A Legal Settlement of One Aspect of the Fall of AHERF, Only 15 Years Later

It only took 15 years, but litigation related to one of the most important, but obscure cases of bad health care leadership and governance from the 1990s was finally settled.   Background The Allegheny Health Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) was a large integrated health care system formed out of multiple mergers.  AHERF went bankrupt in 1998, leading to massive layoffs, hospital closures, and the near dissolution of a medical school (which ended up taken over by Drexel University).  We last discussed the case in 2012 here.. A summary of other important points about it is appended below.  As we noted in 2008, although the AHERF bankruptcy appears to be the largest failure of a not-for-profit health care corporation in US history, its story has produced remarkably few echoes for doctors, other health care professionals, health care researchers, and health policy makers. I often use the fall of AHERF as an example in talks, at least the few talks I am allowed to give on such unpleasant subjects. Rarely have more than a few people in the audience heard of AHERF prior to my discussion of it.I only could locate one article in a medical or health care journal that discussed the case in detail, but was written too early to address it very completely [Burns LR, Cacciamani J, Clement J, Aquino W. The fall of the house of AHERF: the Allegheny bankruptcy. Health Aff (Millwood) 2000; 19: 7-41.]  I doubt the case is used for teach...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: AHERF You heard it here first legal settlements anechoic effect Source Type: blogs