DAILY LOBO new mexico
Spotlight see page 2
tuesday
April 12, 2011
The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
Former surgeon claims retaliation
THAT’S A RAP
Ex-employee said she reported ‘substandard’ patient care by Elizabeth Cleary and Kevin Forte news@dailylobo.com
A former UNM Hospital surgeon filed a lawsuit against the University for an alleged breach of contract and violation of the N.M. Whistleblower Act. Anne Marie Wallace filed a lawsuit in N.M. District Court alleging that UNMH Chairman of Surgery John Russell fired Wallace for reporting colleagues’ “substandard patient care,” the lawsuit states. Russell was among the surgeons Wallace listed, and the lawsuit cites the UNM Regents, Russell and Ashwani Rajput, chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology, as defendants. “The allegation of the lawsuit is that Dr. Wallace was retaliated against as a result of complaining to her superiors about patient care,” said John Boyd, Wallace’s lawyer. “And that the University breached its contract with her.” UNM interim legal counsel Lee Peifer did not return phone calls Monday, but told the Albuquerque Journal the University “adamantly denies there’s any connection between the personnel action and any complaints she may or may not have made.” The lawsuit alleges Rajput falsified medical records and with-
drew medical care without patient consent. Wallace voiced her concerns to key hospital and cancer center administrators, the lawsuit states. As a result, Wallace “experienced immediate and harsh retaliation by the defendants” for reporting Rajput’s misconduct, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said he made “threatening” comments in front of Wallace, such as ‘People better watch out. They’re going to learn how important I am.’” In June 2010, Russell notified Wallace he was going to make “dramatic and unwarranted” changes to her contract with UNMH, according to the lawsuit. These proposed changes included a 15 percent decrease in salary … “an increase in her clinical workload to include all breast referrals within the entire UNM system” and “the removal of her title and position at the (Cancer Research and Treatment Center) in the breast program she had helped build from its genesis,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit contends that Wallace worked to establish the High Risk Screening Program for breast diseases at CRTC. Wallace met with Russell and Cheryl Willman, director and CEO
see Lawsuit page 3
ART IN A CAN
Photo Courtesy Joe’s Spray Can Artist A piece of spray-can art by Joe Watson. Watson and partner Dan Langlois will be at the Duck Pond today creating free, custom art pieces for students. See page 6 for full story.
Inside the
Daily Lobo volume 115
issue 134
Robert Maes / Daily Lobo Miguel Figueroa, left, freestyles Monday outside of Zimmerman Library. Figueroa is a part of Samurai Machine Gun, a multi-instrument band that practices on campus and downtown.
Outcome valid, despite bugs by Kallie Red-Horse kallie69@unm.edu
For the second year in a row, ballot software problems complicated GPSA elections. Seventy-six of 1,235 student votes were deemed ineligible and were discarded, because the link on the GPSA website allowed anyone with a NetID to participate in this year’s election, including faculty, staff and undergraduates. Only graduate and professional students in degree-granting programs can vote. Early on, the GPSA Elections Committee discovered bugs with this year’s electronic ballot system, said Matthew Rush, chair of the elections committee. “During the testing of the elections ballot, we ran into a problem with the plug it uses in order to restrict voters to a list of allowable voters that we give them was broken,” he said. “We went ahead and recognized that the system was flawed and allowed the election to be conducted.” The website plug that restricts ineligible students from voting also experienced problems last year, and 180 eligible voters were left off the list of eligible voters. Those students could not vote online and had to be contacted individually and invited to vote. After it discovered bugs in the system this year, IT contacted Opinio, the software company used for the electronic elections. The two determined they weren’t going to be able fix the problem by the time of the elections, Rush said. Opinio and IT presented the elections committee with options, one that would restrict voting to invited students, but Rush said the commit-
Days are numbered
All hail, the stealth snail
See page 7
See page 4
tee decided against that option, because some eligible students might not be invited to vote. “We would supply e-mail addresses with the NetIDs of allowed students, and they would send e-mails to those students with a link that directly connected them to the ballot,” he said. “We decided against that, because the link possibly wouldn’t get to some students.”
“The discarded votes would not have changed election results.” ~Matthew Rush GPSA Elections Committee Chair Another option was to leave the link accessible to anyone with a NetID and conduct the election solely from that link, Rush said, but the committee decided to use a combination of the two alternatives. The link on the GPSA website remained open to anyone with a NetID, but e-mails with links were sent only to eligible graduate and professional students. Anyone with a NetID could vote in this year’s election, but IT checked NetIDs for eligibility after students voted, Rush said. “IT identified those that had voted and sent an e-mail to everybody they found wasn’t eligible that informed them that their vote would be removed at the end of the election,” he said. “It also told them about the appeals process they could go through if they disagreed.” Almost 90 percent of the ineligible voters were non-degree graduate stu-
dents, Rush said. Newly appointed GPSA President Katie Richardson said because of system issues the candidates were informed of the ballot process used. “It would have been a good idea if the elections committee had provided that information to all GPSA members for sake of greater transparency,” she said. “The committee did what they could so that the elections were fair and represented the interests of GPSA. The fact of the matter is, non-degree students are not GPSA members.” Rush said the discarded votes would not have changed election results. “That is one thing we did make sure of when certifying the election,” he said. “It was nowhere near Katie’s 216-vote margin. Those votes definitely wouldn’t have altered the results.” System issues aside, Richardson said GPSA’s chosen election method is effective. “The fact that GPSA holds electronic online voting increases access to government,” she said. “I would like to see ASUNM adopt the same process. Students with jobs, families and other responsibilities can really have opportunity to vote.” Rush said the committee is satisfied with the process it decided on. “We are happy that there was such a high voter turnout,” he said. “Of the 1,235 students that cast a ballot, only 419 used the link through e-mail. Our recommendation would be to continue providing a link in the future. We do think it was a very effective method to make people able to actually participate.” ~Elizabeth Cleary contributed to this report.
TODAY
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