After 128 physician group faculty signed on to a letter of no confidence in the heads of the University of Virginia’s (UVA's) health system and medical school, the institution’s president has promised a full investigation of the signatories’ complaints before considering any leadership changes.
The letter, circulated late last week, calls for “the immediate removal” of UVA Health CEO Craig Kent, M.D., and UVA School of Medicine Dean Melina Kibbe, M.D. It accuses the two leaders of fostering “a negative environment that is contributing to an ongoing exodus of experience and expertise at all levels” and undermining the organization’s patient care goals.
Specifically, the letter said that the leaders have compromised patient safety by hiring doctors with “integrity and quality” concerns and pressured provider staff from reporting their patient safety concerns. Kent and Kibbe also created a “culture of fear and retaliation,” overpaid new C-suite executive hires, “consistently” violated the faculty’s code of ethics and subjected residents to “bullying and harassment,” per the letter’s allegations.
Names of the letters’ supporters were kept anonymous, but supplied to a select group of university board members, in order to protect signatories from any retaliation, according to the letter.
The criticisms garnered pushback from various leaders within the university who countered several of the claims by citing quality scores, staffing levels, capacity expansion, financial performance and other internal feedback.
In a letter to the medical school’s faculty, UVA President Jim Ryan wrote that “it is unfortunate, in my view, that these faculty have taken this route. They have besmirched the reputations of not just Melina and Craig. Instead, through some of their allegations, they have unfairly—and I trust unwittingly—cast a shadow over the great work of the entire health system and medical school.”
Ryan wrote that the signatories represent about 9% of the medical school’s total faculty—which he noted is about in line with medical school faculty dissatisfaction rates nationally—and that in the time since, his inbox has been “overflowing” with notes of support from other faculty. He also gave his own opinion that “what is described [about Kent and Kibbe] in that letter is not a full or fair representation of who I have seen.”
Though some of the letter’s claims “are fairly evident references to specific matters that we have already addressed or are actively working on,” Ryan said the university leadership will “do our best” to investigate others with which it was unfamiliar. He promised no retaliation against anyone connected to the letter but won’t make a final call on Kent and Kibbe’s positions “until we have done a thorough review.”
“All that said, at this point in time I find it difficult to believe that the right answer here is to force yet another change in leadership, only to bring in new leadership who will inevitably fail to satisfy 1,400 faculty members and thousands more health system team members,” Ryan wrote.
Another letter to faculty penned by William Crutchfield, a board member of UVA Health (but written “as a friend” of the university), highlighted claims from the anonymous letter that “are simply not true.”
Here, Crutchfield pointed to a 5.1% turnover rate at UVA Health that falls below the national average of 8.3%, “all-time low” mortality rates at the system’s four hospitals and executives that saved the organization from “expensive outside consultants.”
He also pointed to Kent and Kibbe’s roles in securing “a record amount of research funding” and ensuring that UVA Health was “one of only a handful of health systems in the nation which maintained profitability throughout the pandemic.”
In their own statement provided to press, Kent and Kibbe similarly pointed to third parties’ high quality scores, expanded access and faculty retention. They said their leadership team “respects and takes serious this feedback and we are committed to learning more.”
Kent took the helm at UVA Health in 2020 and previously served as dean of the Ohio State University School of Medicine. While there, he was indirectly referenced in a 2017 letter of no confidence focused on Wexner Medical Center CEO Sheldon Retchin, M.D., who later stepped down.
Kibbe began a five-year appointment in September 2021 and was previously a vice chair of research at Northwestern University. UVA’s medical school has had six deans within the past 16 years.