LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Repeatedly missing surgical procedures performed by students under his supervision and being unavailable when on call for emergencies were cited in a published report as reasons for the removal of former Lt. Gov. Steve Henry from the University of Louisville Medical School faculty.

Henry is an orthopedic surgeon and was an unsuccessful candidate in this year's Democratic primary for governor.

The Louisville Courier-Journal said in a story published Wednesday that it obtained personnel records pertaining to Henry under the state open-records law.

The alleged reasons for Henry's removal from the faculty were cited in the records, the story said. They were that his actions posed potential legal liability for University Hospital and medical students and could put the university's department of orthopedic medicine at risk of losing its accreditation.

Henry defended his tenure at U of L in an interview with the newspaper Tuesday. He said that Dr. John R. Johnson, chairman of the orthopedic department, had overreacted and that many on-call doctors at University Hospital are hard to reach. When reached by The Associated Press Wednesday, Henry said he had not read the story and would reserve comment.

Henry has said previously that he left U of L because he couldn't run a statewide campaign while continuing to practice medicine. He told the newspaper his problems were primarily with Johnson and that they arose from a long-running disagreement over a billing service run by Johnson. Henry has said in the past that the billing service was responsible for errors that prompted a federal lawsuit against him alleging Medicaid and Medicare fraud.

Johnson declined to comment to the newspaper on Henry's claims. "He'd prefer to let the documents speak for themselves," said Ellen de Graffenreid, a spokeswoman for U of L's Health Science Center.

As for the on-call problems, Henry said missing six or seven calls in a year's time is not a big deal, given that he took hundreds of them. "At no time were the patients ever uncovered by another attending (physician) or by myself when I was in the hospital," Henry told The Courier-Journal.
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Information from: The Courier-Journal,
http://www.courier-journal.com

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)