A few weeks ago, following the collapse of the attempted merger/acquisition of University of Louisville Hospital by private interests, a respected member or the community asked me how we had arrived at a point where the advocates of the takeover failed so miserably to understand the critical issues of concern to the public. I attempted an explanation, but there is no simple answer to this complex issue. Here is the reply I offered. Continue reading “Is the University of Louisville Moving in the Right Direction or Not?”
Category: Hospital Mergers
Archbishop Fights Health Plan Policy.
I have been trying to find the time to branch out to other topics on this policy blog, but material related to issues of the recently failed merger/acquisition of University of Louisville Hospital by Catholic Health Initiatives keeps rolling in. Yesterday it was reporting by Peter Smith in the Courier-Journal on local Catholic Archbishop Joseph Kurtz’s tough talk about the new federal law requiring employers offering health insurance to cover birth control pills, morning-after pills, and certain other basic necessary health services related to reproductive and womens’ health. The Catholic Church equates contraception to murder, although even the large majority of American Catholics and most of the rest of us do not agree.
The coverage requirements do not apply to churches or other purely religious communities such as convents, although presumably some (but not all) of the covered services would not be missed in such institutions. The new law only extends to entities such as hospitals and universities in the public marketplace that would hire non-Catholic employees.
Bishop Kurtz complains that, “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens,” and that his religious ancestors did not come to these shores “only to have their posterity stripped of their God-given rights.” He complains further that the new law “has cast aside the first amendment … denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.” The Bishop apparently fails to see any irony that by forcing employees or patients in hospitals like University Hospital to follow his religious dogma, that he is guilty of violating the freedoms of others, god-given or otherwise! Reverend Simmons, a minister and teacher of medical ethics in of Louisville says it better, “that the only freedom being cast aside is the “liberty to enforce their opinions on others.” Continue reading “Archbishop Fights Health Plan Policy.”
More Bad Press For the University of Louisville. A QCCT Scandal?
One of my favorite lines from old movies is: “The Devil can quote scripture to his own purpose.” So have various parties seen different things in the Dranove opinion of the recent partially released documents related to the acquisition that would have included the University of Louisville Hospital. The University itself focused on a line forecasting “dire effects” if the University was not permitted to proceed with its plans to hand over control of its clinical activities to another organization. My attention was focused on the lack of specific detail in the report. One of the items that must have captured the attention of County Attorney O’Connell who commissioned the report, was the suggestion that a body independent of the University oversee any future use of the Quality and Community Care Trust (QCCT) through which millions of state and local government funds are funneled to the University.
When the County Attorney asked for minutes of the University Board supposedly overseeing the funds, he was astonished to find that the legally required documents were not available, or worse, that there was no official documentation that the Board had met since 2007. Such a failure echoes the recent complaint of the Louisville Metro Council that the University had not produced information requested of it by the Council. Notwithstanding, the Council voted to continue the QCCT funding anyway. The University has now shared a little of its own increasingly tarnished reputation with an overly tolerant Council.
County Attorney O’Connell has called for a new Board, completely independent of the University, to oversee any future use of a public QCCT funding mechanism. He wanted to insure that “money did not come before mission” with respect to the University. I recently called for a State Audit of the QCCT, and questioned whether this almost 30-year-old partial solution to funding indigent care in Louisville is still appropriate. After all, Louisville’s governance has merged, the needs of the pubic have evolved, the health care system of Jefferson County has been drastically reorganized, and alas, the University of Louisville has also changed.
Would a lack of the required accountability from the QCCT Board simply represent a failure of University management? Is this part of a pattern of the University attempting to circumnavigate the law? I cannot help but be reminded of the recent Passport Scandal in which the University and its internal organizations harvested money intended for medical care of the needy and used it for other purposes. In my opinion, what we have been seeing unfold is a failure of leadership at the highest levels of the University of Louisville. The University of Louisville has lost its way. It needs our help now, not enabling responses from the public to which it is accountable.
Peter Hasselbacher, MD
A PDF version of this entry can be obtained here.
My Way or the Highway! UofL Takes Hostages.
Governor Beshear, with consultation from the Attorney General’s office, again rejected “suggestions” offered by James Ramsey and Jim Tayor that were intended to make more acceptable the addition of the University of Louisville and its Hospital to the newly merged Catholic Health Care Initiatives entity in Kentucky. The Governor thought not!
The substance of the suggestions was not initially made public. Even the Governor’s office curiously called them “private and proprietary.” However, President Ramsey has given his version of them to the UofL community in a broadside that continues this matter with some open threats. (Read his message here.) In fact, President Ramsey seems openly to have picked a fight with the Governor and Attorney General by claiming an alternate version of reality. “We began our in depth merger conversations with the governor 18 months ago. He has never expressed any concerns to us about the governance structure of the proposed merged entity.” I do not have a feeling that this is going to end well for Dr. Ramsey and the University!
I am surprised at the continuing secrecy, especially since this whole merger-matter has been widely criticized for inappropriate secrecy and private dealings. Dr. Taylor did not initially reveal this new Plan-B, telling us that the University wanted the Governor to have a chance to reflect on it. I maintain because now that President Ramsey has released his own obviously self-serving version of the suggestions, we of the public have a right to hear it all. I believe the University has already waived its “privacy” with regard to its amended merger propositions, if indeed it was ever entitled to such special treatment. Continue reading “My Way or the Highway! UofL Takes Hostages.”