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September 14, 2000

Administrators respond to question about conflict of interest

Can someone who holds administrative jobs with both the University and UPMC Health System serve as an honest broker in a dispute involving the health insurance needs of Pitt employees enrolled in the UPMC Health Plan?

University Senate President Nathan Hershey posed that question at recent meetings of Senate groups and in his "University Senate Matters" column in this issue of the University Times.

The way Hershey raised the conflict-of-interest issue rankled Pitt's senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences, Arthur Levine. So did Hershey's suggestion that Loren H. Roth, an administrator with both Pitt and the UPMC Health System, was more interested in making UPMC look good than in helping Pitt faculty and staff.

Hershey was describing his role in resolving an impasse between UPMC and Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield over continuity of care for some Pitt employees. See story on page 1 and Hershey's column on page 2.

In seeking to settle the conflict, Hershey contacted Senior Vice Chancellor Levine, who asked Roth to work with Hershey. While the Senate president did not identify Roth by name in his column or at Monday's Senate Council meeting, he did so at last week's Faculty Assembly meeting.

Hershey said that when he discovered Roth holds an administrative post with UPMC Health System as well as serving as Pitt's associate senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences, he wondered: Was Roth really trying to resolve a problem for University employees? Or was Roth more interested in convincing Hershey to blame the problem on Highmark?

Levine said that in requesting that Roth look into the situation, he was simply asking a colleague who is knowledgeable about the UPMC Health Plan to research the issue, keep Levine apprised of his research and try to assist Hershey.

"I think Dr. Roth was just trying to be helpful in a very complicated issue, where the stakes seemed to be, for both Highmark and the UPMC Health System, very high. Basically, he was doing it in an amicus curiae capacity," Levine said.

"I couldn't very well delegate this to a subordinate, as Dr. Hershey suggested I did, since this matter wasn't within my responsibility," said Levine, who attended Senate Council on Monday. "This was an issue that needed to be resolved by the chancellor of the University together with the top officials of Highmark and UPMC Health System. And those are the people who resolved it."

Told of Levine's comments, Roth said: "I think Dr. Levine has summarized the situation very accurately." Roth did not attend Faculty Assembly or Senate Council.

— Bruce Steele

Filed under: Feature,Volume 33 Issue 2

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