Pathology Town Meeting Comprehensive Academic Planning Process

Friday, February 6, 2004

 Facilitator.  Cecilia Fenoglio-Preiser MD.

Recorders: Michael Dixon: Pat Walk

Present:  Drs. Alvares, Askew, Biddinger, Bishop, Boivin, Cook-Mills, Fenoglio-Preiser, Heffelfinger, Howles, Hui, Kendler, Koehler, Nikiforov, Pesce, Retzinger, Rhodes, Schumacher, Tso, Stanek, Stemmermann, J. Wang, Y Wang, Woollett and Messrs. Dixon, Perrotta and Saunders

 

Dr. Fenoglio began by discussing the reason for the meeting which was to have faculty provide input for Dr. Nancy Zimpher’s Academic Strategic Plan.  Responses are due by February 15, 2004

 

We are to provide opinions on the following questions:

·        what is their vision  for UC’s leadership in the 21^st century?

·        what strategic steps and resources are needed to reach that vision?

·        and what standards/outcomes should we be accountable to?

 

Dr. Fenoglio invited responses from those present.  The responses follow:

 

• We want to attract the same high quality graduate students as east coast schools do.
• UC needs to find alternate ways to fund active collaborations with businesses.
• We need to provide information via the Internet for our students, residents, fellows and citizens such as Net Wellness “Ask-a-Doc” 
• We need to better educate our medical students, residents, physicians and community on laboratory testing.  Laboratory testing is vitally important in medical school teaching and to patients.
• We need to figure out how we cope with less money from the state and federal governments. Do we create winners and losers or big and little losers?
• Adopt the Educational – “Outcome Project”,  that is  a federally funded outcome based project
• We need to improve medical education and graduate student education.
•  Need improved resources for brain cutting and neuropath
• We need to provide better teaching – need to fulfill the reasons we say we are here.  Should strive to be in top 25 medical schools. 
• We need  to have an NCI designated  Cancer Center
• We need to be in the top 10% of medical schools in teaching, research and clinical care
• Need to improve entrepreneurial research
• Need to improve didactic teaching
• We need to improve patient care excellence
• We need to work to reduce health disparities in the  community

·        Improve our competitiveness with other graduate programs

• We need to improve our minority recruiting for graduate programs.
• We need to improve our minority recruiting for faculty.
• We need to improve our minority recruiting for post docs.
• Improve our community relationships with other teaching institutions to increase our pool of graduate students
• We need to improve the applicant pool for research assistants/associates
• There needs to be better integration of efforts between campuses and between colleges.
• There needs to be better communication about what is going on in each of the colleges – both within the UC community and with the Cincinnati community
• Find ways to overcome personnel availability from overseas, Find ways to work with Homeland Security and INS to avoid “brain drain” to other countries for students, residents, post-docs and faculty.
• We need to find ways to be able to recruit excellent people who trained in this country who have J-1 visas for faculty positions
• We need to improve our ranking from 28^th in the State of Ohio for biomedical research?  Cleveland  is 1^st, Columbus is  2^nd UC needs to be more facilitative, have a realistic competitive approach to work with outside contractors.  Overhead percentage of 54% for contracts is too high.  Collaborators go elsewhere.
• UC needs to exhibit more flexibility and creativeness to enhance our success rate in dealing with industry and competitiveness for contracts.
• We need to do a better job of working with community groups/advocates i.e. for funding opportunities.
• We need to do a better job of working with community groups/advocates i.e. for health screening initiatives – what do we (UC) offer the community?  This may mean that we have to provide transportation to the facility.
• We need to improve Women’s services.
• We need to improve the work environment at University hospital and the Barrett Cancer Center so that we can provide critical services such as OB/Gyn, or mammography.
• We need to recruit physicians in areas of clinical weakness or shortage, ie gastroenterology, mammography
• We need to improve the patient care environments
• We have expertise but we do a lousy job of marketing ourselves to the community or to anyone.
• Lab Animal Medicine (LAMS) needs to be made user friendly.  Service is so bad researchers refuse to house animals there.
• There needs to be better internal integration of research groups across departmental/institutional lines.
• Pricing for university services needs to be reviewed and some service could probably be outsourced.  For example.  Cost to provide UC police for Genome Research Institute (GRI) estimated at approx. $800,000.  Outside contracting estimated at $175,000. 

 

• Need to provide additional support to service areas i.e. Environmental Health and Safety.  Dr. Utrecht is alone trying to deal with increasing governmental regulations from Homeland Security.  Backlog continues to increase which affects research efforts throughout the university.
• “It’s All UC’ advertising campaign is frivolous. Rather we need to advertise to businesses not to employees. 
• We need to promote the  intellectual environment to local and national industry
• To be competitive with Yale and Harvard UC policies and processes need to be more enabling.  If resources are not available to operate service areas at a higher level these inefficiencies cannot be dumped back on the researchers for resolution.
• Need to use Dr. Henney’s FDA relationships and contacts with Washington politicians to our advantage to promote our scientists, physicians and overall expertise.
• University has the means and needs to us it in making business and intellectual contacts to encourage collaborations. 
• We need to sell our expertise to community leaders.
• We need to create career paths for our post-docs. They are looking for jobs.  Local businesses need to know about them.  We need to provide assistance in matching them up with local/regional businesses.
• We need fewer administrators, asst and assoc dean, especially when they don’t have clear idea of what their role is in the organization.  We need to become lean and mean at that top.  Do more with less in non federally mandated administrative positions
• Need to consolidate core facilities for better efficiency.  Medical center has 4 biostatistic cores and several proteomics cores.  Too much duplication.  The statistics core in Env Hlth is costly and not responsive to researchers.  They charge researchers to talk on the phone. 
• Need for more coherent coordination of teaching including learning objectives, right size courses with proper emphasis on subject matter.
• There needs to be adequate funding for teachers.  Many feel that there is no payment for their teaching efforts. 
• What are general funds used for?  There needs to be more transparency in this area.
• Teaching needs to be recognized for promotion or salary increases.  Teaching needs to be incentivized.  Clinicians don’t want to teach in graduate programs because there is no incentive and it takes away from their clinical time, which is billable.

 

What standards/outcomes should we hold ourselves accountable to?  What have we done to put ourselves in competitive position?

• A survey of benchmarks should be made now and in 5 and 10 years.
• Do a survey of faculty and staff attitudes regarding UC as a place to work and other aspects of UC life and place in the community and state now and in 5 and 10 years to see if there is an improvement.
• Do a survey of what the public’s perception of UC is as a place to send their children, by college and campus now and in 5 and 10 years.
• Determine what the public ( private and corporate knows about UC’s programs now and in the future
• Are we listed favorably among the schools to go to in the US News and World Report
• Are our residents finding better jobs?
• Are our resident candidates higher quality?
• Are we getting our fair share of the State’s investment?
• Make our basketball players ambassadors for the university.  “Huggins Thugs” is not the way we want our school to be recognized  
• What have we done to be more competitive?

 

What can we do better?

• Fund raising
• Advertise our successes to the community - Obesity Center – the community doesn’t know anything about this.
• Indigent Care – advertise the good that we do.  Most people do not know how much we do for the community.
• How many UC physicians become Top Docs in the US?