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appeared 25 June 1999
School Strong Despite Merger Difficulties,
Debas Says
 Haile Debas, dean of the School of
Medicine and vice chancellor for medical affairs, says that although UCSF is facing an
unprecedented crisis in its clinical operations, the medical school is "as strong as
ever and confident about its future."
"Our educational mission has never received more attention, and the level of faculty
participation in and excitement about education has never been higher," Debas said
during his state of the school address on Monday. "Similarly, the research activities
of the school are vibrant, and federal funding for our research has never been as high.
The prospect of a new UCSF Mission Bay campus has produced great optimism as we enter the
new millennium."
In an hour-long speech, Debas shared a number of revelations:
The School of Medicine is discussing recommendations
to implement innovative curriculum reform submitted by the Committee on Curriculum and
Educational Policy with extensive input from faculty and students. One recommendation is
to create an "Academy of Educators" by establishing endowed chairs of limited
term for the best teachers in various medical school departments.
UCSF is likely to come out of the federally mandated
audit for compliance with Medicare rules governing physicians at teaching hospitals and
other Medicare payment rules "remarkably well," he says. All five UC medical
schools and other institutions nationwide are engaged in the process to review whether
physicians at teaching hospitals comply with Medicare rules governing payment of
professional services when a resident is involved and use appropriate codes for the level
of service provided.
UCSF-Fresno received a gift of three acres of land
located next to Community Hospital, which signed a new affiliation agreement with the
University. "On this land we will build a home for the UCSF-Fresno academic
programs," Debas says. "This development will change, decidedly and positively,
the visibility of UCSF within Fresno."
UCSF Stanford Health Care expects to complete the
analyses of options to reorganize clinical activities at UCSF/Mount Zion and will submit a
recommendation to the UCSF Stanford board of directors on July 23. The School of Medicine
also will submit an assessment of the plans as an official response to the UCSF Stanford
board.
The architect selected to design the community center
at UCSF's Mission Bay site is Ricardo Legoretta of Mexico, a world-famous architect whose
signature style is a blend of space, light and color. "I have no doubt that he will
produce a beautiful structure, a building designed to be the heart of the UCSF
community," Debas says. A groundbreaking ceremony at the 43-acre research campus is
slated for Oct. 25.
Mission Bay and the Future of Parnassus
While Debas says Mission Bay "provides incredible opportunities, it also poses some
serious challenges. The most significant drawback is the separation of much of the basic
science community from the clinicians," he says. Debas plans to engage faculty in a
serious discussion of how to minimize the negative impacts of the separation next year.
Faculty and staff also will need to discuss the reorganization of programs on the
Parnassus campus in light of Mission Bay development.
"The vision for a post-Mission Bay Parnassus campus is to develop preeminent programs
in disease-based research," Debas says. "A full discussion on what these
programs should be has not yet taken place. The areas that have been mentioned include
immunology, diabetes, human genetics, neurosciences and vascular biology."
A faculty committee suggested that most of the space to be released once basic scientists
leave for Mission Bay should be used to develop multidisciplinary, disease-based research
programs. "Unfortunately, the space released on Parnassus by the move of the basic
sciences to Mission Bay is only about 40,000 square feet," Debas says. This is
because UC Hall, which houses faculty, is seismically unsafe and must be demolished. UCSF
exceeds the space ceiling on Parnassus and is unable to replace UC Hall with a building of
similar size.
No matter how the release space is used, Debas says, it is clear to him that the space
"will not meet the need of clinical departments for academic space. Both Chancellor
Bishop and I have identified the unmet and critical needs of the clinical departments as
high priority issues, and we are exploring means to address the problem."
San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center (SFGHMC) also will be significantly affected
by Mission Bay development as three research institutes will relocate to the new campus.
As is the case with the Parnassus campus, much of the research space to be vacated at
SFGHMC when the Gallo Center for Neurosciences, the Gladstone Cardiovascular Institute,
and the Gladstone Center for Virology depart for Mission Bay has seismic problems. Still,
Debas says, he finds the vision to develop a center for infectious diseases and
vaccinology and to consolidate most of the activities of the AIDS Research Institute at
SFGHMC to be "compelling." UCSF needs to develop strategies to find the
necessary resources to make that plan happen, he says.
School of Medicine Priorities
In closing, Debas identified five important priorities for the School of Medicine over the
next several years:
1. Resolving the UCSF Stanford financial crisis and the future of the merger;
2. Completing the first phase of Mission Bay, rejuvenating Parnassus research programs and
finding ways to minimize the negative effects of the separation;
3. Identifying funding for teaching that is separate from clinical revenues;
4. Trying to solve the housing problem for students, residents and faculty; and
5. Constructing a building for UCSF-Fresno academic programs and significantly improving
the quality of those training programs.
After delivering his state of the school speech, Debas celebrated the faculty's many
achievements in the past year with the fourth annual Honors & Awards Recognition
Presentation. This year, the presentation is available online. Please note: to view the
presentation you need to have Macromedia's Flash plug-in, which is free and simple to
install. A link to the presentation as well as to the plug-in website can be found on the
School of Medicine website.
Links:
Honors & Awards Recognition
Presentation (requires Flash plug-in)
Related Daybreak stories
Education the Priority for
School of Medicine (1998)
Debas Looks Forward to a New
UCSF That is "Caring and Curing" (1997)
Archive of UCSF
Stanford-related stories
Source: Lisa Cisneros, Newsbreak
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