University Times

Medical faculty committee approves proposed UPP employment agreement

After months of poring over documents and haggling with administrators of the University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP) practice plan, a committee of medical professors has endorsed a proposed UPP employment agreement.

Pitt full-time faculty whose clinical work generates income for UPP will be required to sign such contracts by July 1.

UPP, a subsidiary of UPMC Health System, became the school's sole clinical practice plan in January. It was formed through a merger of the medical school's 18 previously independent practice plans.

Last year, medical faculty elected a committee of seven professors — called the ad hoc faculty oversight committee — to represent faculty financial interests and the school's academic mission during negotiations to create UPP.

Oversight committee members have been meeting and corresponding for months with officials from UPP, Pitt and UPMC over wording of the employment contracts.

Finally, in a letter last week to medical faculty, committee members said they unanimously endorsed the latest version of the contract, telling faculty the document is "fair to you and to UPP."

Arthur Levine, Pitt senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the medical school since Nov. 1, "played an integral part in helping to resolve many of the differences between the oversight committee and the UPP administration that allows us to make this recommendation," the committee wrote.

"The committee believes that the employment agreement that will be sent to you for signing (subject to approval by the UPP executive committee) protects the interests of you (the UPP employee) and the UPP," the letter states. "The agreement creates a work environment that will allow you to contribute to the clinical programs of the UPMCHS as well as the teaching and research missions of the School of Medicine."

At meetings of medical faculty, Faculty Assembly and other groups during the last year, oversight committee members had worried aloud about potential conflicts between the medical school's academic mission and UPP's financial interests.

Since Jan. 1, clinical faculty in the medical school have been jointly employed by Pitt and UPP. Depending on their job duties and their departments' policies, such faculty earn varying portions of their salaries from UPP and the University.

What happens when a clinical faculty member's research and teaching conflict with his or her hospital duties? oversight committee members had asked.

Committee members include Sheldon Adler, Nicholas Bircher, Toby Graham, Bruce Rabin (committee chairperson), Ralph Siewers, Charles Watson and Basil Zitelli.

— Bruce Steele