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March 18, 2004

Court Date set in Pitt’s Challenge to Pap smear Lawsuits

Attorneys for Pitt plan to argue in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court on April 29 that the University should be dropped from lawsuits claiming that Magee-Womens Hospital deceptively used physicians’ electronic signatures, and falsified and destroyed patient records.

In preliminary objections filed last month, Pitt lawyers argued that the University is “an academic institution that is legally separate and distinct from the UPMC defendants and it cannot be held responsible” for Magee employees’ actions.

Two former Magee pathologists who continue to hold faculty appointments in Pitt’s School of Medicine — professor Kenneth S. McCarty Jr. and associate professor Susan Silver — filed whistle-blower lawsuits in December and January, respectively, against Pitt as well as UPMC, its Magee-Womens Hospital and UPMC’s University of Pittsburgh Physicians Inc. (UPP) practice plan.

The individual lawsuits allege that Magee and UPMC compromised patient care for the sake of profits and knowingly falsified thousands of Pap tests (routine tests that tell doctors whether women are at risk of developing cervical cancer) by placing doctors’ electronic signatures on tests that never were checked by those physicians, implying they had reviewed the reports. Such false reports “caused significant misdiagnoses and delays in diagnoses for several years,” Silver’s complaint claims.

Prior to reporting alleged violations to the independent College of American Pathologists and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Silver and McCarty say, they repeatedly shared their concerns with UPMC, Magee and Pitt administrators — only to be ignored, threatened and retaliated against. Both ultimately were terminated from their positions at Magee, and McCarty was dismissed as a Pitt assistant dean.

Arthur S. Levine, Pitt senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the medical school, confirmed that Silver and McCarty came to him with their concerns several years ago. He declined to comment on the validity of those concerns.

Were academic issues involved?

“No, there are no academic issues involved,” Levine told the University Times. “It’s a hospital issue, not a University issue.”

One of the attorneys representing Silver and McCarty, Robert C. Daniels of the Philadelphia law firm Braverman Daniels Kaskey Ltd., disagreed.

“The actors at Magee and within the UPMC system in many instances wear two hats — one a University hat and the other a UPMC-Magee clinical hat,” Daniels said. “Both of the doctors [Silver and McCarty] not only had clinical privileges and clinical employment at the hospital, but they also had contracts at the University.”

Prior to being dismissed from the job in 2001, McCarty was assistant dean of graduate medical education in Pitt’s medical school — “which is clearly a University program,” said Daniels. “I mean, it’s the Pitt medical school. It’s not the UPMC medical school.”

McCarty and Silver are seeking undisclosed amounts of money in damages. They declined to comment to the University Times this week.

Also in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court on April 29, UPMC attorneys are expected to argue for the dismissal of all charges against UPMC, Magee and UPP.

UPMC spokesperson Jane Duffield said the doctors’ charges are unfounded, “and we are confident that we will prevail in court. We stand behind the quality of our laboratories. They meet or exceed all regulatory standards.”

Regarding allegations that Magee-Womens personnel deceptively amended patient reports and destroyed original records, Duffield said: “Records are completely preserved and available for any subsequent retrospective evaluation. They are not destroyed. However, outdated information is removed from the patient’s chart. This is done to avoid confusion, so the patient can be properly treated.”

Since McCarty and Silver filed their lawsuits, additional suits have been filed against UPMC and Magee by four patients who claim they have suffered injuries as the result either of malpractice or

inappropriate readings of Pap smears and other tests.
—Bruce Steele


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