An Embarrassment And A Shame
By
Leonard Zwelling
In this article from the Houston Chronicle on June 22, the 100 highest paid people in the University of Texas System are listed. Number one is Dr. Peter Pisters at just under $4M. He is said to receive additional incentive payments as well.
In addition to Pisters, there are many MD Anderson executives in the top 100, most making over a million dollars and many being paid more than the current UT Chancellor. I only ask one simple question. What did these people do to deserve all this money?
My understanding is that the Saturday clinics were initiated due to a projected budget shortfall. Are these people really good stewards of MD Anderson funds if they had to turn Saturday into Monday? It doesn’t seem so.
The MD Anderson personnel roster has ballooned to over 26,000 people. Even the vice presidents have vice presidents, and the secretaries have secretaries. That cost will take a bite out of your budget. Of course, so will ten or twenty people making over a million dollars and functioning poorly. Why do I say they are functioning poorly beside the budget shortfall? Survey after survey of the faculty show discontent, burnout, and a proclivity to find work elsewhere common among the faculty. The institutional academic culture is toxic.
There are more than 20 or 30 department leadership positions unfilled by permanent heads. With the perspective of 40 years of being on the ground at and around MD Anderson, I can safely say this is the most lackluster collection of leaders in the institution’s history. MD Anderson, the perpetual leader in clinical cancer care driven by research, has been transformed into a testing ground for the molecules being developed by Big Pharma and a basic research operation that has regressed to the mean among cancer centers. This is not your father’s MD Anderson. It’s not even mine. To be blunt, it’s an embarrassment.
On that note, I want to address another tragic resignation at Anderson and it’s a damned shame.
One of the joys of being the Vice President for Research Administration and overseeing the clinical research infrastructure from 1995 to 2004 was the chance to work with truly brilliant clinical investigators. I am married to the only one to emerge from MD Anderson Pediatrics in the past 40 years. However, in the Division of Cancer Medicine there was a wealth of clinical research riches. Irv Krakoff, Bob Bast, and Ki Hong all had some the world’s leaders in clinical research as department chairs for many years. I was privileged to spar with many of them and work productively with all of them.
Perhaps I sparred most with the Department of Leukemia and, in particular, its leader for thirty years, Hagop Kantarjian. If you know Hagop at all you will know that he is not only a brilliant clinician and clinical investigator but a passionate advocate of truth in clinical research and in health care delivery. He also loves verbal combat. And he’s good at it. I should know.
At first, we were adversaries only to become colleagues and then friends. We published a few papers together about the state of health care and clinical research after I returned from my fellowship in Washington, DC and saw the sausage of ObamaCare being made first-hand. We also became cheerleaders for each other and there is no one whose ingenuity, energy, persistence, and intensity I respect more than that of Dr. Kantarjian.
I was, thus, deeply disturbed to learn that Hagop had stepped down from his chairman’s job after thirty years. No one will ever convince me that this was voluntary. If this was a decision from above, it is a bad one, but I suspect Hagop’s passion and Hagop’s demands were not shared by the current leadership of Cancer Medicine or of MD Anderson. I do know his faculty adored him.
Hagop was the last remaining power player within Cancer Medicine. He truly represents the last connection to the glory days of Freireich, Krakoff, Bast, and Hong to today.
For me, this is an end of an era at MD Anderson. I believe that the end began twenty years ago, as readers of the blog know. This is the final blow to MD Anderson’s leadership in clinical research. I really don’t know if any of the current clinical leaders can match Hagop when it comes to expertise or productivity. I hope someone can tell me who that person is if he or she is currently on staff.
In the meantime, if you see Hagop in the hall, thank him. He kept the flame of Freireich and Keating alive. I am not sure to whom the mantle falls now or if it will be picked up at all.
I do hope Hagop continues to contribute to the fight against leukemia whether at MD Anderson or elsewhere. And if he decides to do more painting (he is a truly skilled artist) or write his memoirs (a likely good read), that’s OK, too.
He may well be the last of his kind at MD Anderson.
2 thoughts on “An Embarrassment And A Shame”
We seem to be losing some of the most intellectually diversified and honorable physicians and scientists. The new generations are talented but are driven more to produce a certain number of RVUs and not think outside any box. And, the salaries for physician executives are excessive by every measure.
We have searched Davidson, NC, and Charlotte, NC, and finally found some bright, humanistic physicians and dentists who still have the same values that we embrace. “Hope springs eternal in the human heart!”
Indeed it does Jeb. I too am lucky enough to have great physicians, but not easy to find.