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Two key players in Oregon's health-care industry are headed for a stand-off this week. In one corner is Ken Rutledge, who, as president of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, represents 62 institutions whose annual budgets are counted in millions of dollars. In the other corner stands Diane Lund-Muzikant, who, as editor of a health-biz newsletter, manages a staff of three in an office where the fax machine doubles as the photocopier. Rutledge is meeting with the Oregon Health Forum board of directors this week to register his disapproval of Lund-Muzikant's work. Rutledge says he's not looking to force any changes at Health Forum, but he's certainly sending a message. So far, 15 subscribers have canceled their subscriptions and one member of Health Forum's advisory council has resigned. Now Lund-Muzikant believes Rutledge is trying to force Health Forum to change the way it reports stories. Despite the seeming mismatch, don't count Lund-Muzikant out. Rutledge's complaints will surely be weighed against the deep respect Lund-Muzikant's board has for her. For seven years Health Forum, a sober 12-page monthly newsletter, has been doing candid check-ups on everything from the Oregon Health Plan to spats between pharmacists and docs. Starting in May 1991 with eight pages and a subscription base of 350, Health Forum has grown into a must-read for 1,400 insurers, hospital officials, regulators, business executives and journalists. With a troop of about six freelancers, the staid, ad-free newsletter has broken several big stories, including the Oregon Health Plan's failure to provide adequate drug and alcohol rehab, ODS Health Plans' purchase of Philip Morris stock and United Way's $702,000 donation to Legacy Hospitals while Legacy CEO John King was on the United Way board. As a result, Health Forum's 59-year-old editor and founder has earned a reputation as a muckraking journalist. "She's certainly aggressive," says Robert Dernedde, executive director of the Oregon Medical Association, an industry lobbying group. "Diane has done an excellent job covering stories that other publications do not address. She has a loyal readership, a readership that looks to her to provide real info on health care." Rutledge, though, says his association members at Salem Hospital, Portland Adventist and Legacy have consistently complained about Lund-Muzikant's coverage. According to Rutledge there are two complaints. First, he says, Lund-Muzikant gets her facts wrong. As an example, he points to an incident when Lund-Muzikant incorrectly reported that the president of Salem Hospital was a finalist for a job in Vancouver. (Lund-Muzikant acknowledges the error and says she promptly printed a correction.) Legacy spokeswoman Claudia Brown labels Health Forum "highly inaccurate" but does not provide examples of factual errors. Others say Health Forum is reliable. "I'm not aware of any info they've gathered from us that has been reported erroneously," says Lynn Read, deputy director of OMAP, a state agency that administers the Oregon Health Plan and is a frequent target of Health Forum's hard-nosed reporting. "Whenever they're doing a story that involves OMAP, they are very thorough." Rutledge's second gripe is that Lund-Muzikant is looking for trouble. "She creates controversy where there are no controversies," Rutledge told Willamette Week. "She has a sarcastic and cynical approach and doesn't talk to people to see if there's a positive story." A recent story on profits at Legacy hospitals sent Rutledge over the edge. A February front-page Health Forum story reported that the Legacy hospital chain netted $41.7 million in the fiscal year ending March 31, 1997. The article also stated that Legacy president and CEO John King earned $609,217 in compensation, an 8.1 percent increase from 1996. Rutledge doesn't dispute the numbers but takes issue with Lund-Muzikant's tone. He argues that by printing the numbers without doing any analysis, Lund-Muzikant is trying to paint a simplistic portrait of greedy hospitals. Legacy's Brown agrees. "She just lists the numbers without digging deeper," she says. "She just makes her own interpretations about profits, comparing apples and oranges." In a lengthy letter printed in the following issue, Rutledge argued that the profits reflected improvements in operating expenses, not greed. "She has a preoccupation with CEO salaries and profits," he told WW. Rutledge's disapproval of Lund-Muzikant caused him to cancel the association's subscription, cut Health Forum reporters off from access to association representatives and, most important, stop helping Lund-Muzikant crunch numbers and analyze hospital data. (Lund-Muzikant can still get the data from public records, but it will be a little harder to navigate.) Despite Rutledge's protest, Jim Carlson, chairman of Health Forum's board, says the board will not exert any editorial control over Lund-Muzikant. He is willing to hear Rutledge's concerns, though. Lund-Muzikant says she's not "cynical" but "provocative and interested in the truth." Part of the truth of health care, according to Lund-Muzikant, is that it's become big business, and it's driven by money. "I guess when you expose the truth and put a dollar sign next to it, people get nervous," Lund-Muzikant says. "I want to know why simply printing dollar figures makes people so nervous." Lund-Muzikant says it wasn't until she published her most recent articles, the one on Legacy's profits and another one about local hospitals such as Legacy being fined for double-billing the feds on Medicare payments, that Rutledge took issue with Health Forum. "This is about publishing the profits, penalties and salaries," Lund-Muzikant says. Carlson agrees with Lund-Muzikant. "The association is not happy with the financial data being published in a widely read newsletter," he says. "My guess is that a couple of powerful members of his association voiced complaints." A subscription
to Oregon Health Forum costs $109 a year. Diane Lund-Muzikant, who
relishes publishing the six-figure salaries of hospital executives, says she makes just under $49,000 a year and receives no benefits. Her sparring partner, Ken Rutledge, says his base salary is $185,000. MICHAEL OLFERTFrom their cluttered office on Northwest 21st Avenue, Diane Lund-Muzikant (left) and staffers Heather Henderson and Retha Palmer rake the medical muck. |
