An old friend called, in distress. Memorial Medical Center had just fired Dr. John Andazola. Folks who work at MMC were deeply concerned about what that meant for MMC and the Southern New Mexico Family Medicine Residency Program.
In 2009, that program was in disarray. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education had it on probation. Since it was responsible for training resident-physicians, some of whom might stay here, it mattered to our health.
Andazola took it over. Apparently he specializes in quality control and in medical education. He got the program off probation and obtained 10-year certification. The program has had no citations. It has a high return/retention rate, meaning folks it teaches often stay here. At least 30 area physicians, including several emergency care doctors, received education from it. MMC fired him.
Worse, MMC replaced Andazola with a pencil pusher, its non-doctor CFO, Laurie Thomas. Since Andazola was both Program Director and Designated Institutional Officer (responsible for quality education and maintaining accreditation), Thomas becomes a key person in the future of area medicine. She may have little or no experience in providing graduate medical education. If the ACGME ultimately suspended the program, that’d stop residency education both here and in Alamogordo.
A possible way to preserve the residency program would be having La Clinica take it over. La Clinica is reportedly willing. But because Andazola built the program from a borderline money-loser to a highly profitable project for MMC, MMC might not agree.
Maintaining the residency program is also required by the Asset Purchase Agreement that turned the hospital private. The landlords, City of Las Cruces and Doña Ana County, are [finally!] investigating. Each has hired an outside attorney to do that.
Alert readers might ask, why would we fire a guy actually born in Memorial Hospital [the old one], graduate of Mayfield High, NMSU, and UNM Medical, who’s doctored here 15 successful years, is nationally recognized, and turned your moribund training program into something both helpful to the community and profitable?
My informants tell me he was kind of what I’d call the conscience of the hospital. He cared about patient care and professionalism, and accountability enough to speak truth to power. They say that in meetings he questioned hospital administration policies that unduly favored profit-margin at the expense of maximizing patient care and safety. Local physicians I spoke to thought highly of him – and worried about how Apollo’s ownership affects health care here.
It’s a nationally-known fact that safety and outcomes tend to be less successful in entities owned by private-equity firms. Apollo Global has owned Lifepoint, which owns MMC, since 2018. Andazola was so well-regarded that he was on the National Physician Advisory Board for the entire Lifepoint hospital system – until that was disbanded after Apollo bought the show.
Apollo isn’t publicly traded. What it does and how it does hides in a deep, dark inaccessible hole labeled “proprietary.” At MMC, committees supposedly responsible for safety and quality control can’t even gain access to needed information. That’s so weird that a visiting state official recently suggested the committees should hire an independent outside lawyer to fight for access to the information they need!
My next column will discuss the many current investigations of MMC, for problems that could include defrauding medicare, and the possibility of changing state law to gain some control of rogue institutions with private-equity investors.
So much public attention may help.
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[The above column appeared Sunday, 18 August, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on both the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[This column is part of a long and detailed investigation of MMC. While the recent firing of MMC’s CEO appears to be (and MMC has suggested it was) a step in the right direction. MMC is still owned by Apollo Global. City, county, state, and the public need to keep a sharp eye on developments.]
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