U.Va. med school faculty, clinical leaders defend those who backed CEO’s resignation

More than a month after Dr. K. Craig Kent resigned as UVA Health‘s CEO following an independent investigation and an emergency meeting of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, drama is still roiling at the university.

A group of 21 doctors — U.Va. School of Medicine faculty senators and senators-elect, as well as the president and vice president of the U.Va. Medical Center’s clinical staff — released a letter this week titled, “Statement in Defense of U.Va. School of Medicine Faculty & Colleagues.”

The letter alleges that other public letters by three former U.Va. rectors, a current member of the health system’s board and another member who resigned recently, as well as a prominent U.Va. neurosurgeon, “advanced a false narrative” that 128 physicians who called for Kent’s resignation last year were “motivated by greed.”

“We write to set the record straight and lay that narrative to rest,” the faculty letter says. “It would be a disservice to the community not to defend our faculty against a campaign of falsehoods accusing physicians of placing personal profit above the interests of patients.”

War of words

The issue goes back to September 2024, when 128 faculty members employed by the U.Va. Physicians Group signed a letter of “no confidence” that alleged Kent and Dr. Melina Kibbe, dean of the U.Va. School of Medicine, had created a “culture of fear and retaliation” that “compromised patient safety.” The letter, whose signatures were not made public and were revealed only to a few board of visitors members, also alleged that the UVA Health leaders had spent too much on C-suite executives and failed to “be forthcoming on significant financial matters.”

Although U.Va. President Jim Ryan wrote in a September 2024 email to 1,400 medical personnel that “there are many accusations [but] few details” in the letter of no confidence, and U.Va. Health System Board member Bill Crutchfield defended Kent and Kibbe publicly at the time, the board of visitors hired a law firm, Williams & Connolly, to conduct a third-party investigation into the physicians’ allegations. At the end of the probe, on Feb. 26, Kent resigned. Kibbe is still employed as the medical school’s dean.

In the weeks after Kent’s resignation, former U.Va. neurosurgery co-chair Dr. Neal Kassell, who now chairs the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, wrote a letter published in The Daily Progress saying that Kent and Kibbe were “the most visionary and transformative leaders” the health system had “since I joined the university in 1984.”

Kassell added that “a segment of U.Va.’s medical faculty has long resisted reform and accountability, entrenched in a culture that privileges over innovation. Such cultural habits and lingering bitterness from individuals overlooked for leadership roles have fueled dissent. The resulting campaign of anonymous accusations, media leaks and smears threatens to destabilize the health system and tarnish the university’s reputation.”

Tom Scully, a nonvoting member of the UVA Health System board and a prominent health care attorney, resigned from the board a week after Kent’s resignation and wrote a letter accusing the 128 physicians who signed the letter of no confidence as “a bunch of angry docs who wanted no change or reform.” He added that he thought an unnamed BOV member who sought to become the next rector “wanted to ‘make a new mark on U.Va.,’ and that included cleaning up UVA Health and getting rid of Dr. Kent.”

Scully alleged that the Williams & Connolly investigation was “guided, coached and directed to a preconceived result.” Reached this week by phone, Scully said he didn’t have much to add to his letter but said Kent “is a very decent guy who got treated very shabbily.”

On March 7, three former U.Va. rectors — Frank M. Conner III, James B. Murray Jr., and Whittington W. Clement — sent a letter to attorney Gladstone Jones, who represents a group of UVA Health physicians, and Paul Manning, chair of the UVA Health board and a board of visitors member.

This letter asserts that Kent was not the only UVA Health leader who experienced pushback for financial reforms in the health system. Dr. Rick Shannon, Kent’s predecessor, “learned that a separate, self-governing physician’s cooperative, the University Physicians Group, employed every doctor, an arrangement that since 1979 had masked the physicians’ salaries from public accountability” and “metastasized into a large enterprise that managed hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, with millions more held in capital reserves.”

Shannon worked to change the status quo after joining the health system in 2013, including instituting safety protocols and calling for greater accountability regarding spending and billing. However, according to the former rectors, a “letter-writing campaign” organized by “a small group of vocal and politically well-connected physicians” aimed to have Shannon removed by then-new President Ryan, and Shannon soon left to work at Duke University.

In 2020, Kent was hired, just before the pandemic started, and after the early months of financial decline had ended, Kent started a strategic planning process and resumed Shannon’s reforms, according to the rectors’ letter. Once again, the “unwieldy, duplicative and expensive employment structure” for physicians caused a problem, the former rectors wrote. “After four years, Dr. Kent finally prevailed against stubborn resistance … and finally put the health system back in charge of managing the cash and paying its own physicians.”

“The blowback from all these changes was predictable,” the letter adds. “Letters of protest were sent to Dr. Kent’s superior, President Jim Ryan,” and in September 2024, the letter signed by 128 physicians was released.

The April 7 letter from the U.Va. School of Medicine faculty senators says that the letters from Conner, Murray, Clement, Scully, Crutchfield and Kassell “collectively take untenable positions against a broad swath of U.Va. clinicians; the Faculty Senate; the chair of the [BOV] Audit, Compliance and Risk Committee; the president of the university; the current Board of Visitors; and two nationally respected law firms.”

The letter adds, “After four years of dismissive responses and even retaliation, concerns were escalated to the Board of Visitors, who retained a law firm to investigate the allegations. The investigation led to Craig Kent’s immediate resignation, demonstrating that these longstanding concerns were indeed significant and actionable. Further, President Ryan subsequently offered a public apology for his initial response.”

According to a Daily Progress report, Ryan wrote a letter March 1 that although he “disagreed with the approach” taken by the group of 128 letter signers, his September 2024 response was “intemperate and disrespectful.”

Conner, Crutchfield and Kassell did not immediately respond to messages requesting comment on the April 7 letter.

Murray, one of the former U.Va. rectors, said in an interview Thursday that “speaking for myself, I think we stand by the original letter.” He added that his primary issue with the 21 faculty members’ April letter defending their colleagues is that they are “publicizing … what is essentially a personnel dispute.”

Clement added in an interview Friday that the rectors’ letter “was not about the motivations that inspired the doctors to oppose Craig Kent. The letter was not about defending his aggressive management style,” but rather, “we were concerned that the publicity had tarnished the institutions.”

Asked whether the public battle could impact the university’s search for a new permanent leader of UVA Health, Clement said, “I don’t know. It’s not helpful.”