Reinventing the Academic Health Center

Abstract

Academic health centers have faced well-documented internal and external challenges over the last decade, putting pressure on organizational leaders to develop new strategies to improve performance while simultaneously addressing employee morale, patient satisfaction, educational outcomes, and research growth. In the aftermath of a failed merger, new leaders of The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center encountered a climate of readiness for a transformational change. In a case study of this process, nine critical success factors are described that contributed to significant performance improvement: performing a campus-wide cultural assessment and acting decisively on the results; making values explicit and active in everyday decisions; aligning corporate structure and governance to unify the academic enterprise and health system; aligning the next tier of administrative structure and function; fostering collaboration and accountability-the creation of unified campus teams; articulating a succinct, highly focused, and compelling vision and strategic plan; using the tools of mission-based management to realign resources; focusing leadership recruitment on organizational fit; and "growing your own" through broad-based leadership development. Outcomes assessment data for academic, research, and clinical performance showed significant gains between 2000 and 2004. Organizational transformation as a result of the nine factors is possible in other institutional settings and can facilitate a focus on crucial quality initiatives.

The role of academic health centers in addressing social responsibility

“…The management infrastructure of universities and academic health centers is often fragmented, inhibiting alignment among all of the institution's functions. This complicates the ability of any one member of senior leadership to encourage collaboration across schools and departments (Kirch et al 2005).…”

Functional mentoring: A practical approach with multilevel outcomes

“…12 Investment of personnel and resources in such programs, however, carries a responsibility to produce a return on investment. 13,14 While there is variability in mentoring programs, 2,4,5,8,15 institutional programs typically emphasize the pairing process and logistical components. [15][16][17] The usual, primary outcome of these programs is the establishment of a "successful" relationship.…”

How Important Is the Contribution of Surgical Specialties to a Medical School’s NIH Funding?

“…On the departmental level, departments may not be fostering a research culture and directing residents and young faculty into research. Such a problem and departmental direction is of course multifactorial; many surgical departments are the major clinical revenue-generating departments and expectations both for salary support and for revenues to the medical center may mandate a large fraction of effort be devoted to patient care [8,9]. In fact, a decreased rate of NIH funding has been noted in regions nationally that have a large fraction of managed care penetration [10].…”