Summa President and CEO Thomas Malone seems bound and determined to become the Scott Scarborough of 2017.
“The Scar,” as he was less-than-affectionately known to many students, faculty, alumni and friends of the University of Akron, nearly managed to dismantle the 147-year-old institution with his knuckleheaded unilateral decisions, such as trying to “rebrand” UA as “Ohio’s Polytechnic University” and cutting the budget with seemingly random swings of a meat cleaver.
Only when big private donors started to close their checkbooks did the board of trustees come to its senses and show him the door.
Almost right next door to UA, at Summa’s Akron City Hospital, the health system’s flagship, Malone stunned the community with his unfathomable last-second move to blow out all of the ER docs and those at four other Summa ERs.
With a mere two days’ notice, he ousted a physicians group that had staffed City’s ER for four decades, replacing them with a Canton-based group called US Acute Care Solutions.
Did we mention that the CEO of the Canton group, Dr. Dominic Bagnoli, is married to Summa’s chief medical officer, Dr. Vivian von Gruenigen, who holds one of the most powerful positions at Summa?
More than 230 Summa doctors have signed a letter urging Malone to resign. The abrupt ER change also has been criticized by four national health organizations.
Keep in mind that this wasn’t the only incident that has drawn boos. Doctors are calling this “the last straw” in a culture based on fear. A longtime orthopedic surgeon and an internal medicine doc both have accused Malone of being “tyrannical.”
The controversy continues to rage, and no one knows exactly how it will play out. But if nothing else, we can add the word “hypocrisy” to the list of charges against Malone.
The cover photo splashed across the top of his personal Facebook page shows him lying on a beach towel next to his wife, wearing sunglasses and puffing on a huge cigar.
His online comment:
“Cubans in cayman. Doesn’t get much better!!”
That photo was posted April 12, 2015 — 2½ years after he was hired, and — ahem — more than five years after Summa adopted a tough no-nicotine policy for new hires.
In other words, if Dr. Tom Malone had applied for any job at Summa in mid-April of 2015, he would not have been qualified to work there.
The health system’s no-smoking policy for prospective employees is no joke. The county’s largest employer requires all candidates to take a urine test to confirm they don’t use tobacco products — cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, chewing tobacco, snuff, pipes and, yes, cigars.
So why on earth is the CEO raving about the joys of Cuban cigars?
Summa spokesman Mike Bernstein responded via email, “Our policy prohibits the use of nicotine products at work and during work hours. It does not govern non-working hours.”
So you can’t smoke before you’re hired but you can smoke after you’re hired.
Well, that makes perfect sense.
For a CEO whose company won’t hire smokers to post a photo of himself smoking is tone deaf.
It’s not as if Malone set up an obscure Facebook site, using a nickname or his first and middle names, as some folks do. He goes by “Thomas Malone,” and the page pops right up with a simple Facebook search. (Unless he has taken it down since my inquiry.)
Surely a man of his stature should be aware of the repercussions of putting a photo of himself breaking his own company’s hiring policy on a network originally known as the World Wide Web.
Seems sort of like a Founders Day sponsor posting a photo of himself doing a shot of tequila. It just doesn’t compute.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. To find his podcast, “Dyer Necessities,” go to www.ohio.com/dyer. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31