Women's Committee Will Meet With Wacker, Release Update

A Medical Area women's committee which has filed a formal grievance against University Health Services (UHS) gynecologic care will invite Dr. Warren E C Wacker, director of UHS, to meet with the full committee for the first time since the complaint was filed last April.

In its first full meeting since June the approximately 40-member Joint Committee on the Status of Women yesterday decided to invite Wacker and to issue a formal update on the grievance to area women's groups.

Wacker had asked to attend yesterday's meeting and had been turned down committee members said yesterday.

The meeting and the formal update will both take place within the next two weeks, Gen Denterlein, the committee's official liaison, said.

Ten Many Cesareans

After discussing the grievance--which charges that Dr. Paul I Winig '62, one of UHS's two gynecologists, performed too many Cesarean section operations over a five month period--the Joint Committee "really felt things were on the right course." Denterlein added.

A review committee at Harvard-affiliated Brigham & Women's Hospital (BWH), where Winig practices, has, however, found all the despaired Cesarean section operations to be" medically appropriate."

Wacker subsequently released a statement denying that the complaint, had any validity and calling the statistical evidence inadequate.

Nevertheless, committee members have said that they wits continue pursuing the complaint. They cites second complaint filed this fall against Winig, charging inadequate treatment leading to health problems, as evidence that a problem still exists.

Wacker said yesterday that he had asked to meet with the Joint Committee along with Dr. Maureen M. Lynch, a UHS affiliated pediatrician who cares for some of the babies delivered by Winig.

"I thought we should bring them [the committee] up to date on where we stood--that by statistics and peer review, Dr. Winig does not do too many Cesareans," Wacker said yesterday. "As far as I'm concerned, the substantive issues are settled," he added.

Wackey said he would also inform the committee of the steps UHS has taken to improve gynecologic and obstetric care in the wake of the complaint, including arranging for UHS patients to have access to BWH's nurse-mid- wife delivery program and agreeing to begin a search for a female gynecologist.