Current and former officials at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville have come forward to defend Craig Kent, MD, the system’s former CEO and vice president for health affairs at the university, The Daily Progress reported March 31.
In September 2024, faculty at UVA Health signed a letter of no-confidence against Dr. Kent and Melina Kibbe, MD, the dean of the school of medicine. On Feb. 25, Dr. Kent resigned from his role as CEO, following an independent investigation.
The letter, penned by 128 UVA Physicians Group-employed faculty and addressed to the university’s board of visitors, accused the both of fostering a negative work environment. The letter alleged that the leaders used threats against faculty who raised concerns about safety, used promotion delays as retaliation and allowed physicians to be hired despite quality concerns, among other claims.
However, past rectors of the university’s governing board of visitors, as well as other members of the UVA Health System board have begun speaking up in defense of Dr. Kent, claiming that the investigation and subsequent resignation were spurred by physicians with ulterior motives.
“We have a strong impression that there may be just a very small handful of doctors who, for entirely personal reasons, have for some years fomented discontent at UVA,” UVA’s previous three rectors wrote in a letter to a law firm representing some of those critics dated March 7. “And have done so with utter disregard for the damage they might be doing to the reputations of UVA and their fellow physicians.”
Several other former colleagues of Dr. Kent have spoken to the Progress or have penned open letters in support of him. One surgeon, Neal Kassell, MD, who worked with Dr. Kent for 30 years, said that when Dr. Kent stepped into the CEO role, the system was plagued with “low productivity, poor morale, faculty resistance to change and accountability, financial instability, as well as coding and billing disfunction [sic].”
Thomas Scully, a prominent healthcare attorney and supporter of Dr. Kent, told the Progress that shortly after joining the board, Dr. Kent proposed “significant structural physician payment reform,” which is currently rooted in the UVA Physicians Group. Many of the system’s employees receive their paychecks from UPG, which the rectors identified in their letter as a significant issue.
“Over some three decades, UPG had metastasized into a large enterprise that managed hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, with millions more held in capital reserves,” they wrote. “Over the years UPG had built a big team of accountants and finance staff whose job it was to maximize physician incomes.” They added that UPG’s payment system is an “unwieldy, duplicative, and expensive employment structure,” costing the health system millions of dollars — and that Dr. Kent wanted to fix it.
Rick Shannon, MD, Dr. Kent’s predecessor said that the attempt to take on UPG resulted in pushback from a “small group of vocal and politically well-connected physicians.” J. Scott Just, MD, CEO of UPG, did not respond to the publication’s request for comment.
The publication reported that, according to UPG’s website, “The UVA School of Medicine, in partnership with the university provost, establishes clinician compensation and generally pays the first $100,000 of faculty compensation.” It goes on to say that UPG “supplements by paying amounts over that threshold” and also provides “fringe benefits that enhance those provided solely by UVA.”
The rectors claim that UVA Health was losing millions of dollars on “duplicative accounting and administrative staff” prior to Dr. Kent’s arrival. “Patient safety ratings were poor, accident and mortality rates were high, patients were unhappy, and no one was being held accountable,” they continued.
Reforms instituted by Dr. Kent included integration of the entities’ revenue cycles and reimbursement processes. This resulted in some long-time physicians taking pay cuts and being given new instructions on how to calculate time spent with patients and workload.
The rectors did acknowledge that some of Dr. Kent’s personality traits could have created “friction” between himself and UVA Health’s employees. “In his pursuit to improve UVA Health we observed that Dr. Kent could be insensitive, autocratic, and slow to take advice,” they wrote. Physicians who spoke with the Progress under the condition of anonymity said that their concerns expanded beyond a toxic work environment and included specific cases of patient endangerment, harm and death.
According to the report, a handful of physicians shared substantiating evidence with attorneys hired to investigate their allegations, but neither the physicians nor UVA has released any of that evidence to the public.