University Times

An elected committee of medical school professors has begun sifting through hundreds of pages of documents related to the University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP) unified practice plan.

UPP and Pitt officials forwarded the documents after professors complained — during a series of sometimes-stormy faculty meetings last winter — that they were being kept in the dark about negotiations to create UPP.

UPP is being formed through a merger of the 17 previously independent physician practice plans of the School of Medicine plus the dental school's practice plan. Officials from UPP, the University and UPMC Health System are negotiating a new financial relationship through which the health system will absorb UPP.

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and other administrators have pledged that the medical school's teaching and academic research missions will be preserved under the new arrangement, but some faculty remain skeptical.

To defend their academic and financial interests, medical faculty last month elected a committee of seven professors (from among 20 nominees) to review UPP draft documents and update faculty on negotiations. Ultimately, faculty want a voice in approving the new UPP-Pitt-UPMC relationship.

The Faculty Ad Hoc UPP Oversight Committee, as the seven-member group is called, has received drafts of UPP bylaws, policy and procedures manuals, and an employment agreement for faculty hired after UPP is formed.

Interim medical school Dean George Michalopoulos also has distributed the proposed bylaws to all medical faculty.

Ad hoc committee chairperson Bruce S. Rabin said, "I think [UPP President] Richard Baron and Dean Michalopoulos deserve credit for releasing these documents and working in a collegial way with the ad hoc committee." The committee has met twice and plans to meet again on June 13.

Besides Rabin, who is a professor of pathology, committee members include: medicine professor Sheldon Adler (whose sudden dismissal by Michalopoulos in February as the medical school's No. 2 administrator sparked a public controversy about school governance); Nicholas Bircher, associate professor of anesthesiology; Toby Graham, professor of medicine; Ralph Siewers, chairperson and professor of surgery, surgery professor Charles G. Watson and pediatrics professor Basil Zitelli.

Except for Watson, all of the ad hoc committee members also serve on the steering committee for the Faculty Association of the School of Medicine (FASM).

During the spring term, a group of senior medical professors revived FASM (which had been dormant since 1991) to promote shared governance between school faculty and administrators. The University-wide Faculty Assembly endorsed FASM last month as a legitimate organization representing medical school faculty.

— Bruce Steele