At first blush, it seems a little extreme to compare a leading institution of higher learning to a Mafia family, but that is exactly what the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has become.

While no one was looking, New Jersey wrested the Most Corrupt State title from Louisiana. Its love affair with bribes, kickbacks and influence peddling can be attested to by all of the politicians – from lowly municipal burghers to state senators and political party leaders – who are doing time in federal prisons.

These public officials are not to be confused with all of the mafiosi doing time in federal prisons for the same things. It’s not for nuttin’ that “The Sopranos,â€? the hit HBO television show, is based on a lovably lethal North Jersey crime family that traffics in bribes, kickbacks and influence peddling.

This brings us to the reason for why UMDNJ, New Jersey’s largest and supposedly most prestigious health-care institution, is doing a pretty good imitation of being a mob family.

UMDNJ has been so adept at bribing, kickbacks and influence peddling that it has been honored as the first university in the entire U.S. of A. to be overseen by a court-ordered federal monitor. Not even the Soprano family or the Corleone family of “The Godfather” fame had federal monitors.

The federal monitor was invited to the UMDNJ party because:

* Its politically-wired administrators have let an astonishing $700 million in no-bid contracts, some of which also included kickbacks. Kind of like only doing business with merchants who pay you homage, better known as the Mafia street tax.

* Administrators have hired employees based not on their qualifications, but through use of a secret code identifying an applicant’s political patron. The more powerful the patron, the lower the secret code number. Kind of like speaking Sicilian so that no one knows what you’re up to.

* They schemed to bilk the federal and state governments out of millions in illegal Medicaid payments. Kind of like scamming old ladies of their inheritances.

Let’s remember that UMDNJ is not a trash-hauling business or labor union, two enterprises that are no strangers to mob influence. UMDNJ is a major teaching hospital. We’re talking brain surgery and root canals, not landfills and construction jobs.

It is that context that makes the federal monitor’s most recent discovery about this mobbed-up institution so mind-blowing, even for New Jersey:

For several years, UMDNJ has paid 18 doctors — including some of its most prominent — up to $150,000 a year each in kickbacks to refer patients to its struggling cardiac surgery program at University Hospital in Newark.

That’s right, these doctors sent patients to UMDNJ based on lining their own pockets, not what was best — let alone what the best hospital was — for the patients.

It gets worse:

The University Hospital cardiac surgery program has death rates triple to the state average.

Furthermore, even with the kickback scheme, University Hospital has performed so few surgeries that it lost its accreditation, including the right to train cardiac specialists. This is a big blow to a hospital system that needs to keep its high-level trauma center designation. Kind of like a mob hit.

Furthermore furthermore, the kickback doctors are listed as being on the university’s faculty, but never teach courses.

Just as Kay begged Michael to quit the mob in “The Godfather,” UMDNJ administrators ignored warnings that the cardiac kickback scheme was improper and continued to bribe doctors to get patients. In fact, their entire response to the corruption allegations is like what Michael said:

It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.

DISS CLAIMER
There probably will be people of Italian-American descent who will take offense at the rampant stereotyping in this post.

Well, bring it on because it gives me an opportunity to note the over-arching hypocrisy of the Italian-American community and Roman Catholic Church in big cities with Mafia crime families.

Take Philadelphia. Please!

In that city, the church’s priests baptize, bless and bury mobsters. They give their children their first communion. They quietly annul their marriages. The mobsters, in turn, give lavishly to the church, and one in particular used to throw spectacular Christmas parties for his South Philadelphia parish where hundreds of bicycles and other goodies were distributed by a Mafia Santa Claus and elves. The parties ended when he went off to prison.

As regularly as the seasons came and went, the church and Italian- American groups would complain to my bosses at the Daily News about its portrayal of these goons. But not once in all of my years as an editor and reporter in the City of Brotherly Love did I ever hear the archbishop, let alone a priest, an Italian pol or officer of the Sons of Italy or Christopher Columbus Society, utter a harsh word about the mob.