Paul O'Neill ... chides UPMC for not joining plan to eliminate medication errors.
Posted on 12/08/2004 9:32:30 PM PST by pittsburgh gop guy
Thursday, December 09, 2004 By Pamela Gaynor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has quit the board of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, saying he did so because he was frustrated that the region's largest health care provider would not embrace a regional plan for eliminating medication errors.
Paul O'Neill ... chides UPMC for not joining plan to eliminate medication errors. |
O'Neill helped launch the regional initiative, one of the first of its kind in the country,shortly before the federal Institute of Medicine, in a landmark study five years ago, estimated medical errors kill 98,000 people annually. He remains on its board.
"The fact that the leading academic medical center in this part of the world wouldn't make a public declaration that it was going to identify medication errors ... makes it difficult to say that the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative is really regional," said O'Neill, who began the initiative while he was chairman of Alcoa and rejoined it after leaving his job as President Bush's Treasury secretary at the end of 2002.
O'Neill, who was appointed as a UPMC trustee and member of the board's executive committee in 2003, resigned from the board in mid-September.
UPMC, as a matter of policy, does not disclose who serves on its board, though the health system's president, Jeffrey Romoff, said at the time of O'Neill's appointment that he welcomed O'Neill because of his widely recognized knowledge about health care.
O'Neill and Romoff, however, are said to have clashed on numerous matters, including the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System's liver transplant program, which last year broke away from UPMC.
One board member, who asked not to be identified, said that while UPMC's refusal to embrace the medication-error reporting project might have been a tipping point, O'Neill was also dissatisfied with the amount of information executive committee members received before voting on important decisions.
"If it wasn't this [stance on the medication error project] it would have been something else," the board member said.
UPMC Board Chairman G. Nicholas Beckwith III dismissed speculation that O'Neill had resigned over any quarrel about how much information the health system's leadership shared with its executive committee.
He also said that "UPMC has been an active participant" in numerous quality improvement projects sponsored by the regional health care initiative, but "because of the press of business and the press of time, we haven't been able to participate in all of the projects."
"As far as why Mr. O'Neill chose to resign, I think only he can respond," Beckwith said.
O'Neill would not comment on any dispute he might have had with Romoff concerning the VA Pittsburgh Health System's organ transplantation program, but he did not disagree that he "had a few set-tos" with top UPMC management over what he saw as the insufficiency of information shared on some important decisions. O'Neill said that in instances where he challenged the adequacy of information, he had been given what he wanted.
O'Neill maintained that his main reason for leaving UPMC's board was the health system's refusal earlier this year to participate in a proposed PRHI undertaking in which participating hospitals would have committed to eliminating all medication errors.
The campaign, which was never launched, would have begun with identifying errors that occurred because of the illegibility of handwriting on prescriptions.
"The reason to start there is it engages the first people in the process ... namely the doctors," he said.
O'Neill said UPMC's unwillingness to participate in the project made him question the system's desire to be held to measurable standards of quality.
"I don't understand the leadership there," he said.
O'Neill said he "found that being an insider at UPMC didn't make any difference" in his ability to push the health system to fully embrace the kinds of quality projects the regional health initiative was spearheading.
The projects were modeled after practices borrowed from industrial titans such as Alcoa and Toyota. Those companies improved performance on an array of issues, ranging from production to safety by examining each step in a process to determine where things go wrong.
O'Neill's use of such practices in overhauling Alcoa -- including ones that dramatically reduced occupational injuries -- has become the stuff of legend in major academic business reviews as well as in the news media.
O'Neill has said he is convinced that eliminating medical errors is the key not just to improving quality but to lowering runaway health care costs, possibly by as much as half.
Others said UPMC wasn't the only player in the region's health-care landscape to refuse participation in the medication error project or to be reluctant to pursue some other quality improvement initiatives.
"I wouldn't say it was just UPMC," said Karen Feinstein, who chairs the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative. "We have varying degrees [of acceptance] from a number of systems."
She and O'Neill both said the organization is rethinking its mission and structure.
O'Neill's outspokenness about his quarrels with UPMC is not unusual for him. He also bared his quarrels with the Bush administration in former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty."
I knew, just knew, that because this was on freerepublic it would be about character assassination, with no comment on the actual subject - nearly 100,000 people killed by medication errors.
Any thoughts on the actual subject? I know hospitals are spending money on IT in order to try and track medication through the process in order to prevent these kinds of mistakes. I wonder why UPMC was so resistant.
"O'Neill maintained that his main reason for leaving UPMC's board was the health system's refusal earlier this year to participate in a proposed PRHI undertaking in which participating hospitals would have committed to eliminating all medication errors.
The campaign, which was never launched, would have begun with identifying errors that occurred because of the illegibility of handwriting on prescriptions.
"The reason to start there is it engages the first people in the process ... namely the doctors," he said.
O'Neill said UPMC's unwillingness to participate in the project made him question the system's desire to be held to measurable standards of quality."
"Uh, anyone get the picture that the guy is hard to get along with?"
Right or wrong, that message is coming through loud and clear. Maybe he needs to start another world tour with Bono, et al.
I'm sure between the two of them they could solve all the world's problems, if only the rest of us would listen to them.
Mr. O'Neil, Mr. Bono, I recommend you start in Darfur. Those people need some help, STAT! After that, off to the Ivory Coast. The UN and the French are making a hash of things, AFRICA NEEDS YOU!
I'm starting to think that Paul O'Neill is just a whiny little b!tch...
The question is, how can he believe only he is correct,and everyone else is wrong?
So Freerepublic is about character assassination?
"I knew, just knew, that because this was on freerepublic it would be about character assassination, with no comment on the actual subject..."
Well, aren't you a jolly fellow? Please don't take that as character assassination...
This is just another story about Paul O'Neill being difficult. If he were a true leader, he would convince others and bring them around to his point of view. He was ok in the corporate world, but a terrible Treasury Secretary - and after being fired he attacked the Bush Administration.
This guy is psychotic.
O'Neill has said he is convinced that eliminating medical errors is the key not just to improving quality but to lowering runaway health care costs, possibly by as much as half.
Yeah right. NOT! Pointing out medical errors is the same as dialing direct to John Edwards and saying his ship is in again and again and again....You get the picture.
This isn't so hard..... where are most of the errors occurring? Deal with THEM. As someone who was a technician in both hospital and retail pharmacies, I can say that errors were very few and far between in any pharmacy I worked in. Yes, errors do happen. We are not perfect beings. Look at the facilities where the majority of the errors occur, and fix it! Some administrations might be in need of upheaval, so upheave away! That's most likely a big part of the problem.
He just doesn't seem to be positive about anyplace that he works. He reminds me of the old Groucho joke about not wanting to join a club that would have him. Maybe he just shouldn't take any job he's offered as he knows that it involves problems in an imperfect world. And isn't the mission to solve problems why he was asked to be a cabinet member, etc., in the first place?
The campaign, which was never launched, would have begun with identifying errors that occurred because of the illegibility of handwriting on prescriptions.
"The reason to start there is it engages the first people in the process ... namely the doctors," he said.
Anyone who has spent any time in a Pharmacy knows how to read that writing, whereas a layman has no clue. Any time any pharmacist is unsure about the prescription, whether it be the "handwriting", or a myriad of other questions, ie - the drug itself, the dosage, interactions, the condition of the patient.....all of these things are paid close attention to, and if there is any concern at all, the physician is asked. If you are in a hospital environment where the administration treats doctors like gods, and those docs get used to that kind of treatment, that COULD hinder the pharmacy personell in dealing with questions.....
OK, so what did he accomplish by picking up his marbles?
He basically performed the same duties for the admin.
He did nothing because he is a jerk!
<< This guy is psychotic. >>
Or -- more likely -- an Alcoholic.
O'Neill's public persona is that of a classic sufferer of that progressive, incurable, degenerative and [Unless put in remission by total abstinence] inevitably fatal disease that annually kills more Americans than the next score of diseases combined: Alcoholism.
[A physical allergy to alcohol that manifests itself in the phenomenon of craving -- And not to be confused with the consequences of defective behavior often called "addiction"]
If being a psychotic is knowing 2+2=5 and being completely comfortable with that fact -- and being a neurotic is knowing that 2+2=4 and not being able to stand it -- such is alcohol's ability to alter an Alcoholic's -- and ONLY an Alcoholic's -- perception of reality that only an Alcoholic may experience both states on an alternating basis.
Whether a daily or a binge drinker, every Alcoholic suffers an ever-increasingly-intense neurotic state until, by imbibing alcohol, he induces his own temporary effective psychosis and thereby relieves himself of the requirement that he learn to deal with reality.
Or, in other words, grows up.
O'Neill needs, before it is too late -- and he is dead from his disease, to sober up and then to grow up and learn to afford himself the dignity of the consequences of his own behavior.
After all, after you have grandiosely blamed the President and Armed-Forces Commander-In-Chief of the United States of America for what ails yah -- who is there left to blame?
Paul O'Neill: Negadit Contrarian [We got some of'em right here at FR]
Intended to save you from a doctor or nurse incorrectly dosing patients (either by time, amount, interaction, etc.) and killing almost 100,000 of them annually. These are preventable mistakes, but the doctors are balking a system that would identify the mistakes they make. If you can't even acknowledge it, how can you ever rectify it?
These are preventable mistakes, but the doctors are balking a system that would identify the mistakes they make. If you can't even acknowledge it, how can you ever rectify it?
I don't believe that they are not acknowledging it. They just are not making it available to lawsuit happy lawyers and I don't blame them. For another thing, who came up with the figure 100,000? If they are able to come up with this number they sure can come up with names, dates, cause and the prescribed treatment. Doctors and nurses are not perfect and mistakes can and will be made. Just because they have a Dr.or RN in front of their names should not make them a target of lawsuit happy lawyers and relatives.
You know he has a drinking problem, or you suspect it based on his behavior?
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