Posted on 03/10/2006 6:52:03 AM PST by Calpernia
If there are no prosecutions (with real time, unlike Kushner); than this whole War on Terror is just a horse and pony show.
Excerpt:
http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060519/NEWS01/605190370/1006
Documents shredded at UMDNJ
A secretary may have shredded documents tied to an ongoing probe at the local campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, a lawyer involved in the investigation said Thursday.
A tipster alerted authorities that papers were being destroyed Wednesday in the office of Warren Wallace, a school administrator and Gloucester County freeholder, said the lawyer, John Inglesino.
(snip)
Bryant, formerly a program support coordinator at UMDNJ, is under investigation for possibly using his position on the state Budget and Finance Committee to steer funds to the school.
(snip)
Here is the 57 page Federal Report to date on the UMDNJ activities that includes money mismanagement to political favors.
http://goexcelglobal.com/NJ_DefenseForce/UMDNJ/umdnjhstern.pdf
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/
Monday, June 05, 2006
Another UMDNJ Leader Fired
After another brief hiatus, UMDNJ is back in the news again. The university now is operating under a federal deferred prosecution agreement with the supervision of a federal monitor (see most recent posts here, here and here.) We had previously discussed allegations that UMDNJ had offered no-bid contracts, at times requiring no work, to the politically connected; had paid for lobbyists and made political contributions, even though UMDNJ is a state institution; and seemed to be run by political bosses rather than health care professionals. (See post here, with links to previous posts.)
Our most recent post about UMDNJ was about a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raid on the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, NJ responding to a tip that papers related to the school's relationship to New Jersey state Senator Wayne Bryant (D-Camden) were being shredded in the office of Bryant's political ally, Warren Wallace, the senior associate dean for academic and student affairs at the osteopathic school.
The redoubtable Newark Star-Ledger reported Friday the firing of Dean Wallace. Today, the paper reported on the federal monitor's findings that lead to the firing. These included:
Wallace, whose responsibilities include admissions, worked behind the scenes to get his daughter into medical school. The report says that in a highly unusual decision, the university granted her an interview even though she had failed to submit test scores and other information critical to admission. According to those who have been briefed on the report, his daughter's application did not include the Medical College Aptitude Test scores every medical student must take, letters of recommendation or her required essays on why she should be accepted. Some members of the admissions committee were upset she was even granted an interview. But two members of the school's admissions committee, who acknowledged being contacted beforehand by Wallace, gave her the highest possible interview score.
Records show Wallace interceded to help a friend and neighbor obtain a no-bid contract to provide exclusive cafeteria and catering services for the campus in Stratford worth more than $300,000 over the past three years. The report says Wallace received free meals from the catering service.
Wallace submitted nearly $3,000 in travel expenses through subordinates, who put in for petty cash reimbursements that then were handed over to Wallace. The scheme allowed him to sign off on his own expenses.
Computer files in his office reveal Wallace -- who is also a Gloucester County freeholder and chairman of the Delaware River and Bay Authority -- conducted extensive amounts of outside business while at UMDNJ.
Wallace now is just the latest in a series of UMDNJ leaders who have been forced out, including the former UMDNJ President, former Chair of the UMDNJ board of trustees, and the Dean of the School of Osteopathy.
[ADDENDUM (June 6, 2006): The report is out, and in it, according to the New York Times, federal monitor Herbert J Stern called Mr Wallace's activities "unethical at a minimum." Furthermore, the new chair of the UMDNJ board, Robert J DelTufo, called his behavior "ethically unsavory." And a UMDNJ spokeswoman said, "Dr Wallace's interference with the admissions process was unethical and unacceptable." The Newark Star-Ledger reported that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine said, "I think it's time for Mr. Wallace to step aside from public life." And the Gloucester County Times revealed the report "states that before a May 15 admissions committee meeting, staff was directed by Wallace to announce to the committee that his daughter was a candidate and that upon acceptance would be interviewed by a member of the faculty who reports to Wallace." After the report was made publich, she withdrew her medical school application.]
As this scandal lurches from one lurid revelation to another, I wonder how difficult it must be for the many honest and hard-working faculty, students, and staff at the institution who continue to fulfill the university's mission, the same mission that was seemingly abandoned by too many of the university's former top leaders.
Perhaps the hope that the university will learn something collectively from this awful experience, and may emerge from this experience as a strong and honest institution again.
We can only hope that the health care community as a whole might learn something from UMDNJ's nightmare. Of course, the community will not learn a thing if it never hears about the story at all.
Thus, the continued envelopment of the UMDNJ story in the anechoic effect remains distressing. I have just searched using PubMed, Google Scholar, and Google, and found absolutely not a single reference to UMDNJ's recent travails in any medical, health care, or health policy journal. The closest my search came was an article in the Spring issue of the Rhode Island American College of Physicians Governor's Newsletter, an article that I wrote.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1620384/posts
Report on UMDNJ exposes thousands in misspent funds (med school dean guzzled $50 Glenlivet shot)
The ACLU shows up on a google of Praxis. These are progressives and they want to run the State of Florida. In some areas, they have already infiltrated - heavy infiltration.
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/07/repositioning-and-rebranding-while.html#links
Monday, July 31, 2006
"Repositioning and Rebranding" While UMDNJ Burns (Money)
The management of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) was back in the harsh media spotlight again. UMDNJ has appeared frequently in posts on this blog. The university now is operating under a federal deferred prosecution agreement with the supervision of a federal monitor (see recent posts here, here, here and here.) We had previously discussed allegations that UMDNJ had offered no-bid contracts, at times requiring no work, to the politically connected; had paid for lobbyists and made political contributions, even though UMDNJ is a state institution; and seemed to be run by political bosses rather than health care professionals. (See post here, with links to previous posts.) Most recently, the costs of all these management shenanigans was estimated to be a whopping $243 million (see post here).
The indefatigable Newark Star-Ledger reported that yet another UMDNJ trustee has resigned. This time the issue was
the federal monitor overseeing the school concluded [trustee] Sterritt had committed ethical and legal violations by pressuring university officials to hire his brother, an admitted alcoholic who lost his license to practice law because of misconduct.
The monitor, former federal Judge Herbert J. Stern, said in the report that staffers within the university's human resources department complained that Sterritt was 'very involved' and 'persistent' in an effort to find his brother a position at UMDNJ -- which they considered unprofessional and unacceptable interference.
The report said UMDNJ staff felt pressure to find employment for Sterritt's brother 'at all costs,' noting he was eventually hired after the job requirements were loosened so he could qualify. However, he was paid at the higher salary of the titled position before it was downgraded, according to the monitor.
The article also cataloged all the other UMDNJ leaders who have left:
In the past eight months, the university has lost its president, who was pressured to leave by Corzine; three other trustees who left after tougher ethics rules were put in place banning even casual business relationships with the school; the dean of the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine and the university's senior vice president for academic affairs, who were both accused of abusing travel and expense accounts; and a senior associate dean, who was fired for abusing his position to help himself, friends and family -- including wielding his influence to get a daughter into medical school.
Meanwhile, the repurcussions of the university's huge financial losses continue. The Star-Ledger also reported that the university will lay off more than 100 staff, raise tuition at the medical and dental schools by four percent, and delay the opening of a new out-patient cancer center at the Newark campus. The interim president warned of "longer waits in the hospital's emergency room for non-critical cases. He predicted patients also will have to wait longer to get appointments at the hospital's clinics, as well as face delays for elective surgery."
But amazingly, despite these cuts, the Star-Ledger further reported that UMDNJ leadership had planned to spend about $2.5 million on a "marketing campaign to spruce up the image of the state's scandal-plagued medical university." This was "the second time the governor's office has killed an image campaign by UMDNJ that it found to be ill-timed or ill-conceived. An earlier media effort was quashed in January under pressure by then-Gov. Richard Codey." (See post here.) " The new plan was to resurrect elements of that plan, in a so-called 'repositioning and rebranding campaign' to highlight UMDNJ's research, aimed at attracting researchers, students and patients to the university's clinical services and its teaching hospital. It included many of the television commercials and print advertisements that had already been produced before the lid had been put on the original marketing effort, officials said." The plan was all set to go forward, but after the Star-Ledger asked the state governor's office to comment on it, "the university was ordered to put the ad campaign on hold indefinitely. That request was made by Stuart Rabner, the governor's chief counsel, who told the university that while image improvement was important for UMDNJ, the $2.5 million expenditure would seem inappropriate at a time when the university was cutting jobs and programs to help address a $25.5 million budget deficit at UMDNJ's University Hospital. "
Ok, UMDNJ is operating under a deferred prosecution agreement, has lost $243 million to mismanagement and other administrative misadventures, has seen the departure of many of its top leaders, is running a deficit and forced to make severe cutbacks. So how do the current leaders respond? - by trying to run a marketing campaign of "repositioning and rebranding?" Is there no problem that can't be papered over by a little repositioning and rebranding?
One correspondent responded to the problems at one of the large pharmaceutical companies by wondering if that company had become "a marketing company that happens to make drugs." Has UMDNJ become "a marketing company that happens to be a health care university?"
Once again, the problem appears to be corporate culture. Health care organizations have attracted leaders who are more interested in marketing than in their fundamental missions. UMDNJ needs leaders who put mission before marketing. Leaders' papering over problems is what lead the university to its current sorry state.
>>>Once again, the problem appears to be corporate culture. Health care organizations have attracted leaders who are more interested in marketing than in their fundamental missions. UMDNJ needs leaders who put mission before marketing. Leaders' papering over problems is what lead the university to its current sorry state.
This is very well said and bumping for emphasis.
All boils down to a bunch of evil, greedy monsters in places of power. So many fraudsters in one place also means collusion, aiding and abetting each other's frauds.
It got so quiet after the initial FBI report release that I was nervous about the investigation being shut down. I'm thrilled it is still ongoing.
There's so much fraud---cataloguing it must have been quite a chore.
I guess Dr Petillo better plan on guesting at a federal "tennis resort."
I'm sure he will have a heart condition before then. Can't risk caging a song bird.
Yeah, he doesn't look too well---although he might have gotten some rare tropical disease while visitng his offshore bank accounts.
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/12/umdnj-as-political-sand-box.html
UMDNJ as a Political Sand-Box
The Newark Star-Ledger just published another in its long series of stories on the troubles at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). As we have discussed previously, the university now is operating under a federal deferred prosecution agreement with the supervision of a federal monitor (see most recent posts here, here, here, here and here.) We had previously discussed allegations that UMDNJ had offered no-bid contracts, at times requiring no work, to the politically connected; had paid for lobbyists and made political contributions, even though UMDNJ is a state institution; and seemed to be run by political bosses rather than health care professionals. (See posts here, and here, with links to previous posts.) The most recent development (see post here with links to previous posts) was that UMDNJ apparently gave paid part-time faculty positions to some community cardiologists in exchange for their referrals to the University's cardiac surgery program, but not in exchange for any major academic responsibilities.
Now the Star-Ledger has come up with a story of some mind boggling decisions made by the former UMDNJ leadership that seemingly wasted millions on expensive building projects that now stand vacant. The article then concluded with another insightful analysis of what went wrong in the leadership culture of the university, an analysis that may generalize to other health care organizations.
First, let's summarize the blundering building projects. The first was a highly secure site to develop vaccines against biologic terror agents, which is years behind schedule because a UMDNJ leader wanted to relocate it to a piece of land owned by his neighbor. Per the Star-Ledger,
It was known as a Regional Biocontainment Lab.
It was announced in September 2003 by then-Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thomp son, who hailed it as 'a major step' toward providing effective vaccines and diagnostics for diseases caused by agents of bioterror as well as in fections such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and West Nile virus.
The federal grant stipulated the project be built in Newark's University Heights, adjacent to an existing bioresearch lab operated by UMDNJ.
Memos and e-mails show that within four months, Robert A. Saporito -- then UMDNJ's senior vice president for academic af fairs -- was looking for another site, as university officials grew concerned they would be unable to find matching funds required to build the project.
The search for alternate sites was never disclosed to the public, to the political leaders who secured the money, or to the federal agency that awarded it.
Saporito was forced to resign in March after he was accused of abusing his expense account. In an interview before he left, he said changes in the original design, mandated by security concerns, led to discussions about relocating the lab. He said he explored moving the lab to Picatinny after receiving a call from William Marcellino, a developer who lived a few doors down from him in Brick Township.
When the National Institutes of Health learned about the Picatinny plan last year, the agency was clear: 'We explained to UMDNJ that alternate sites were not an option,' said John J. McGowan, an administrator at NIH.
In an August 2005 letter to the university, NIH officials complained that they had seen little progress on the project and warned 'if you are unable to show the project can be completed, we will need to begin to negotiate the return of funds.'
The next was a cancer center that sits mostly vacant.
The newest building on UMDNJ's Newark campus is a nine-story structure emblazoned with distinctive red signs identify ing it as the New Jersey Medical School/University Hospital Cancer Center.
It includes vast expanses of glass, state-of-the-art research labs, underground vaults for linear accelerators used in cancer treatment, and an outdoor garden for patients.
But no cancer treatment is going on. There are no doctors, no clinical services and no patients. While some researchers have moved in, more than half the building remains empty.
Christopher Paladino, a former university trustee, said there was never a real plan for the cancer center. He said millions were spent without benefit of any economic feasibility studies, or any examination of whether the center would actually bring in patients.
Paladino, named a trustee after the project began, concluded the center had been the product of jealousy between the school's Newark and New Brunswick campuses. In Newark, he said, there was a feeling that because the university has a cancer institute 'in New Brunswick, we should have it here.'
The article documented other expensive buildings that sit partially vacant in lieu of any realistic plans to use the space they provided. In particular,
Adjacent to the cancer center in Newark is a new, six-story building for ambulatory outpatient services completed this year. Walk through this structure, past the cool pastel walls, and there are few people. One level is vacant, as are large parts of the rest of the building.
Since before construction began in April 2003, UMDNJ officials knew they would have trouble down the road because the center was built with tax-free government bonds and money raised that way cannot be used for profit-making operations such as doctors' offices.
'The total confusion on that subject has been the major obstacle,' [Interim UMDNJ President] Vladeck said. 'We're starting to untie that knot.'
Vladeck said the complex was planned and built by people who put off the financial issues, figuring it would be constructed and 'by then, they would have to fix the problem.'
Finally, the Star-Ledger discussed a fascinating analysis of what has gone wrong with the leadership of UMDNJ.
Interviews with past and current officials indicate many projects were a product of a school that increasingly was divided into two worlds the past few years.
In one, nurses and doctors battled to provide health care in a poor, urban environment. But at the top were administrators who got their jobs through political patronage and whose basic job experience was not teaching or medicine, but state government and politics.
Paladino, who was an assistant counsel to Gov. Jim Florio, said political jobs seemed to be part of the lifeblood of the university.
'It's a Sharpe guy. It's a Rice guy. It's a McGreevey guy, or a DiFrancesco guy, he remarked, referring to former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, state Sen. Ronald Rice, and two former governors, James E. McGreevey and Donald DiFrancesco. Everyone has a guy. They don't hide from it.'
It wasn't always evil, he said, but it became a slippery slope as politicians sought comfortable jobs for their political supporters.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, who is overseeing a criminal investigation into the university that was launched after a series of stories in The Star-Ledger last year, saw it all as less than innocuous.
"There were people in political life who were in charge of the budget process who made sure UMDNJ got taken care of, because they knew folks could go there and be employed,' said the U.S. Attorney. 'There was a very symbiotic relationship there between the political world and the university.'
He added that his parents once told him character was what you do when you think nobody's watching.
'UMDNJ,' Christie said, 'was the way politicians acted when they thought nobody was looking, and it's a pretty ugly picture.'
So there you have it. One fundamental problem with UMDNJ was that the University was run by people with no background or fundamental interest in health care, who did not share, even at an intellectual level, the values of health care. The leaders treated the country's largest health care university as there own political sand-box, completely disregarding its core mission, and thus completely disrespecting the patients and learners it was supposed to serve, and the health care professionals who tried to serve them.
After the revolution that turned health care over to business people, bureaucrats, and politicans, how many other health care organizations are run for the benefit of their leaders, rather than the missions they were supposed to support?
Thanks for the ping!!!! This gives me the chills.......more government intervention into our lives coming our way............
Corslime refers to the latest head of UMDNJ as a good guy who volunteered.............he gets over $500,000 for volunteering.
Well, it's only the taxpayer's money, no problem!
And expense accounts!
(thanks for the ledger/editorial tidbit. Reading now)
Evidently the dems think nothing of spending our money and telling us how much they care about us all.
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