Medical school dean under fire

Thursday, March 7, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

University of Nevada School of Medicine officials are under scrutiny on at least three fronts.

* A committee of University Medical Center physicians issued a no-confidence vote Tuesday against Dean Robert Daugherty, saying he has not acted in the best interests of the school and its students.

The medical school trains its students at Clark County's University Medical Center.

* Daugherty is expected to meet this week with the attorney general's staff about Medicaid billing practices at UMC. The attorney general's office is questioning whether teaching physicians provided enough oversight of student doctors to warrant charging Medicaid $900 per childbirth.

* The school's entire Las Vegas internal medicine department resigned after Daugherty replaced the department's chairman, Dr. Steven Newmark, in a disagreement about the medical school's direction.

Maddy Graves, chairman of the University and Community College System Board of Regents, said the situation is serious. "There's certainly a lot of problems with the medical school," he said.

The regents met last week in a closed-door personnel session about the medical school.

"It is worth every ounce of our attention," Regent Shelly Berkley said.

The 15-member physicians committee issued the unprecedented no-confidence vote Tuesday.

One member of the committee abstained. Representatives from every major UMC department serve on the committee.

Neither Daugherty nor Joe Crowley, president of the University of Nevada, Reno, where the medical school is based, would comment on the UMC action. Daugherty said he had not seen the UMC staff vote.