FYI, an article sent through the University of Rochester system that might interest those getting ready for UR.
New Dean Dr. Mark Taubman Ready for Challenge, Change
Mark Taubman, M.D.The former chair of the Department of Medicine, Mark Taubman, M.D., served as Acting CEO of the Medical Center for nine months after Bradford Berk, M.D., Ph.D., suffered a serious spinal cord injury. As of March 1, when Berk returned to his full-time post as CEO, Taubman became the School of Medicine and Dentistrys 10th dean and remains a pivotal member of Berks leadership team. Pulse sat down with Taubman to discuss his vision for the School and the challenges that lay before it.
Pulse: Has nine months as URMCs Acting CEO changed your perspective of the institution?
Taubman: Its shown me so much, giving me a birds eye view of the many challenges the health care industry, and academic medical centers in particular, are facing. Were at a point where sweeping reform and changes in the way health care is reimbursed will force us to examine our existing practice models. Theres a good chance that the way were currently working simply wont make sense in this new age in health care.
Pulse: What else might change?
Taubman: Well, lets start with the big industry buzzword: quality. Our performance on various benchmarks will become more and more public. Patients (rightly so) are being empowered to be better consumers, and our compensation, in part, is becoming tied to how well we perform. While these transparency trends still seem somewhat novel to those of us whove been practicing for years, for new students and residents, pay for performance is going to be second nature. Itll color their whole careers. We need to find ways to approach quality improvement academically both in the sense that its infused into our curriculum, and also in the way we proactively innovate and study and report care improvement efforts.
Pulse: Speaking of compensation, lets face the elephant in the room: our Medical Schools deficit. How do you begin to approach that?
Taubman: There are a few important things to keep in mind. The first is that, in a way, the deficit is a child of our success. What I mean is that, while we can boast about the extraordinary growth in our research funding (just this year alone, our rank in NIH funding has increased from 24th to 21st), researchers lose thirty cents on every dollar under the best of circumstances and the Schools endowment and the hospitals margin cant be expected shore up the difference, especially in todays economy.
That said, we certainly want to move forward on our research strategic plan. Our recent successes and the growth of the research enterprise have made us even more attractive to investigators around the country. However, we will need a multi-pronged approach to allow us to move forward. Part of that solution, we hope, will flow out of our Clinical and Translational Science Institute. We anticipate it will create a fertile environment that encourages commercialization of scientific advances into intellectual property, royalties, and perhaps even start-up companies.
Well also need to better engage our alumni, to secure more philanthropy, to encourage investigators to maximize their funding (applying for multiple grants), and to be creative with how we can reduce costs, share resources, and ultimately work more efficiently.
Pulse: It sounds like theres a lot on your plate.
Taubman: Yes, but Im not alone, and I certainly wont make decisions in a vacuum. There will be lots of input from colleagues, and Im going to take time, at first, observing things.
Pulse: Are you beginning to notice trends that will challenge medical education?
Taubman: Yes. One is that, as the aging population faces a shortage of primary care physicians in the coming years, we in Rochester feel a special obligation to make sure were not only training tomorrows scientists and specialists, but its PCPs, too. And then, after training them, well need to try to retain some of them regionally well need them.
Also, in a faster-paced age where patient records are becoming digitized and more portable, well need to make sure that technology helps us offer care thats more interactive and relational not less so. We need to train another generation of physicians who can carefully tune-in to patients needs, even as the world moves quickly around them.
A formal investiture for Taubman will take place this spring.
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