Times: USF aims big in efforts to rebrand and reinvent its medical school

[USFishin]

USF aims big in efforts to rebrand and reinvent its medical school

By Letitia Stein and Richard Martin, Times Staff Writers

In Print: Monday, March 28, 2011

TAMPA — The University of South Florida dreams of seeing its name on a hospital, boosting the prestige of its medical school. But having failed to make headway for years, leaders have a new strategy to make lemonade out of a sour situation.

The university is pushing to rebrand itself as a statewide medical school — or even a national or international one — forging unlikely partnerships as it embarks on wide-ranging and ambitious new ventures:

• Build a $30 million training and simulation center in downtown Tampa to help doctors from around the world master the latest, high-tech procedures.

• Send students 1,094 miles away to Allentown, Pa., to train as medical leaders.

• Run a network of five new trauma centers at HCA hospitals from Miami to Jacksonville.

Dr. Stephen Klasko, dean of the USF College of Medicine, has long chafed at the absence of a hospital to help stabilize funding and bolster USF's reputation. Now, though, he touts the lack of an anchor as an advantage: USF is free to take bold moves to attract high-profile faculty and elevate care in the region.

"Tampa Bay benefits by having a great medical school in Tampa Bay," said Klasko, explaining an unorthodox strategy that isn't just focused on tried-and-true benchmarks like increasing research funding. "It's not to be nationally prominent in the traditional academic sense. It's to have four or five areas where people from around the world say, 'Let's go to Tampa Bay.' "

• • •

Doing something different may be a necessity for the 40-year-old medical college. In the past decade, Florida has created four new medical schools, all of which are competing for the same resources as USF. Since 2005, state funding for the USF school has dropped by 26 percent, Klasko said.

Three years ago, USF riled Tampa's medical establishment with a pitch to build a hospital on its campus. In making his case, Klasko criticized local hospitals with a broad brush, saying Tampa Bay residents often leave in search of better health care.

The push exposed tensions between USF and its primary teaching hospital, Tampa General. USF later tried a softer tone with a scaled-back plan for a hospital centered on diabetes and lifespan diseases. That also stalled.

"We could have dug our head in the sand and had a lot of excuses for why we haven't grown," Klasko said. "Or we could basically have a totally different model and grow wildly, which is what we believe we have been doing and are doing."

Consider the three-story, $30 million building rising in downtown Tampa. The Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation will train doctors on high-tech robotic simulators, testing their ability to perform advanced procedures.

Though it won't open until January, USF already is fielding interested calls from Australia, South Korea, India, Israel, Panama and the United Kingdom, said Dr. John Armstrong, who left the University of Florida to lead the facility. He expects it to draw more than 60,000 medical workers to Tampa each year.

In the fall, USF kicks off another unusual initiative that crosses state lines. The twist: A group of medical students taking specialized classes in leadership will spend their first two years studying in Tampa and their last two training at the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Pennsylvania.

The program, called SELECT (Scholarly Excellence, Leadership Experiences and Collaborative Training), grew from Klasko's long-standing relationship with the Pennsylvania health system and its residency program.

"Who cares that Allentown, Pa., isn't exactly our palm-tree territory?" USF says in its promotional materials. "For us, distance is just another barrier to break."

• • •

USF's goal of becoming a statewide medical school departs sharply from its founding mission to produce practicing doctors, not researchers and educators.

William McGaghie, a professor of medical education at Northwestern University, notes that national accrediting requirements ensure that both big-name and lesser-known schools produce quality doctors.

Still, he said, it's understandable that USF wants to improve its image.

"Everybody likes to look good," McGaghie said. "It's just like on a personal level. You want to dress up and look good at the prom."

Nor is it guaranteed to boost its position in the influential, if often criticized, U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of the nation's best medical schools.

"It wouldn't be a direct way to impact at least one of the rankings, which would be to become a more research-oriented medical school," said Robert Morse, director of data research at U.S. News. "It would be hard to go in that direction without their own hospital."

But to look at recent recruits, USF's vision is gaining traction.

Six months after arriving at USF, Dr. Leslie Miller is working on plans to create a heart institute on the Tampa campus. He envisions an 80,000- to 100,000-square-foot building with a similar focus to Moffitt Cancer Center, only for heart disease. Plans don't include a hospital, but research and outpatient care.

The former chief of cardiology at Georgetown University says he came to Tampa because of USF's unbridled enthusiasm for trying new things.

"That's the magnet. It's the snowball," Miller said. "You realize that this is where other people who have that kind of big vision and broad agenda that want to go forward will be encouraged."

But the heart institute remains far from reality. To begin planning, USF is seeking $1.5 million from a cash-strapped Legislature. Even as Miller begins to recruit nationally to double the size of his cardiovascular sciences department to 20 doctors, it's unclear exactly where and how they will operate locally.

USF is talking with University Community Hospital's Pepin Heart Hospital about a new affiliation, Miller says. Any moves will be watched closely by current partner Tampa General, where USF is also eager to branch out and get involved with the hospital's busy heart transplant program.

Tampa General officials say they continue to look for ways to strengthen their ties with USF. Yet as recently as last fall, USF was making waves with TGH and other local hospitals. In November, USF and the HCA hospital chain announced a plans for the university to run five new trauma units across Florida, including at Hudson's Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point.

But the region's existing trauma programs — Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, Tampa General and St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa — all worry that the new units aren't needed and could hurt the quality of care at their programs, which already have been struggling with reduced volume.

USF said HCA made the decision to add the trauma units before it approached the university to run them — so it captured an opportunity that could have gone elsewhere. And it credits the program for luring to the region another star recruit.

Dr. Jim Hurst is coming from Harvard Medical School to direct the USF-HCA trauma network, as well as a Tampa-based data analysis center that researchers plan to mine for best practices in treating everything from seat-belt injuries to gunshot wounds.

Without a statewide trauma network, "we wouldn't have had a chance of getting Jim Hurst," said Klasko, who this week plans to announce another partnership beyond Tampa Bay, but wouldn't provide specifics.

And don't think USF has given up on the dream of seeing its logo on a hospital. In a rapidly changing health care landscape, Klasko believes that day is coming.

"We continue to grow," he said, "so that we're a very good partner when things shake out."

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Letitia Stein can be reached at lstein@sptimes.com. Richard Martin can be reached at rmartin@sptimes.com.

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[Guest nybullsfan]

Good for USF - making lemonade out of lemons!

However, IMO, what we need in this country is to PREVENT bad health through proper nutrition, exercise, and stress relief far more than we need to spend huge amounts of money on helath remediation with expensive treatments, hospitals, and med schools.

:2cents

[Jihme]

great to see a vision like this outlined and pursued.  i would love nothing more than for usf to grow, no matter what college.

[locus000]

Sounds great when I come back to do my residency at USF in 4 years, well that is the plan anyway  ;D

Going to another medical school and knowing so much about USF MED, I have to say that this plan was a long time coming. Instead of trying to keep building hospital in TAMPA, there are so many already (you are bound to angered a few people by saying that you are going to build another one and cut their bottom line)

It is great that USF is going to spread out throughout Florida, go to those small towns and start hospitals there. People will love you and will get students plenty of experiences in different situation. Plus you get to do more procedures as medical student at those small town anyway, which is awesome in so many ways!!

Even UF has hospital affiliations in Jacksonville to sent their residents and medical students there. So it is about time USF decided to branch out.

Plus put some $$$$$$ into remaking your campus!! USF has one of the worst looking medical school I seen.

[DontPushMe]

Good for USF - making lemonade out of lemons!

However, IMO, what we need in this country is to PREVENT bad health through proper nutrition, exercise, and stress relief far more than we need to spend huge amounts of money on helath remediation with expensive treatments, hospitals, and med schools.

:2cents

Completely agree. Doctors and Psychiatrists now a days are becoming more and more like drug dealers. I often wonder how much theiy get in kick backs from the drug companies. The ads for these drugs now are hilarious with half the commercial being someone quickly listing all of the side effects.

We have all of this technology for how to treat heart diseases, but you'd treat far more if everyone just stopped eating themselves to death.

But i guess thats a discussion for another day. Good to see the university doing well. I would like to see them spend a good amount of money modernizing the campus though. We arent a historic old school so the best way to attract people to it would be to make it really modern and nice.

[Paisa el Toro]

Seems like someone out is so behind this change in direction that he/she wrote an editorial in the Times. Check it out:

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/new-usf-medical-school-program-is-a-sound-solution/1169071

A Times Editorial

New USF medical school program is a sound solution

In Print: Thursday, May 12, 2011

 

Officials at the University of South Florida are taking a more constructive tack in dealing with their primary teaching hospital, Tampa General. Medical school dean Stephen Klasko is no longer arguing for USF to build its own hospital on the Tampa campus. The university instead is launching new research and training programs. Dr. Klasko also is sounding more upbeat about the quality of health care in the Tampa Bay area. These are sound changes in strategy and tone.

Klasko made a splash three years ago when he talked openly about building an academic medical center at USF in part to stem the flight of local residents who seek advanced care in other parts of the country. Some area physicians took the comment as a gratuitous slight while Tampa General viewed a new hospital as a direct economic threat that would have diverted state and local resources for health care. In outlining a new vision for the medical school recently, Klasko made clear he still desires having a hospital — but acknowledges the economic and political climate has changed. He is right to move in a different direction to build the university's role and image.

Academic medical centers are grand, expensive institutions that can be international draws for research and clinical care. It is no surprise that USF would want to explore the idea; indeed, Tampa General's then-chief executive proposed a similar, controversial concept a decade ago. But Klasko seems to better appreciate that any such plan needs a broad discussion, and now is not the time. He has moved instead to build a simulation center in downtown Tampa to train physicians on the latest procedures. At the Villages retirement community north of Orlando, USF will use doctors and researchers to track living habits in an effort to develop an early-warning system for chronic diseases. USF also is working with Pennsylvania's health system to instill better leadership and communication skills in medical students.

Klasko has not abandoned his desire to operate a full-fledged hospital. But he is right not to press the issue. USF had a more urgent need to improve its relationship with TGH. Keeping this partnership strong is a vital interest for the bay area. Klasko sent the right sign by looking for other opportunities in this tough economy. He will need to resolve the uncertainty over the future of USF's residency program at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg now that Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine has joined forces with the pediatric hospital. Klasko has challenges with the operation he has. It is good a faceoff with Tampa General is over, at least for now. The region is lucky to have USF and Tampa General, and it is best served when the two cooperate.

[Don Toro]

Good for USF - making lemonade out of lemons!

However, IMO, what we need in this country is to PREVENT bad health through proper nutrition, exercise, and stress relief far more than we need to spend huge amounts of money on helath remediation with expensive treatments, hospitals, and med schools.

:2cents

Exactly, I lost 50lbs and have kept them off 3 years ago. I did not take a single pill, yet through proper nutrition I was able to eliminate my heartburn problems, snoring, and sleepapnea. No chemicals, no pills, no medicine. Most of the tools we need to get better are in the produce section of our supermarkets. There is some research going on about the benefits of coconut oil in patients with Alzheimer yet this is not profitable enough for hospitals, and drug companies so you won't see much of it being published.