University Times

The Faculty Association of the School of Medicine (FASM) will sponsor an open forum Jan. 28 to discuss draft employment agreements for the new University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP) practice plan.

UPP was formed through a merger of Pitt's 18 previously independent clinical practice plans. It is a nonprofit corporate subsidiary of UPMC Health System.

Pitt clinical faculty whose salaries will be paid through UPP will be required to sign the agreements. These legal contracts will spell out policies on treating and referring patients, salaries and fringe benefits, and other matters. But the employment agreements aren't in final form yet and faculty may still influence their wording, FASM leaders and medical school administrators agree.

FASM attorneys Louis B. Kushner and Alan C. Blanco are scheduled as speakers at the Jan. 28 open forum, set to begin at 5 p.m. in lecture room 6, Scaife Hall. They are expected to comment on the draft agreements and field questions from the audience.

Kushner and Blanco are with the Downtown firm of Rothman Gordon PC, which specializes in employment law and has represented the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, among other labor unions.

The forum is open to the University community, not just medical faculty, said FASM member Bruce Rabin. In addition to serving on FASM (which is the official faculty organization at the School of Medicine), Rabin chairs the school's Faculty Ad Hoc Oversight Committee. Medical professors elected the oversight committee to represent faculty interests in negotiations to form UPP.

Oversight committee members still can't agree among themselves whether to endorse the employment agreements as currently worded, Rabin said. But the committee plans to meet Jan. 30 to try again to reach a consensus and make a recommendation to medical faculty, he said.

— Bruce Steele