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by Jerry Reves, M.D.
Dean, College of Medicine and Vice President, Medical Affairs
The College of Medicine and University Medical Associates (UMA)
recently held its eighth Leadership Development Institute (LDI), titled
“Brave New World: How to Thrive and Not Just Survive.”
Susan Harvey, M.D., served as the moderator, reminding us at the onset
of how many struggles we have faced and overcame successfully as an
organization by “circling the wagons.” This set the tone for a day of
discovery, planning and creative problem-solving.
We reviewed a number of significant “wins,” most notably Hollings
Cancer Center’s recent NCI designation—an outstanding achievement. We
have also risen four points this year to reach our highest NIH ranking
ever, 47th among freestanding medical schools. We are very hopeful that
our Clinical and Translational Research Center application will also be
funded in the near future. I commend all of those among you who have
succeeded in securing federal research support despite significant NIH
budgetary constraints.
We also introduced our new director of the MUSC Excellence Program,
Andrea Swartz. She will begin focusing on areas of concern within the
college and UMA during the coming months. Our pillar goal progress was
reviewed, and employees were reminded to complete their annual
satisfaction surveys. Resident and post-doctoral satisfaction surveys
are forthcoming, and student satisfaction-related concerns have been
elicited through a series of focus groups in an effort to improve these
scores.
Inpatient satisfaction scores remain below goal, and providers were
reminded to continue key behaviors such as AIDET, managing up, patient
rounding, and functioning as effective team members. Though outpatient
satisfaction remains above goal, we will continue to look for areas of
improvement here as well, particularly regarding space utilization and
clinical outreach efforts.
Robert Dickler served as the key note speaker, focusing on the
challenges facing academic medical centers (AMCs) across the nation. He
reviewed the critical roles and contributions of AMCs, looking beyond
the traditional tripartite model of education, research, and clinical
care to include serving as a safety net for the uninsured, providing
unique community benefits, and fostering economic development. He
discussed the national imperative to produce more physicians and
eliminate gaps in graduate medical education.
Mr. Dickler also focused on the critical agenda of how to finance AMCs
in an era of economic turmoil, discussing key financial and legislative
trends and challenges. He reviewed the broad concept of health care
reform and how definitional variations can influence and potentially
impede effective planning efforts. The talk concluded with a look at
how AMCs should be positioned to respond to health care reform efforts:
by ensuring mission alignment and accountability, functioning
effectively as a unified organization, identifying and focusing on
clinical strengths, positioning ourselves economically, providing
leadership for change, and educating future physicians to focus on
quality.
We reviewed outcomes from our recent strategic planning meeting,
“Mission Critical Success,” where the college’s key leaders focused on
preserving our best people and programs to not only accomplish our
critical missions but also come out of this financial crisis better and
stronger. In light of the recent budget cuts, our projected fiscal
balance would continue a rapid downward spiral to a $14M deficit by the
end of this fiscal year without intervention. However, by implementing
sweeping reforms, we can overcome the current $8M deficit and be out of
the red by June, if we work together cohesively and move quickly to
enact necessary changes.
Following the recommendations of our task forces, we will critically
evaluate all of our departments in terms of their responsiveness to our
tripartite mission and critical objectives and their financial
solvency. We will restructure our basic sciences to capitalize on
current strengths, better define critical areas of focus, foster a
broader spirit of collaboration, and permit growth through economies of
scale. We will implement broad educational reform in the basic science
curriculum to permit greater integration of systems-based content and
employ more effective methods of adult learning. Our clinical spectrum
of services will move from an integrated to a multi-specialty model of
operations, with an even greater focus placed upon academic
productivity. A new COM Leadership Council will ensure consistent
levels of accountability throughout the college. These changes must be
in place by the end of this fiscal year if we wish to reverse our rapid
economic decline.
We also held breakout sessions on critical topics, including tactics
for enhancing faculty and staff performance, dealing with budgetary
constraints, using financial data for clinical management, improving
administrative and research operations through best practices, and
implementing educational reform. These interactive sessions provided an
open forum for discussion and produced an array of take-home lessons
and practical tools for change.
For information about MUSC Excellence, visit http://www.musc.edu/com1.
I commend you all for your commitment to excellence.
Friday, April 17, 2009
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