Investigation focusing in part on organ donation for DOH official's mother

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Inspector General probes Health Department
Investigation focusing in part on organ donation for DOH official's mother
By BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer
Updated 12:29 p.m., Friday, July 1, 2011

ALBANY -- The state Inspector General's office is investigating the Department of Health in a probe that is focusing, in part, on whether an agency official sought preferential treatment when her mother obtained a kidney transplant.

The ongoing investigation by the Inspector General, Ellen Biben, also is examining hiring decisions and whether funds from grants and other revenue streams were used properly. The probe is being conducted parallel to a state comptroller's audit of the Health Department, including an embattled unit, the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, that has been accused by current and former employees of mismanagement and employee witch hunts.

Last year, a former BNE director went public with allegations that top health department officials failed to correct problems noted in an Inspector General's report issued more than two years ago. Kenneth W. Post, a former Ulster County sheriff, has alleged Health Department officials ignored his recommendations and retaliated against him when he refused to take part in a manager's efforts to terminate a staff pharmacist for personal reasons.

The state Division of Human Rights later rejected a complaint filed by Post but the comptroller's office and Inspector General both are examining some of the issues he raised, according to a person briefed on the probes.

The Inspector General's investigation began three months ago after the Times Union published a story citing state email records that raised questions about whether a health department official sought to use the agency's influence in her mother's bid to obtain a kidney transplant at Albany Medical Center Hospital. A year after the manager's mother was placed on an organ-donor waiting list, that state official, Jennifer Treacy, authorized the hiring of two temporary state workers to help clean up a backlog in the state's organ donor registry.

The email records indicate that in June 2008, Lisa McMurdo, director of the agency's health systems management office, contacted Dr. David Conti, director of Albany Medical Center's transplant program, on Treacy's behalf.

The contact was made the day before Treacy's 65-year-old mother, Michaele Quinn, a Saratoga County resident who also has lived in Arizona, was scheduled to meet with transplant surgeons to learn if she could be placed on a kidney-transplant waiting list.

There are roughly 300 people on the hospital's kidney-transplant waiting list. Factors such as age, smoking, obesity and heart disease can prevent someone from being placed on the waiting list.

The emails do not indicate Treacy's mother was moved ahead of others on the waiting list. Quinn was added to the transplant waiting list a few weeks after she and her daughter met with the hospital's surgeons. Quinn underwent surgery two years later, in September 2010, according to Health Department emails.

Albany Medical Center issued a statement in April saying the hospital "activates individuals on the list for transplantation according to the highest ethical and medical standards consistent with the regulations of the United Network for Organ Sharing, the federal agency that provides oversight for all transplant programs and that regularly audits our program."

Health department officials previously denied anyone from the agency had contacted Albany Medical Center on Treacy's behalf. The Department of Health has regulatory authority over state organ-donor programs, including donor lists.

After the Times Union story published a story on the issue in early April the Health Department launched an internal probe to determine how the newspaper obtained the emails, according to a person with knowledge of the matter but not authorized to comment publicly.

Jeffrey R. Gordon, a health department spokesman, declined comment on the Inspector General's investigation. John Milgrim, a spokesman for the Inspector General's office, also declined to comment.

Reach B. Lyons at 454-5547 or by e-mail at blyons@timesunion.com.



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