For a school as enamored with the field of journalism as SBU is (in fact, Dr. Kenny also pushed for the implementation of a journalism program while president of CUNY Queens College), their treatment of a well-established newspaper like Newsday is, at best, unfair.
The administration repeatedly criticizes Newsday for failing to ‘..capture the subtleties of these cases…’ (Media Relations Officer Patrick Calabria in reference to the infants who died while SBUMC patients) while failing to acknowledge that Newsday has not actually made any allegations; they have simply reported the allegations leveled by others. It was in fact the New York State Department of Health that expressed concern over the recent incidents at Stony Brook University Medical Center, including the unprecedented action of appointing an administrator with no medical background to the role of a hospital’s ‘governing body.’
The report issued by the DOH specifically stated, ‘[t]he governing body does not ensure that the medical staff is accountable for quality of care provided to all patients.’ This was reported by Newsday, but Newsday did not level these allegations.
Health Commissioner Antonia Novello personally stated, ‘When I look at how this one hospital is allowing doctors to practice outside their scope and qualifications … Oh my God, oy vey,’ Novello said. ‘… I have a feeling they had a selective method, that whenever they had a need for a person, they just found a person to do it…that is worrisome.’
Once more, while these quotes were indeed printed in Newsday’s November 5 article ‘Blame For Boss,’ they were verbatim quotations from the NYS Health Commissioner, not paraphrased interpretations of careless comments made by anonymous people on the street.
SBU continues to refuse to own up to the mistakes that have occurred in the Medical Center (including placing an administrator with no medical background in a position usually reserved for seasoned physicians) by launching counter-allegations that do not address the issue at hand.
For example, they have continuted to criticize Newsday while failing to acknowledge that the state’s Department of Health actually issued the scathing report that criticized Dr. Kenny and the Medical Center. Despite the extensive ‘damage control’ performed on the part of the University by Mr. Calabria, it is apparent that those beyond the artifical world of the University remain unconvinced.
From 2004 to 2005 (even before a majority of the allegations were made by the DOH), Stony Brook’s Medical school dropped from 59th to 65th out of 123 in National Institutes of Health awards. Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center chose to become affiliated with St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn (some 30-odd miles away from Brookhaven) for cardiac services instead of Stony Brook.
