Flaws That Led to 2019 UNM Neurosurgery Losing Accreditation, Resurface as Docs in Charge Rake in Millions of Extra Income
Introduction to Expanded Investigatory Reporting on the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine Neurosurgery Residency Program.
Background
Since October 2024, The Candle has interviewed persons with intimate knowledge of bullying, discrimination, and misconduct towards doctors in the residency program of University of New Mexico School of Medicine’s Neurosurgery Department.
Sources have also conveyed information relative to alleged harm to UNM Neurosurgery Department patients – harm that may have contributed to the death of some patients
The Candle has made multiple Inspection of Public Records Act requests of the UNM School of Medicine to turn over thousands of pages of documents relative to the investigatory research for our reporting.
UNM produced many documents, but also refused to provide many other documents.
UNM’s refusal to provide access to an array of the documents it is withholding is a matter which The Candle is preparing to challenge under provisions of the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act.
The Candle will show that UNM is wrongly withholding information of importance to the public in order to cover up practices at the University’s hospital and School of Medicine that have resulted in patient harm and which have contributed to a culture of bullying and discrimination towards minority resident doctors in the neurosurgery program.
In addition, The Candle made multiple formal requests to interview UNM senior officials with knowledge of the problems at the Neurosurgery Department.
UNM has refused to make these officials available for questions and has also ignored written queries submitted by The Candle to the UNM officials regarding the patient safety concerns and bullying raised by medical personnel who have spoken with The Candle.
(NOTE: Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education is the nationally recognized entity consisting of medical professionals in the United States, and which “oversees the accreditation of residency and fellowship programs in the US.”)
Introduction – History
A critical requirement for a residency program to maintain accreditation by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), is to meet the educational needs of the resident doctors (doctors who had graduated medical school) in the program in order for them to succeed in their field of medicine and become good practitioners of the best care of patients.
On August 29, 2019, the ACGME informed the New Mexico School of Medicine it would lose accreditation for its Neurosurgery Residency program at the end of June 2020.
At the time the program had eleven residents in its seven year program – two doctors in year one, one in year two, two in year three, one in year four, two in year five, one in year six, and two in year seven.
Among the reasons cited in the accreditation revocation letter, investigators noted:
“…the program acknowledged that residents believe that the structure and content of the
educational program is lacking, operative experience is inadequate, the department culture is
strained, and it is unclear who is in charge.” [page 3, of August 29, 2019, letter to UNM School of Medicine Neurological Surgery Department of ACGME Withdrawing Accreditation of Neurosurgery Program.]
Between August 2019, and early 2020, UNM sought to find a team to rebuild the Neurosurgery department with the daunting goal of achieving accreditation as soon as possible.
It took about two years to do so, but in April 2022, the program received initial accreditation reinstatement.
And in early 2025, the program received full accreditation.
As reported in the Albuquerque Journal in February, “The University of New Mexico School of Medicine’s Department of Neurosurgery has gained full accreditation for its physician residency program five years after it was revoked.”
The Journal reporting also noted, “The full accreditation is also a big victory for Harsh [Dr. Griffith Harsh], the department head who took over at the start of this year following a stint as the chairman of the council that revoked the accreditation of the residency program he now oversees.”
But There’s More to This Story …
Despite that being the extent of the story the UNM School of Medicine and their “spin doctors” have shared with the public, The Candle has found an abusive and discriminatory culture toward minority residents and complaints of a lack of sufficient mentoring of residents by department attending physicians.
And more importantly to the public safety, UNM refuses to account for their failure to address concerns raised by medical personnel about patients not being properly informed of the use of certain medical devices and harm done to patients due to the alleged misuse of those devices.
It’s conceivable that Dr. Harsh, who has been on the scene for less than five months, has been kept in the dark by UNM about these significant issues, and reemerging problems related to those he and the ACGME team from 2018 and 2019, determined were reasons for the program losing accreditation in 2020.
…That reporting, along with reporting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of on-call compensation for each of a handful of neurosurgery doctors in charge – compensation that has been excluded from the public portal on hospital compensation, begins on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
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