The University Medical Center, School of Medicine and Health Services Foundation have formed committees to launch the Decade Plan, a collaborative effort to improve the health system.
The Decade Plan's vision aims to have the University Health System and School of Medicine achieve "top institution" status by the end of the decade.
Arthur "Tim" Garson Jr., vice president and dean of the School of Medicine, said the term 'top institution' is not defined by numerical comparisons to other health systems.
"Top institutions are described as being innovative, out-front and exciting places to be," Garson said.
He co-chairs the steering committee with R. Edward Howell, vice president and chief operating officer of the Medical Center. The two men oversee five teams of steering committee members that will form timelines and accountability guidelines for area improvements.
Garson said the Decade Plan addresses a gap between the separate, non-overlapping plans that the Medical Center and the School of Medicine drafted several years ago.
"In today's world you must have total alignment between a medical school and a medical center," he said. "Ed Howell and I wanted to be sure that we were entirely in sync with any planning with each other and the health system."
The five steering committee teams each focus on different areas of potential innovation.
The patient care team will examine how the health system can better serve patients in the Commonwealth and surrounding states, especially through improved patient access to timely appointments and medical procedures.
"We want to make sure to best serve the state's patients," Garson said. "For example, we are going to have a cancer center that will likely have a network where patients stay with their own referring physician as much as possible, making trips only when absolutely necessary for advanced diagnostic studies that they can't get locally."
The education team will evaluate medical student, graduate student and resident training across the nation.
"It is time to look at the medical school curriculum and perhaps do some mid-course corrections," Garson said. "There is a whole new push toward 'competency-based training' for graduate residents where residents will not just be tested on book learning but on certain areas of competency."
The research team will focus not only on targeting growth in certain research areas but also helping translate research to medical care practices. Committee members also will assess the allocation of research space and facility quality.
The cross-mission team, whose aim is similar to that of the research team, will focus on integrating the health system's clinicians and researchers together in collaborative research areas.
Munsey Wheby, co-chairman of the cross-mission team, said cardiology and biological sciences are an example of overlapping fields where collaboration could benefit everyone.
"That's where this term cross-mission comes in," Wheby said. "What we're looking at is the optimum arrangement for this research as far as administration and salary arrangements."
He added that although the health system already has similar collaborative efforts in place, the cross-mission team hopes to improve and expand them.
"Cross-mission work brings these people together physically and also gives them a forum to meet," Wheby said. "A lot of administrative questions come in with a center that brings in multiple departments, like how we determine the administrative and salary lines."
The community service team will assist with the health system's community service initiatives.
Karen Rheuban, co-chairwoman of the community service team, said her team will work to coordinate existing health system initiatives such as Outreach Virginia and to define the community service constituency of the health system better.
"We are in the process of ascertaining what the service area should be for the U.Va. Health System," Rheuban said. "We already do things in Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Southwest Virginia, nationwide and internationally. We're trying to get a handle on how we best allocate institutional resources and create a system of communication."
Although the Decade Plan is wide in both scope and innovation, Garson and the steering committees remain optimistic that budget restrictions will not seriously hamper their efforts.
"We've got some money and we've been very fortunate to receive two endowments recently" that total over $25 million, he said. "We will need to fundraise as much as we can, but it provides us with a great base to start with while we're tightening the belt."
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