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Puliafito Morning 7/28
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Is USC committed to transparency, or just damage control? (EDITORIAL)
Jul 28, 2017 | LA Times
By Editorial Board
Officials at the University of Southern California are now in full damage-control mode. Facing growing anger that the university ignored or mishandled reports alleging that the former medical school dean took drugs and partied with a circle of criminals and drug abusers, USC President C.L. Max Nikias finally admitted this week that “we could have done better.” -
Could drug testing have saved Dr. Carmen Puliafito’s career, and USC’s reputation?
Jul 28, 2017 | STAT News
By Casey Ross
The revelations about Dr. Carmen Puliafito are an academic hospital’s worst nightmare — methamphetamine use, partying in the dean’s office, the doctor’s presence at the scene of a 21-year-old’s overdose. -
Reports on USC Probe Spotlight Gibson Dunn Ties
Jul 27, 2017 | The American Lawyer
By Mariam Rozen
As University of Southern California alumni digest the news of ex-medical school dean Carmen Puliafito’s alleged drug-fueled escapades—and the university’s handling of the scandal—USC’s president announced last week that it had tapped Debra Wong Yang, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, to conduct a “thorough” investigation. -
Dori Monson Show
Jul 27, 2017 | KIRO-FM (Seattle)
Listen to piece here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28493572?token=dd4fe89e-6350-4944-8948-94faad3482a5
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Please Find Full Texts and Transcriptions Below
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Is USC committed to transparency, or just damage control? (EDITORIAL)
Jul 28, 2017 | LA Times
By Editorial Board
Officials at the University of Southern California are now in full damage-control mode. Facing growing anger that the university ignored or mishandled reports alleging that the former medical school dean took drugs and partied with a circle of criminals and drug abusers, USC President C.L. Max Nikias finally admitted this week that “we could have done better.”
But even though Nikias has now acknowledged the obvious, it’s not entirely clear yet that he and other USC leaders are committed to a comprehensive, independent and transparent evaluation of what went wrong.
The full story should have come out last year, after Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito, a powerhouse dean and prolific fundraiser, abruptly resigned in March 2016. But it did not. There was no mention at the time of the resignation that just three weeks earlier, a 21-year-old woman overdosed in his presence in a Pasadena hotel room.
Shortly after the incident, an anonymous witness called Nikias’ office and told two employees there about the dean’s presence at the hotel. The witness also told The Times, prompting a 15-month investigation by reporters that uncovered photos and videos that appear to show Puliafito using methamphetamine and other drugs in hotels, cars and even his USC office, as well as apparent breaches of medical ethics.
Yet during that period — even several months after Puliafito resigned — Nikias and other university leaders continued to praise the former dean for helping Keck Medical School rise in national rankings. Puliafito remained on the Keck faculty, continued to accept new patients and represented USC in public as recently as this month, when The Times’ investigation was published
If Nikias and other USC leaders were indeed ignorant of Puliafito’s conduct, they were willfully ignorant. Times reporters made numerous phone calls and sent repeated emails to USC leaders to talk about the allegations — and were repeatedly ignored or rebuffed. They showed up at Nikias’ office to ask for an interview and were turned away.
A reporter even hand-delivered a letter to Nikias’ home, asking to discuss the circumstances of Puliafito’s resignation. The letter was returned to The Times by courier, along with a letter of complaint from USC’s vice president for public relations who said the reporter “crossed the line” by taking a letter to Nikias’ house. How, then, can USC leaders be taken seriously when they feign shock and outrage at the Puliafito story?
Nikias announced last week that the university has hired former U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang to investigate Puliafito’s conduct and the university’s response. But even that decision raised eyebrows — Yang represented USC in a wrongful-death lawsuit in 2012 and taught classes at the law school. Her firm was cited for its fundraising efforts by former USC grads.
Ultimately, the USC Board of Trustees, which is a veritable who’s who of power brokers in Los Angeles, will have to sort out what went wrong and why. They ought to do so honestly and transparently.
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Could drug testing have saved Dr. Carmen Puliafito’s career, and USC’s reputation?
Jul 28, 2017 | STAT News
By Casey Ross
The revelations about Dr. Carmen Puliafito are an academic hospital’s worst nightmare — methamphetamine use, partying in the dean’s office, the doctor’s presence at the scene of a 21-year-old’s overdose.
But the case of the University of Southern California eye surgeon and former medical school dean, as reported recently by the Los Angeles Times, raises a bigger question: Could it all have been prevented by random drug testing?
California voters handily rejected a ballot question in 2014 that would have required physicians to submit to testing. Meanwhile, with no state or federal regulations on the matter, hospitals nationwide have enacted an array of policies. Some only test anesthesiologists; still others do not require any drug testing; one major hospital, Cleveland Clinic, recently took the rare step of instituting random drug testing for all of its 55,000 employees.
Drug testing is common in other industries, and it is required for pilots and other transportation workers whose impairment would directly undermine public safety. But hospitals have been resistant to embrace the practice.
Their trepidation reflects various objections that have been raised in the industry. Doctors groups have expressed concerns about privacy, false positives, and a lack of evidence that such testing would actually improve the safety of patients. There is also no consensus on the best way to implement random testing of doctors or on how to discipline those with positive results.
But Dr. Michael Fitzsimons, who oversees the drug testing program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said health care organizations should consider expanding random testing, especially with many states liberalizing drug laws.
“With legalization of marijuana, I do worry that that could put our patients in more jeopardy,” Fitzsimons said. “Physicians should be more widely tested. As medicine starts to focus more and more on safety and the human factors, I think it’s valid for hospitals to consider, and I’m actually in favor of drug testing.”
Mass. General’s policy calls for testing doctors when there is a suspicion of drug use. The hospital also randomly drug tests anesthesiologists, but does not require random testing for other doctors or caregivers.
Fitzsimons, director of cardiac anesthesia at the hospital, said drug testing should be implemented in concert with other measures, including substance control in hospitals as well as education and treatment programs for doctors with substance abuse problems.
“Drug testing alone is not the answer,” he said. “All arms really need to be enhanced, addressed, and utilized.”
A University of Southern California guide on disciplinary practices indicates that the university can drug test employees to determine whether they are working under the influence. But there is no provision for random testing. The university did not respond to a question about whether Puliafito was ever tested, or whether it will revisit its testing policy in light of his case.
In a statement, USC President C.L. Max Nikias said the university is “working to determine how we can best prevent these kinds of circumstances moving forward.” The statement added that the school launched a new office of campus wellness and crisis intervention and continues to operate a peer-to-peer program with Vanderbilt University to help physicians in distress.
The investigation by the Los Angeles Times reported that Puliafito, 66, a renowned eye surgeon and prolific university fundraiser, repeatedly used drugs with prostitutes and other criminals — sometimes in the dean’s office at USC.
The Times reported that it reviewed photos and videos that show the Harvard-educated Puliafito using methamphetamine and ecstasy in 2015 and 2016. It also reported he was present in a Pasadena hotel room when a 21-year-old woman overdosed. She was rushed to the hospital and later recovered.
Attempts to reach Puliafito were unsuccessful. Following the newspaper’s report, USC officials released a series of statements saying they were working to fire Puliafito and strip him of his faculty tenure. The university is also conducting an investigation into the extent of his drug use.
In November 2014, California voters soundly rejected Proposition 46, the ballot proposal that would have required drug testing of doctors, by a margin of 67 percent to 33 percent. While earlier polls showed strong report for drug testing of physicians, the proposal was paired with a measure that would have increased California’s cap on non-economic damages in medical negligence lawsuits.
Opponents, including the state’s medical association and other prominent groups, argued that ballot proposal was about increasing payouts to trial lawyers more than protecting patients.
Following its rejection, the proposal faded into the background. However, hospitals have continued to face pressure to address substance abuse within their own ranks and beyond, due to legalization of marijuana and a national opioid epidemic fueled by prescription drug abuse.
Cleveland Clinic, whose home state is in the throes of the opioid crisis, instituted random drug testing for all of its employees in January 2016.
Dr. Paul Terpeluk, medical director of employee health and the clinic, said the policy was put in place to send a clear message to employees. “We’re a health care organization and we consider basically every job at the Cleveland Clinic to be a safety-sensitive job,” he said. “We don’t believe people who work in those positions should be under the influence of drugs.”
Terpeluk said the random testing policy has led to the discovery of drug use by employees. But he declined to elaborate on the number of positive results or whether the implementation of the new policy has reduced the number of employees with substance abuse problems.
“We use this policy as a deterrent to drug use,” he said. “Because most people are rational, they say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that because I might get caught.’ But we do have people who turn up positive.”
If there is a positive result, Terpeluk said, the clinic’s policy is to provide treatment to the employee. “Rather than fire people, we try to help them and get them back to work as soon as possible,” he said.
If the employee with a positive result is a licensed clinician, the clinic is obligated to report positive results to the state medical authorities, who run an independent process to determine whether the caregiver should be fined or have their license suspended or revoked.
Terpeluk said the clinic abides by the state’s determinations. He added that drug testing is important both for the safety of both patients and caregivers. “Doctors and nurses, like everyone else, are not immune to this issue,” he said. “We feel good this program is in effect and helping to identify people who may have a problem.”
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Reports on USC Probe Spotlight Gibson Dunn Ties
Jul 27, 2017 | The American Lawyer
By Mariam Rozen
As University of Southern California alumni digest the news of ex-medical school dean Carmen Puliafito’s alleged drug-fueled escapades—and the university’s handling of the scandal—USC’s president announced last week that it had tapped Debra Wong Yang, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, to conduct a “thorough” investigation.
The university didn’t call the firm's internal review independent. And the Los Angeles Times, which first broke the USC story, made a point of detailing the strong ties that Yang and her firm have to the school.
Yang once taught at USC’s Gould School of Law, where firm managing partner Kenneth Doran earned his degree and later served as board president. In 2014 the law school touted Gibson Dunn’s “100 percent participation” in an alumni fundraising drive. And Yang has done legal work for USC before, representing the university in 2012 when parents of Chinese students who were killed near campus brought wrongful death claims.
In a different Gibson Dunn investigation, Yang had earned scrutiny over her ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose office hired the firm to investigate his administration’s conduct in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.
The Gibson Dunn team included Yang, a former prosecutor who was a Christie friend and fundraiser. The firm ultimately issued a report clearing the governor of wrongdoing.
But in the USC matter at least, the firm’s institutional connections don’t raise red flags, according to Columbia University Law School professor and corporate governance expert John Coffee Jr.
“I don’t see this as dangerously close [to signaling a conflict]. I don’t even see it as an appearance issue. It doesn’t sound incestuous. She didn’t go to the law school,” Coffee said of Yang, who graduated from Boston College Law School.
While Gibson Dunn and Yang have represented USC, they haven’t done so regularly. And when it comes to Gibson Dunn lawyers’ contributions to USC’s law school and to other ties, Coffee said, “You aren’t going to find major law firms that don’t have those connections.”
But, Coffee added: “The classic rules are that you use a law firm that is not your regular counsel. You make it very clear this is going to be a one-shot retention.”
Chuck Herring, a partner in Austin’s Herring & Panzer who also focuses on ethics, was more skeptical. “In order to have an investigation that the public will have confidence in,” he said, the school would be better served to pick a firm with no ties. “If the firm has previously been a beneficiary of the school, questions might be raised after the report has been issued,” Herring said.
“If you paid me in the past that may undercut the public perception and confidence in the investigation. It’s not as if there is a shortage of former prosecutors out there,” Herring said.
Letters to the editor published by the L.A. Times highlight the public perception issue. One reader, calling Yang a “former employee” of USC, asked if the university would have a “thorough investigation or a whitewash.” Another reader also noted that Yang had been an adjunct professor at the law school, writing that “a truly independent investigator is warranted.”
Both Yang and her firm declined to comment for this story.
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Jul 27, 2017 | KIRO-FM (Seattle)
Listen to piece here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28493572?token=dd4fe89e-6350-4944-8948-94faad3482a5
Rough transcript: story number two the dean of the university of southern california medical school was caught. he's sixty six years old doctor carmen puliaifito made one point one million dollars a year as the u. s. c. med school dane he was caught in his hotel room with a twenty one year old a prostitute who had overdosed. but he had a story for the police he wasn't just hanging out with some child actor. i know twenty one isn't a child. i know he just said that she was a family friend who came over to visit him in the hotel. but the l. a. times did this investigation and found that this doctor had what they described as a sordid history of drug taking and partying the police didn't buy his story about the twenty one year old being a family friend they said that she was wearing provocative clothing and that his secret life has been well chronicled in photos and video shot the last couple of years by his drug related friends. the dean of the med school has not commented on those allegations.
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