UMDNJ Today: An Update

William F. Owen, Jr., MD
President, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni and Other Members of the UMDNJ Community:

Many of you have read the provocative articles about UMDNJ by Josh Margolin and Ted Sherman that appeared in this week's Star-Ledger. The article on the front page of the October 26 edition is a rehash of old information and ignores the many positive reforms we have instituted in recent years.

The October 26 article contained little real news. It was instead an often confusing and convoluted trip down memory lane, airing old allegations plucked from draft reports, anonymous sources, disgruntled former employees, and memos that went as far back as three years ago.

As many of you have experienced, UMDNJ is making enormous progress since a
Federal Monitor was with us and in the many months since he and his team departed.

In January 2008, the Monitor described UMDNJ as a much-changed institution: "From the top down, UMDNJ has undergone major personnel, policy and cultural changes. Perhaps most importantly, we believe that UMDNJ can now conduct its business honestly and legally." Our accrediting agency, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, affirmed its confidence in us when it decided "...to remove the institution from probation because of progress to date and evidence of the institution's capacity to make appropriate improvements."

Strong leadership has been critical to our transformation. We're proud of the way we have overhauled our senior management team. Our reconstituted Board of Trustees is an active and energized working board. Our current Board has separate Audit and Finance Committees to address financial matters and facilitate timely independent audits and review compliance activities.

We now have an infrastructure in place enabling us to accelerate our success:

• Our ethics and compliance unit works vigorously to make sure that dollars spent, people hired, and policies administered comply with State and Federal regulations.
• Our ethics, compliance, investigatory and auditing infrastructure dramatically exceeds that of any public institution in the State of New Jersey.
• Our investigations unit aggressively pursues allegations of wrongdoing, including any employee charges of harassment or retaliation made over our anonymous UMDNJ hotline.
• New procurement practices have curtailed abuses in our methods of obtaining goods and services and ensure that these methods are in compliance with State policies and procedures.
• We have a zero tolerance policy for infractions.
• We have a culture of accountability at all levels.
• We have greater transparency, especially in developing budgets and financial reporting.
• University Hospital now has a separate Board of Directors that is providing it with an additional layer of oversight.
• University Hospital recently achieved full JCAHO reaccreditation.
• We comply with State ethics regulations while enabling our faculty to engage in scholarly activities.

The bottom line is this: UMDNJ has turned the corner. Yes, there is still more to do. We must resolve pending legal matters left over from the past. But we can assure you with absolute sincerity that we are not the same institution as three years ago.

That is not the impression you might have received after reading the October 26 article. The reporters referred to allegations in the Monitor's unredacted report, the more detailed report that was not released to the public. At the time this report had been prepared, these allegations had not yet been investigated and resolved; the Monitor left that task to us.

• We have been aggressively following through on our responsibilities. We even hired some of the investigators used by the Monitor -- Sobel & Company -- to continue the investigations so that the entire process would be seamless.

We also hired Walter Timpone, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, to sign off on all investigative findings before a case is concluded. An experienced federal investigator managed the investigations. In addition, the Board created an investigative Subcommittee of the Audit Committee to oversee the investigative work. We are pleased to tell you that a majority of those allegations requiring our follow up have been investigated. A full accounting of all the investigations in the redacted report will be presented to the Board of Trustees at their December meeting.

Most of the allegations we have so far are without merit. These include some recently cited in the Star- Ledger:

• The charge that University Hospital was inappropriately billing for patients in the Emergency Department was determined to be untrue.
• Follow-up investigations also disputed allegations that Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists assigned to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital had been improperly paid.
• The allegation accusing UMDNJ of inflating medical expenditures was raised in a preliminary JH Cohn report only. Without coercion from UMDNJ officials, a $7 million interpretation of overpayment was withdrawn by JH Cohn on further analysis. In light of JH Cohn’s own disparity in analysis and concern expressed in the unredacted report, Walter Timpone sought another independent analysis shortly after receipt of the unredacted report. The result is pending.

We are eager to provide the media and the public with the news about the University. Last week the UMDNJ Board of Trustees and the University Hospital Board of Directors publicly discussed the status of University Hospital. The presentation provided an overview of the hospital's financial condition and the critical issues contributing to its current fiscal challenges.

At that same meeting, the University Trustees approved a transformational agreement between UMDNJ and the University Physicians Associates which will, among other things, vastly improve the level of accountability, collaboration and transparency between the two groups.

Both of these events are newsworthy and are of importance to the communities served by UMDNJ. We are troubled that there has been no mention of either of these initiatives or of our many other reforms in the most recent Star Ledger news reports. We are concerned about how our staff, students, faculty, alumni and the general public will perceive the rehashing of the old UMDNJ scandal. But we also welcome the opportunity to have the public appreciate that we are a vastly improved public university and statewide asset.

Sincerely,

William F. Owen, Jr., MD, President

Robert J. DelTufo, Esq., Chair, UMDNJ Board of Trustees

UMDNJ Board of Trustees