health Care Corporations

First Discovered Cases

In 2006, we first noticed that leaders of academic medicine also were serving as board members of large for-profit health care corporations.  The first example we discussed was that of Marye Anne Fox, Chancellor (equivalent to president) of the University of California - San Diego, and hence the person to whom the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and its academic medical center report. The conflict was between this position, and her service as a member of the board of directors of Boston Scientific, a medical device manufacture, and the board of directors of Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc., a contract research organization.

Later that year, we discussed a "new species of conflict of interest."  At that time we wrote:

Medical schools and their academic medical centers and teaching hospitals must deal with all sorts of health care companies, drug and device manufacturers, information technology venders, managed care organizations and health insurers, etc, in the course of fulfilling their patient care, teaching, and research missions. Thus, it seems that service on the board of directors of a such public for-profit health care company would generate a severe conflict for an academic health care leader, because such service entails a fiduciary duty to uphold the interests of the company and its stockholders. Such a duty ought on its face to have a much more important effect on thinking and decision making than receiving a gift, or even being paid for research or consulting services. Furthermore, the financial rewards for service on a company board, which usually include directors' fees and stock options, are comparable to the most highly paid consulting positions. What supports the interests of the company, however, may not always be good for the medical school, academic medical center or teaching hospital.

Since 2006, we continued to find colorful examples of such conflicts of interest, e.g.,

- In 2006, the UnitedHealth board included multiple academic leaders, at least one of whom seemed partly responsible as a member of the board compensation committee for allowing the then UnitedHealth CEO to collect many backdated stock options (look here)
- In 2009, some attributed the problems at George Washington University's medical school that caused it to be put on probation to the conflict of interest of its provost and vice president for health affairs,  who also sat on the board of Universal Health Services, which owned the university hospital (look here)...

Through more recent years,

- In 2014, members of the AMA committee that has an outsize role in how the government fixes the pay of US doctors wer also found to be members of boards of directors of such companies as Kindred Healthcare, Hanger Inc, and Sante. (Look here.)
- In 2015, the academic physician and research unit leader nominated to be the new head of the US Food and Drug was a director of Portola Pharmaceuticals (look here)...

Look here for even more

Our Early Cross-Sectional Study

In 2007, we did a somewhat rough and ready research project based on 2005 data to determine the prevalence of such conflicts.  The results were presented in abstract form,(1) but not published as an article:

In 2005, there were 164 US health care companies in the 2005 S&P 1500, and 125 US medical schools. We identified 198 people who served on the companies' boards of directors who had faculty or leadership positions at these medical schools. Of the 125 medical schools, 65 schools had at least one faculty member and/or leader who also served on a health care corporation's board of directors. 15 schools had more than five, and 4 had more than 10 such individuals. Of the 125 schools, 7 reported to university presidents who were also directors of health care corporations, and 11 schools reported to vice-presidents for health affairs who were also such corporate directors. Four schools were lead by deans who were also health care corporate directors, and 10 schools had academic medical center CEOs who were such directors. 22 schools had at least one top leader who was also a director of a health care corporation. 36 schools reported to university boards of trustees which each included at least one director of a health care corporation, and 12 schools' own boards of trustees included at least one such director.

We concluded:

more than one-half of US medical schools had a leader or faculty member who also was a director of a major US for-profit publicly traded Bpure^ health care corporation, more than one-sixth of schools had a top leader who was also such a director, and more than one-fifth reported to boards of trustees which included such directors.

More Modern and Complete Data

Unfortunately, we never wrote a full paper about this work, although the likelihood we could have gotten it published around 2007 was very small.  It is fortunate that Anderson and colleagues did a more complete and current version of this project, which was published online this week by the British Medical Journal.(2)

Methods

Their methodology was similar to our earlier work, but more sophisticated.  They obtained data on the 2013 board members of 446 public for-profit US companies listed on New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ and classified as in the healthcare sector, including pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical equipment and supply companies and health care providers from the companies' 2014 proxy statements.

Results

Their results were striking, suggesting even a greater prevalence of conflicted academic leaders than our preliminary results suggested

Directors were affiliated with 85 geographically diverse non-profit academic institutions, including 19 of the top 20 National Institute of Health funded medical schools and all of the 17 US News honor roll hospitals. Overall, these 279 academically affiliated directors included 73 leaders, 121 professors, and 85 trustees. Leaders included 17 chief executive officers and 11 vice presidents or executive officers of health systems and hospitals; 15 university presidents, provosts, and chancellors; and eight medical school deans or presidents.

The new study also described the direct financial relationships among the academic leaders, professors and trustees and the corporations on whose boards they served.

The total annual compensation to academically affiliated directors for their services to companies was $54 995 786 (£35 836 000; €49 185 900) (median individual compensation $193 000) and directors beneficially owned 59 831 477 shares of company stock (median 50 699 shares).

Discussion

As we have suggested, Anderson et al stated that being on the board of directors of a for-profit health care corporation creates conflicts of interest beyond those created by simply having a financial relationship with a health care company, e.g., by participating in a commercially sponsored research project or acting as a consultant to a company.

Similar to individuals engaging in consulting relationships, directors on industry boards enter a formal contract with the company and receive financial payment for services; however, they are subject to two important differences. Firstly, unlike consultants who are compensated to provide expertise on a specific issue, directors are subject to a fiduciary responsibility to company shareholders to advance the general interests of the company and increase profits. Secondly, directors are reimbursed both through larger cash fees than typical consulting contracts and through stock options, the value of which is directly tied to the financial success of the company.

They also added the reminder that,

Though the missions of academia and for profit companies can overlap, they may also diverge, specifically when the for profit mission of industry competes with the non-profit taxpayer funded clinical and research missions of academic medical and research institutions.

So,

previous guidelines have emphasized the relationships of clinicians and researchers with industry, but institutional conflicts of interest, which arise when administrators, including executive officers, trustees, and clinical leaders have a financial relationship with industry, are increasingly recognized and pose a unique set of risks to academic missions. 

Our Summary

We have written again and again on the problem of conflicts of interest affecting health care professionals, academics, and policy makers.  The worst such conflicts may occur when individuals are simultaneously leaders of large mission-oriented health care non-profit organizations, such as teaching hospitals, medical schools, or research institutes, and board members of for-profit health care corporations.  Despite our attempts to raise such issues as important, and probably important causes of health care dysfunction, they have remained anechoic.

Now a broadly based study of this no longer so "new species" of conflict of interest has appeared in one of the biggest and most prestigious medical journals.  Let us hope it will bring this issue to the forefront, and also partially counter those who have been preaching that concerns about conflicts of interest in health care are overblown.

As we have said again and again, the web of conflicts of interest that is pervasive in medicine and health care is now threatening to strangle medicine and health care.  Furthermore, this web is now strong enough to have effectively transformed US health care into an oligarchy or plutocracy.  Health care is effectively run by a relatively small group of people, mainly professional managers plus a few (lapsed?) health care professionals, who simultaneously run or influence multiple corporations and organizations.

For patients and the public to trust health care professionals and health care organizations, they need to know that these individuals and organizations are putting patients' and the public's health ahead of private gain. Health care professionals who care for patients, those who teach about medicine and health care, clinical researchers, and those who make medical and health care policy should do so free from conflicts of interest that might inhibit their abilities to put patients and the public's health first.

Health care professionals ought to make it their highest priority to ensure that the organizations for which they work, or with which they interact also put patients' and the public's health ahead of private gain, especially the private gain of the organizations' leaders and their cronies.

ADDENDUM (16 November, 2015) - Note that an abbreviated version of this post has appeared as an electronic "rapid response" to the article by Anderson et al (link here), although the published form has on it our original submission date.   

References

1. Poses RM, Smith WR, Crausman R, Maulitz R. Selling them the rope: prevalence of for-profit health care corporate dirctors among academic medical leaders. J Gen Intern Med 2007; 22 (Suppl 1): 98.
2.  Anderson TS, Good CB, Gellad WF.  Prevalence and compensation of academic leaders, professors and trustees on publicly trade US healthcare company boards of directors: cross sectional study.  Brit Med J 2015; 351:h4826.  Link here. 

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave - Duke and UNC Allegedly Agreed Not to Hire Each Other's Faculty

We have intermittently discussed the worsening plight of physicians trying to provide clinical care as employees of large organizations.  Such corporate physicians are likely to be squeezed between professional values that put the patient first, and management that puts revenue first.   Physicians employed by large corporations may find their values increasingly at risk as these organizations adapt the tactics of the robber barons.

Now it appears that even ostensibly genteel academic medical institutions may be adapting these tactics.

Allegations of Anti-Competitive Faculty Employment Practices at Duke and University of North Carolina Medical Schools


The story first appeared with little fanfare in the (Duke) Chronicle in June.  An assistant professor at the UNC School of Medicine was interested in a position, also at the assistant professor level, at nearby Duke.

[Dr Danielle] Seaman had been in email communication with UNC’s Chief of Cardiothoracic Imaging beginning in 2011, when she expressed interest in a radiology position at the UNC School of Medicine, and the chief of the division encouraged her to apply, the case file describes. In 2012, Seaman was invited to visit the campus and toured the radiology department at UNC.

However,

When Seaman expressed interest in the assistant professor position again in early 2015, however, the chief responded in an email by saying he had just received confirmation that 'lateral moves of faculty between Duke and UNC are not permitted' as per a 'guideline' set by the schools’ deans.

In a later email, the chief also described to Seaman the reason the agreement was created—Duke had tried several years ago to recruit the entire bone marrow transplant team from UNC, and UNC was forced to pay them a large retention package to keep them.

Both emails are included in the filing by Dr Seaman's lawyers.


Imagine the nerve of medical faculty thinking they should be paid more by the current employer because another institution was willling to recruit them and pay them that much.
 
An Agreement Comfortable for the Deans, but Disadvantageous for Their Faculty

An August article in the Chronicle suggested that the top leaders of the two medical schools felt that the "no-poaching" agreement was mutually beneficial. 

According to the case file, Seaman became aware of the policy earlier this year, but the UNC chief of cardiothoracic imaging—who is unnamed in the file—believed the policy had been in place for several years after Duke had previously tried to recruit the entire bone marrow transplant team from UNC.

'The general rule was that we didn’t recruit there and they didn’t recruit at Duke—it certainly was in the years I was in the administration,' said John Burness, former senior vice president for public affairs and government relations from 1991 to 2008. 'I don’t know if it’s ever been a formal agreement, but it’s certainly been a practice over a long period of time.'

Burness—now a visiting professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy—noted that he could not recall an instance in which a faculty member from UNC was recruited to Duke during Nannerl Keohane’s tenure as president of the University from 1993 to 2004. Keohane also confirmed that during her time as president the University avoided poaching of UNC faculty.

Also,

'The question of whether Duke and UNC [or N.C. State] should attempt to recruit faculty from the other campus was always somewhat delicate,' Keohane, now Laurance S. Rockefeller distinguished visiting professor of public affairs at Princeton University, wrote in an email.

The Chronicle found a Duke Law professor who provided a comfortable rationale for the agreement between the two schools,

Despite the case file’s claims that such a policy is detrimental to faculty from both schools, Clark Havighurst—a former professor in the Duke University School of Law who taught healthcare policy and antitrust law for more than 40 years—also believes that this agreement would be beneficial to both institutions in the long run.

'You’d probably find relatively few instances where Duke and Carolina have poached each other’s faculty,' Havighurst wrote in an email. 'This is probably a matter of mutual restraint as much as explicit agreement, however, as each school or department would hesitate to irritate the faculty at the neighboring institution, thus undermining collegial and personal relations that are undoubtedly beneficial to each.'


What the soothing words about mutual benefit and collegiality leave out is that while the school administrations benefit from less disruption, they also likely benefited by being able to pay their faculty, especially junior faculty less. As Dr Seaman argued in her filing, as per the June Chronicle article,

The suit—filed June 9 in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina—contends that the no-hire agreement had the “intended and actual effect” of suppressing competition and employee wages, therefore violating federal and state anti-trust laws.

An Aside, the Non-Poaching Agreement Defended by One of the Key Advocates for Market Fundamentalism in Medicine

As an aside, Professor Havinghurst turns out to be one of key architects of the transformation of the US health care from a regulated system emphasizing health care provided by individual professionals and small non-profit institutions to our current laissez faire commercialized system.  It is more than ironic that while Prof Havinghurst now scoffs at applying anti-trust law to alleged collusion by big employers, per M Gregg Bloche in the Stanford Law Review(1),

Since the mid- 1970s, market-oriented scholars have challenged a broad range of legal principles previously assumed to sustain the trustworthiness of physicians and health systems. Doctrines shielding physicians from antitrust law, insulating them from insurers' and hospitals' influence over clinical practice, and reinforcing the precept of undivided clinical loyalty to patients came under attack as protection for the medical profession at consumers' expense. These scholars, including Clark Havighurst, Richard Epstein, and Mark Hall, urge contractual ordering of clinical standards of care; relationships among physicians, hospitals, and health care payers; and physicians' conflicting obligations to patients, payers, and other third parties.

Again, Havinghurst appears to have been one of the principal, if not the principal advocate to use anti-trust law against small groups of physicians, and against the notion that physicians can promulgate their own codes of ethical conduct.  In an introduction to an article by Havinghurst in Health Affairs in 1983.(2)

For a decade or more, Clark Havighurst has been a philosophical thorn in the side of organized medicine, preaching a view of the health sphere that rejects decision making by professional self-regulation in favor of a system based on marketplace principles.

Note that in retrospect, this article seemed to stake out Health Affair's position as an important organ to promote market fundamentalism in health care. 

How convenient that Prof Havinghurst is still affiliated with Duke and in a position to defend his university's treatment of other faculty.


I urge you to scan Health Care Renewal to see how the change from professional self-regulation of ethics to the free rein of the laissez faire marketplace turned out. Look here for our first reporting on the late Dr Arnold Relman's discussion of how medicine was pressured to accept commercialization, and how that acceptance has since decimated our core values.  Look here for our discussion of the fallacy of the perfect market in health care.  Look here for a rebuttal from an authority we do  not often quote of the concept of health care as a commodity versus a calling. 

Summary

Note that the outcome of the lawsuit against Duke and UNC is unknown.  The allegations it makes are not proven.  However, I chose to discuss it because the evidence, particularly the emails reproduced in the court filing, seems pretty strong that the two schools did have an actual agreement not to compete in the hiring of faculty, and the argument that his suppressed faculty wages and opportunity is prety strong and obvious.

Academic physicians, particularly at elite institutions, may feel they are in a rarefied atmosphere separate from the hurley burley or everyday health care.  They may feel they are protected from, and can even ignore the health care dysfunction we discuss on Health Care Renewal.  They certainly may not think of themselves as "wage slaves" from the era of trusts, monopolies, and robber barons.

But this case exhibits that academic medical institutions are getting closer to the ruthless world of poorly regulated, commercialized, market fundamentalist health care.  Talk about collegiality is nice, but it seems pretty clear that the "non-poaching" agreement between Duke and UNC may have reflected collegiality among top medical school leadership, but limited their faculty salaries and individual faculty members' choices and opportunities.  This seems like another example, however soft spoken and genteel, of the leaders of health care organizations putting the interests of their own ingroup ahead of the interests of the larger organizations and the mission they are supposed to serve.

It is time for even academic physicians to realize that they are not protected from the troubles of the larger world.  If they truly believe in their professional values, if they really care about patients' and the public's health, and about medical and health care science and education, they will have to start speaking up, or they will end up wage slaves of the new health care robber barons along with nearly everyone else.   

To lighten things up at the end, the Eagles doing Hotel California live in 1977 -



"We are all prisoners here, of our own device"

References
1.  Bloche MG. Trust and betrayal in the medical marketplace.  Stanford Law Review 2002; 55: 919-954.  Link here.
2.  Havinghurst C. The doctors' trust.  self-regulation and the law.  Health Affairs 1983; 2: 64-76.  Link here.

The Medical School as Hereditary Plutocracy - Retiring Board Chair Sanford Weill of Cornell Weill Medical School Names His Own Daughter as New Chair

As I have written before, sometimes you just could not have made this stuff up.

The Retiring Board Chairman Appoints His Own Daughter to Succeed Him

The most even handed reporting on this story was in Inside Higher Ed,

Leadership of the board that oversees Cornell University’s medical college is passing from father to daughter, an unusual transition of power for a higher education board.

Weill Cornell Medical College’s Board of Overseers has been chaired for the past two decades by its namesake and major donor, Sandy Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup.

His daughter, Jessica Bibliowicz, is now set to take over Weill's role. She is the founder and former CEO of a major insurance brokerage, and has also been on the board for a decade.

Let me just dissect this a bit.  Weill Cornell Medical College is a large, prestigious medical school located in New York City, and part of Cornell University.  The chair of its Board of Overseers for the last two decades as been one Sanford I Weill.  Mr Weill is a famous finance executive, formerly CEO of Citigroup from 1998 - 2003, remained chairman of the board of Citigroup through 2006, and is now chairman emeritus (look here). 

According to a Cornell press release, the new chairperson, ms Jessica Bibliowicz, is a

Cornell University graduate in 1981 and after working 18 years in financial services, Ms. Bibliowicz became CEO of National Financial Partners in 1999, a financial services firm that specializes in benefits and wealth management. The company went public in 2003 and was sold to Madison Dearborn in 2013.

 Currently,

Ms. Bibliowicz is a senior advisor at Bridge Growth Partners and serves on the board of directors of Sotheby's(NYSE: BID); Realogy (NYSE: RLGY); and the Asia Pacific Fund (NYSE: APB). She is a board director/trustee of Prudential Insurance Funds....

The Inside Higher Ed article noted that

In a statement, Cornell said, Weill Cornell Medical College engaged in a comprehensive process to select its chair of the Board of Overseers by canvassing multiple members of the board in full consultation with senior leadership. The search was headed by a group of senior trustee overseers with extensive knowledge of the institution and Weill Cornell firmly believes it has selected the best choice as chair.'

The New York Times reporting of the succession, oddly in the Dealbook blog, which is focused on finance and Wall Street, not medicine, made it seem, however, that Mr Weill handpicked his daughter to succeed him,

he increasingly felt that the time was nearing to appoint a successor.

'I felt like it was a good time for younger blood,' he said.

Ultimately, he decided upon his daughter,

The Cornell press release lauded Mr Weill, the retiring chair as providing "bold and visionary leadership," having "enduring dedication," exemplifying "benevolence and unwavering resolve to ensure a healthier future," etc, etc.  It called him a "self-made man who exemplifies the philosophy of leading by example."  It quoted the current dean of the medical school, Dr Laurie Glimcher, (whose apparent conflict of interest as a board member of Bristol-Myers-Squibb we discussed here and here) calling his accomplishments "breathtaking."  It quoted the university president, David Skorton, calling him again a "visionary."

In the Dealbook article, Dr Glimcher further praised the chairperson designate, Ms Bibliowicz, as "a person of enormous energy and passion," who will "bring her energy, her connections and her passion for medicine and medical research and education to the role."


The Inside Higher Ed article noted some vague questions about the position of chair of the board of trustees of an important medical school being passed from father to daughter,

'On the other side of the coin, within-family succession planning adds complexity to the issue -- it just raises certain questions,' [former vice president for programs and research at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges Peter] Eckel said.

However, Mr Eckel did not really list these questions.

Later, the article referred to "nepotistic arrangements," presumably in part referring to this father - daughter transition, but then found someone to defend them. 

The Real Questions

Weill Cornell Medical College is part of a non-profit organization.  Nonprofit organizations have no owners. Non-profit organizations are formed to support particular missions, under the stewardship of boards of trustees (or directors or overseers).  These boards have three basic duties [italics added]

 Duty of care: Board members are expected to actively participate in organizational planning and decision-making and to make sound and informed judgments.
Duty of loyalty: When acting on behalf of the organization, board members must put the interests of the nonprofit before any personal or professional concerns and avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Duty of obedience: Board members must ensure that the organization complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations, and that it remains committed to its established mission.

Thus, the transfer of the position of chair of the board from parent to offspring, apparently directly under the control of the parent, is questionable on its face, suggesting that family interests came before the "interests of the nonprofit."  Such transfers may commonly occur on the boards of privately family held for-profit companies, but are basically unheard of for medical schools or other large academic medical nonprofit organizations, where they certainly could appear nepotistic.

That concern is amplified when neither parent or child have any appreciable background or training in the work of the nonprofit.  Neither Mr Weill nor Ms Bibliowicz seem to have any training or background in health care, biomedical research, or specifically medicine.  Yet Weill Cornell Medical School's basic mission is to train students to be physicians.  So how well either or their personal judgments about the policy and operations of a medical school are "informed" is not exactly clear.  

Further concerns are raised by the background of the father in this father daughter transaction, the part of the background that was entirely ignored by the rather fawning public discussion of the transaction in the Cornell press release, and also the NY Times Dealbook article.

In fact, Mr Weill's leadership in the past was of Citigroup during the lead up to the global financial collapse of 2008.  Citigroup, the poster child for the too big to fail bank, nearly went bankrupt, and required a huge government bailout.  Its near collapse, again apparently only prevented by government action, is widely considered to have been a major cause of the finance disaster starting in 2008.  As we noted in a 2009 blog post about Weill Cornell,   The Sellout, by Charles Gasparino, featured vivid portraits of the bad leadership that lead to the collapse, including specifically Mr Weill,

But in reality, Will never really ran anything. He was a visionary, to be sure, but one whose vision was so myopically focused on building the empire had lusted for for so long and on its share price that he ignored just about everything else. (p. 144)

Furthermore, this was Mr Weill's listing in the "key people" section of the book,

Former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, Weill created the idea of the one-stop-shopping mega-financial conglomerate, engineering a series of mergers ... and in the process created the world's largest financial company.  Famously obsessed with his firm's stock price, Weill announced his resignation in 2003 after investigators discovered he'd pressured a stock analyst, Jack Grubman, to raise his rating on AT&T, where Weill was on the board, in return for ensuring that Grubman's children got into an exclusive preschool.

Furthermore, in the Time magazine series on the "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis," Mr Weill is listed as  "blameworthy" because,

Who decided banks had to be all things to all customers? Weill did. Starting with a low-end lender in Baltimore, he cobbled together the first great financial supermarket, Citigroup. Along the way, Weill's acquisitions (Smith Barney, Travelers, etc.) and persistent lobbying shattered Glass-Steagall, the law that limited the investing risks banks could take. Rivals followed Citi. The swollen banks are now one of the country's major economic problems. Every major financial firm seems too big to fail, leading the government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to keep them afloat. The biggest problem bank is Weill's Citigroup. The government has already spent $45 billion trying to fix it. 

In a post on the Baseline Scenario blog, Simon Johnson, author of another authoritative book on the financial crisis, 13 Bankers, wrote this about Citigroup leadership,

Citigroup is a very large bank that has amassed a huge amount of political power. Its current and former executives consistently push laws and regulations in the direction of allowing Citi and other megabanks to take on more risk, particularly in the form of complex highly leveraged bets. Taking these risks allows the executives and traders to get a lot of upside compensation in the form of bonuses when things go well – while the downside losses, when they materialize, become the taxpayer’s problem.

Citigroup is also, collectively, stupid on a grand scale. The supposedly smart people at the helm of Citi in the mid-2000s ran them hard around – and to the edge of bankruptcy. A series of unprecedented massive government bailouts was required in 2000-09 – and still the collateral damage to the economy has proved enormous. Give enough clever people the wrong incentives and they will destroy anything.

Physicians are supposedly rigorously trained, and tasked with upholding important ethical principles.   So did it make sense to entrust the stewardship of a premier American medical school to the man who engineered the expansion of Citigroup that turned out to be "stupid on a grand scale," in order to "get a lot of upside compensation," while leaving the "downside losses" to become "the taxpayer's problem," so that the "collateral damage to the economy has proved enormous?"   Does it make sense to allow him to choose his own daughter, who has no more medical experience than he did (which was zero), to steward the school in the future?

I wonder what Cornell medical students, or physician alumni would say, if they felt safe enough to answer the question?

As we wrote in 2009,  boards of trustees of not-for-profit health care institutions have a primary duty to uphold the institutions' missions.  Thus, one would think such boards would be selected according to their dedication to their missions.  But perhaps, in the grubby real world, there may be more important criteria, possibly such as the size of their donations to the institution.  Furthermore, those likely to donate the most  may be more likely to be richest (and perhaps most in need to making themselves appear philanthropic and public-spirited) than the most fervent upholders of patient care, teaching and research.

Maybe giving stewardship of our once proud health care institutuions to people most likely to defend their missions, rather than most likely to donate a lot of money, would result in somewhat poorer institutions which do a better job of patient care, teaching and research.

You heard it here first.