Penn State chief sees threat in health care, pension costs

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Rising health-care costs and a looming state pension-funding crisis threaten to add more financial uncertainty to Pennsylvania State University's already tight budget, university president Graham Spanier says.

The school on Friday received a portion of $334 million in state subsidies and federal stimulus funding that had been held up for months by legislative gridlock in Harrisburg. But appropriations have been shrinking, and the university isn't sure what will happen when stimulus money dries up.

The financial future has been made more complicated by long-term concerns about health care and the State Employees Retirement System.

That pension system is expected to require massive infusions of cash in coming years, and Penn State could be forced to find tens of millions of dollars annually to make up for shortfalls.

Throw in uncertainty about the economic recovery and this year's race for governor, and Spanier's outlook for the future gets more cloudy.

"Right now, I would have to say we have our highest level of uncertainty in doing long-range planning than we've ever had in my 15 years as president of Penn State," Spanier said during a break in a meeting of university trustees Friday.

He did confirm that Penn State would not need to raise tuition at midyear to make up for current budget pressures. As he spoke about financial issues, he was informed that the school had just received about $150 million in state funding, a lump sum of roughly six months' worth of funding held up in the legislature. The rest is to be paid in monthly installments.

That funding primarily helps in-state residents pay lower tuition than out-of-state residents. For instance, a full-time, in-state freshman or sophomore at Penn State's main University Park campus pays $6,800 a semester, while an out-of-state freshman or sophomore pays more than $12,500.

"If we didn't have that, in essence what we would be doing is turning all students into out-of-state students," Spanier said.

Penn State has an enrollment of more than 94,300 at its 24 campuses and online, including roughly 44,800 at University Park.

The university is considered a "state-related" institution, with 8 percent of its income coming from state funding. Appropriations have gradually become a smaller source of revenue, declining 1 percentage point each year, Spanier said.

Tuition dollars are the biggest revenue source, about 34 percent, followed by hospital and medical-services revenue and research grants. Applications for enrollment continue to increase, and Spanier said the other areas "are in pretty good shape right now."

Private donations are also expected to pass state funding as a revenue source soon, he said. The school received more than $58 million in donations in December, a one-month record for the university.

Spanier is scheduled to appear before the legislature in the coming months to talk about the school's budget requests, which ask for a 3.9 percent increase in funding to $360.9 million.

The school projects that receiving that amount would limit tuition increases to between 3 and 5 percent.

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Meet NEPA's Future MDs on the Next State of Pennsylvania on WVIA

PITTSTON, PA (WVIA) - The Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, Pennsylvania is in session, but who are the students? "Meet NEPA's Future MDs" on the next State of Pennsylvania, this Thursday, Jan. 28 at 7 p.m. on WVIA-TV.

Who's saying the Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton will transform our region? How is the college teaching young Pennsylvanians to be future doctors? What's different about their education that will make them better MDs? What drew them to Scranton for medical school?

These and many more questions will be answered when WVIA President Bill Kelly welcomes Robert M. D'Alessandri, MD, President and Dean of the Commonwealth Medical College along with medical students Charles Karcutskie from West Wyoming, PA, Sara Roper from Beaver, PA and John Kotula from Moscow, PA to the show.

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High school teen struck by middle school principal in SUV

A high school student was struck and injured by a sport utility vehicle (SUV) driven by a North Middle School principle on Monday morning, January 4, 2010, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Police and emergency medical services (EMS) responded to the incident. Police reported that the 15-year-old sophomore was crossing the street from Pennbridge High School at 6:45 a.m., when he was struck by an SUV driven by the Principle of North Middle School identified as Margaret Kantes.
EMS transported the injured Bucks County teenager via helicopter to Lehigh Valley Medical Center. He was treated by doctors and nurses for a potential traumatic brain injury (TBI) and was listed in critical condition. Kantes rolled to a halt at the 5th Street and Campus Drive after the tragic incident.
Kantes immediately called the police. She reported that the boy had been wearing a dark hoodie at the time of the crash. She said she did not see him. There have not been any charges brought against her as of yet. Police continue to investigate the crash. Officials impounded the SUV as part of the investigation. Prior reports showed that another driver, or a school bus had struck the teen.


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Medical students reckless on Internet, sometimes at patients’ expense

In 2007, a resident surgeon snapped a picture of a patient’s tattoo—the words Hot Rod on his penis—and shared it with colleagues, making international news when the story was leaked to the press. At least the resident didn’t post the picture on the Internet.

A new survey suggests that with the rise of blogging and sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, such a thing could happen. In fact, 60 percent of medical schools have had students post inappropriate or unprofessional information on the Web, according to a study in the September 23/30 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Most of the time, the information was related to the student’s own behavior, including drunken, drug-related, or sexually suggestive images or comments, as well as the use of profanity or discriminatory language.

But six schools, or 13 percent, reported incidents in the past year that involved content that violated patient privacy. For example, some students blogged about their experiences with enough detail to identify patients, and one student posted patient details on Facebook. Most of the time other trainees told the dean about the indiscretions, but in two cases, patients or their families blew the whistle.

“We expected to find incidents of unprofessionalism, but the number was higher than expected,“ says lead study author Dr. Katherine C. Chretien, of the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center.

Less than half of schools currently have policies in place to police or punish such behavior.

In the study, the researchers sent out anonymous surveys to medical school deans or their representatives at each institution in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)—a total of 130 schools. Of the 78 schools that responded, 47 reported ever having an incident. In the previous year, 13 percent of those schools reported no incidents, 78 percent had fewer than 5 incidents, 7 percent reported 5 to 15 incidents, and 2 percent had some incidents but did not know exactly how many.

Of those that reported an incident and responded to the question about disciplinary actions, 30 gave informal warnings and three students were expelled. Overall, 38 percent of the schools had policies in place that cover unprofessional online behavior and 11 percent of the schools without such policies were working on developing one.

Deans who reported incidents were more likely to have such a policy in place, the survey found.

“This is a pretty new issue for medicine,“ Chretien says. “We need to have a discussion about what kind of information is appropriate to be out there and what defines medical professionalism in the online world.“

Other professions are also grappling with the same types of issues, she says. “The difference with medicine is that we have patients’ privacy to maintain, and that is critical; doctors have also been held to a higher moral standard, at least historically.

“There needs to be better education in medical schools about protecting patient privacy on the Internet because even if [students] don’t use direct patient identifiers, you can still identify someone with certain characteristics,“ she says.

Arthur Caplan, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, says he was surprised that more institutions had not begun to adopt policies about the Internet. “Today’s medical students think of the online world as freewheeling and open-ended with no rules, and we have to educate them that they can’t take that attitude when discussing their patients or personal information,“ he says.

Medical students may be accustomed to being free with their thoughts and photos on the Web, but the Internet is not a free-fly zone for future doctors. The only way to reign in this behavior is to punish violators, Caplan says. “First-time violators should get suspended, which is serious stuff, and second-time violators are out,“ he explains. “We also need to remind and teach students what medical privacy is in terms of the Internet.“

Dr. Jordan Cohen, a professor of medicine at George Washington University and a former president of the AAMC, says he finds the study results not all that surprising, given the popularity of social-networking sites.

“It’s clearly an area that should be addressed by schools,“ he says. “The Internet needs to be included in examples of potential areas where unprofessional behavior can occur.“


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