March 2013

Findings of the Administrative Organizational Review Committee By Leonard Zwelling March 27, 2013             How’s that for a title?             Well, it’s spring and we need some renewal and rebirth. The Easter bunny is coming on Sunday, the Passover matzos were eaten last night and then there are eggs, admittedly more colorful for the Christians […]

A Letter From the Front Lines                  March 21, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling “One must question the employer-employee relationship of the medical staff and the hospital administration. What will happen to the already fragile balance between quality patient care, the fair treatment of the medical staff and hospital profit? Will your average hospital administrator or

Thinking Small               March 20, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling                 At the Faculty Senate meeting last evening, a new chair-elect was named. He is Gary Whitman of Diagnostic Imaging. I do not know him myself, but his videotaped address before the voting was extremely polished and well considered. It was highlighted by his simple, succinct message:

WSJ Letter: The following letter is up on the WSJ site in response to an op-ed published last week: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578360584086516100.html This is a horror story of a pediatric oncologist wrongly convicted of a crime in absentia and then detained when passing through the UAE on his way back to South Africa from a family wedding

From Gail Collins’ column in NY Times today about our newly-elected Senator Ted Cruz and his truly juvenile interaction with Senator Diane Feinstein over gun control this week: “If you combine a lack of a sense of humor with an absence of humility and then stir in a cup of self-righteousness, you are definitely not

Debits and Credits                                       March 13, 2012 By Leonard Zwelling           This is really easy.           The first day in my Accounting 101 class in business school they taught us about debits and credits—what comes in (a plus asset) and what goes out (a plus liability). It is considered favorable if the amount that comes in

Let’s Be Prepared                                                             March 11, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling             The email was beamed out over the institutional system. The Faculty Senate was sponsoring yet another Faculty Forum, this one on Clinical Productivity and Institutional Finances. My guess is that what this is really about is trying to get an explanation from the leadership team

The Time Magazine Article and the President’s Response By Len Zwelling                 The Bitter Pill by Steven Brill was an eye-opening article in Time Magazine for some. But what was in this piece should have come as no surprise to anyone at MD Anderson.                 My interpretation of the Brill article is: 1.       Charges for

The Hard Task of Representing the Faculty March 4, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling Mia Love is the young (37) mayor of Sarasota Springs, Utah. She is a conservative Republican, African-American, Mormon and an articulate spokesperson for the right. (It’s a great country!).  She appeared on ABC’s This Week on March 3 and had a rather

A Kind of Madness March 3, 2013 By  Leonard Zwelling, MD, MBA In her column in the Wall Street Journal on March 2, Peggy Noonan described a White House that has grown more and more out of touch with reality. She accuses the Obama Administration of overreaching, imperiousness and being overly full of itself. She