Like every employee everywhere, Dr. Greenberg’s performance needs to be reviewed. Gossip over his marriage and personal slights are irrelevant distractions and reflect personal pettiness. Things are never as simple as the “peanut gallery” likes to mince them down to be.

Everyone likes to ride the gravy train… until the gravy train slows or crashes- then it becomes every man for himself! MUSC like just about every other medical institution and business in this country is faced with financial issues that have not been seen in generations. Government funding is just a small portion of resources. Insurance reimbursements are a mess and constantly declining. Individuals have less to spend on everything including healthcare. The bank failures alone are making a huge negative impact on the South Carolina and Charleston economies. Like a lot of businesses, MUSC probably should not have hired so many people and taken on so many building projects when times were good. Like many businesses…. the economy is now shifted so that most businesses are downsizing to the essentials.

Just as when the Carolina and Clemson football coaches are paid millions to do their jobs, it is not that at face value their jobs are doing that much to mankind or education. But those successful programs elevate the schools to ultimately attract money, students and professors at a much higher level. Otherwise, one could argue that those football program monies are really better spent on actually educating South Carolina kids – books, teachers, computers! Many things flow from a successful football program and at an institution like MUSC, many things from the facilities, technology and top personnel. Nobody wants to be treated by a doctor from a LOW medical school with little current technology. We all want top docs from top training!

Dr. Greenberg is paid on par to his peers running similar institutions. In fact, his background and knowledge could net him buckets more money. Healthcare is one of the most complex businesses that there exists. It is not a business that just anyone can comprehend. MUSC also provides an incredibly generous amount of indigent care. Every day, all day there are people getting care who do not pay a cent because they don’t have it. This is great and essential to the community and the state. Perhaps people in South Carolina don’t realize how many areas across the country do not have ANY convenient indigent care and certainly not at an institution with state of the art technology and highly trained medical professionals. There are many communities where doctors don’t take ANY Medicaid patients and hospitals that turn ambulances around if the patient doesn’t have “good” insurance. Ultimately, poor healthcare deteriorates the entire area and economy.

Probably most people on this blog have themselves benefitted from this MUSC process and the business that has flowed from MUSC. Directly or indirectly. Including whoever started this blog. Directly or indirectly through the university, hospital, political game or residual business that flows from those entities.

No doubt, MUSC like every other institution, business, political office needs to be shorn up. I would bet that if in all of these bloggers, there are few who have NEVER attended an event or had a “perk” at taxpayer or shareholder expense. Especially those of you who have held political posts or been part of political staffs.

Most importantly, this public airing of personal issues is going to be harmful to MUSC, South Carolina and the healthcare of South Carolina citizens. Availability to high quality healthcare, recruitment of the best and brightest ( ( not necessarily the most likable ) and retention are essential to quality of life for citizens and an economy. It takes, money and even perks. Top recruitment also requires a great “atmosphere” for learning and for accomplishment. Public flogging and mudslinging might feel good and give some kind of political payback, but you will ultimately harm everyone at MUSC ( from janitorial staff on up ) and South Carolina as a whole. South Carolina is recognized by many as having some of the poorest educational systems in the country. Shredding your medical university and doing anything other than promoting it as a great place will hurt recruitment of top students, physicians and staff. It will also hurt the essential raising of private funds as MUSC is only partially government funded.

I’m curious if one must pay parking for a part time job. That would be a real kicker to those poor $35,000/yr nurses who do pay to park. Certainly the Board is aware of this sensational folly meaning they approve of such behavior. Furloughs probably could be avoided but for the cost of this one little Greenburg luxury. I say off with their somethings and past time for all of them to retire. If any Board member has objected to any of this insanity let that one be the new president.

The morale buster – over the top titles and tenure to a web person – is a stab in the heart to the doctors who see patients, perform research and write academic papers for the betterment of medicine and MUSC. What did an earlier blogger report this woman wrote – how to get the man and your love novels? Sound like qualification to anyone else? Years of hard work and dedication skipped by one who knows how to find love to tenure and a title of assistant dean is one smart woman and one stupid dean. I’m a submarine captain if this is leadership. I’m not.

Boggles the mind to imagine what else is going on. We have heard of abuse of power, abuse of process, abuse of taxpayers’ funds and state equipment, but far and away the most egregious of all is the abuse of many and the extreme favors to few. A legislative audit is screaming for attention, Columbia, before the evidence disapears.

I can hear paper shredders and sharpening pencils all the way to Edisto.

Jack