A petition signed by 45 faculty members of the Georgetown University Medical Center was sent to University President John J. DeGioia’s office in December. The petition was signed in protest of DeGioia’s recent decision to appoint current Executive Vice President for Health Studies Sam Wiesel to the newly-created position of Senior Vice President and Dean of Clinical Affairs.
DeGioia’s decision to promote Wiesel comes a year after the medical center faculty cast a vote of 171 – 0 against Wiesel’s leadership on an interim basis.
In this new position, Wiesel will hold the power as an academic dean of the Medical School, while being paid by MedStar Health.
The petition requests that DeGioia withdraw his decision due to faculty members’ belief that “it would seriously undermine the plan to strengthen and rebuild excellence at the Medical School.”
Medical School faculty members were in discussions with University administrators when DeGioia announced his decision. According to Amy DeMaria, director of communications of the Georgetown University Medical Center, the Medical Center community has been working to develop a new framework for its governance structure since last spring. These discussions became necessary after the creation of the Medical Center’s partnership with MedStar Health, DeMaria said.
“In developing a draft framework, Medical Center faculty (including faculty that are now employed by MedStar Health) and faculty representatives from the other two campuses, assisted by an outside mediator, met regularly to work through the issues and draft a plan,” DeMaria said.
“A great deal of progress was made through their efforts to balance the interests and perspectives of all Medical Center faculty.”
Petition signer Michael Cole, chair of the Medical Center Caucus of the faculty senate, said that DeGioia’s decision came as a surprise to him, as well as other faculty members. He said that Wiesel’s appointment to the new position created a conflict of interest because Wiesel would be making decisions for the University while being paid by MedStar Health.
“We were completely dumbfounded … when he said he had created this new position for Wiesel,” Cole said. “It had never been hinted at during the process, [and] I personally felt betrayed by the whole thing … We were under the impression that we could create a new governance similar to the main campus, and in the 11th hour we were presented with this new situation.”
Cole said that he did not think that Wiesel was appropriate for the new position because he would be “serving two masters.”
Cole added that there had been a “lack of confidence” in Wiesel’s administrative abilities among faculty members for a number of years. “[Wiesel] is carrying a lot of baggage,” he said.
The petition states that “the faculty have expressed an unequivocal lack of confidence in Dr. Wiesel’s academic vision and leadership, as previously demonstrated by two votes of ‘no confidence.’”
“[Former University president Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J.] turned a deaf ear on this,” Cole said. “We thought with DeGioia we had turned over a new leaf … We didn’t see Dr. Wiesel playing a role any longer,” he said.
Cole said that he believed that Wiesel was aware of the negative sentiments that some faculty members felt towards him. “I think he realizes that he’s very unpopular with a section of the faculty. I think there’s not even general support for him among the medical center staff,” he said.
Cole said that DeGioia most likely made his decision in response to pressure from MedStar Health to keep Wiesel on board.
“I think that he thinks its necessary for the Georgetown-MedStar relationship to flourish,” Cole said. “I think that MedStar sees Wiesel as an essential individual to them, and DeGioia has acquiesced.”
“I think [DeGioia]’s overriding concern is to make this Georgetown-MedStar relationship work … When [faculty members] asked DeGioia why he promoted Wiesel, he said nothing. He has no justifications for it,” Cole said.
DeMaria said, “President DeGioia felt that Dr. Wiesel has made a number of contributions to the Medical Center and that his continuing in this dual role will further strengthen Georgetown’s partnership with MedStar Health, which is vital to the University’s future.”
Cole said that he thought that MedStar Health was pressuring DeGioia to promote Wiesel because of financial reasons. “This is business we’re talking here … I think what is basically happening is that MedStar doesn’t want to do anything that will disadvantage them. It’s not an easy decision for DeGioia, but I think his main concern is the wellbeing of the University,” Cole said.
“We’ve bent over backwards for MedStar … and I haven’t seen them do a [single] thing for the University,,” he said.
“I think DeGioia has lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the University faculty with this,” Cole said.
Over 60 Medical Center faculty members filed grievances to the University last April, accusing the University of breaking the law when it revoked their tenure during the creation of the Georgetown Medical Center-MedStar Health partnership. In a letter to the Medical Center faculty who lost their University positions, then-Senior Vice President DeGioia wrote that the University was forced to sell the hospital to MedStar Health in order to make up for $218 million in losses from the hospital in the previous four years.
Nevin Katz, the former chief of cardiology and cardiac surgery at the Georgetown Hospital, was one of the faculty members who filed a grievance against the University afer his tenure was broken. Katz, who helped the hospital earn its ranking as the second in the nation for fewest deaths related to heart surgery with his mortality rate of 0.6 percent, was replaced by Dr. Paul Corso, who has a mortality rate of 3.6 percent.
In August 2000, The Voice reported Katz saying that then-EVP for Health Science Wiesel and then-Senior Vice President DeGioia originally encouraged him to believe that he would be allowed to continue to practice heart surgery at Georgetown for one year if he refused the tenure buyout.
Katz’s grievance was dismissed by O’Donovan in August 2000.
“The University continues to force [Wiesel] down our throats,” Cole said. “The time has got to come when we have to put our foot down and say that enough is enough.”
