Monday, January 03, 2005

Tooting My Own Horn

My description of the Allegheny Health Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) case just appeared in the Rhode Island Chapter American College of Physicians (ACP) Governor's Newsletter. Although it was hard to do justice to this very complicated case in the space I had available, I think I was able to include some aspects of this case that have only heretofore appeared in individual newspaper articles.

My summary was: "the AHERF case illustrated a large and powerful health care organization whose governance did not represent key constituencies, and was secretive, unethical, and unaccountable. The human and financial costs of its mismanagement have never been clearly accounted. Yet the case received relatively little publicity and has generated sparse discussion in the medical and health care arena. However, failing to acknowledge cases like this risks their repetition. "

By the way, although space did not permit listing any references, every statement in the case description was derived from the extensive coverage of the case in the media. References are available to anyone interested.

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