The aging of the Baby Boomers, the explosion of new treatments, and an uncertain financial picture make this a turbulent time for academic medical centers. Recognizing the challenges, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, the University Medical Center, and the Health Services Foundation conducted their first-ever joint planning effort. The result: the Decade Plan, an ambitious blueprint for improving programs in four critical areas-patient care, community service, research, and education. By pinpointing strategies that anticipate changes in the health care environment, the University Health System intends to secure its place as a leader in academic medicine.
From a Position of Strength
The University is well-positioned to realize this expectation, as evinced in rankings released this year. The University's Medical Center was named one of the nation's Top 100 Hospitals for the fifth year in a row, based on data such as quality of care, mortality rates, complication rates, length of patient stays, profitability, and efficiency.
will house new operating rooms
and space for a larger heart
center, among other facilities.
U.S. News & World Report placed five specialties at the Medical Center in the top twenty-five in their fields, including hormonal disorders (fifth); urology (fifteenth); ear, nose, and throat (seventeenth); cancer (twenty-third); and gynecology (twenty-fourth).
The School of Nursing gained top-ten honors for graduate programs in psychiatric and mental health nursing, clinical nurse specialist training for adult medical/surgical settings, and pediatric nursing.
The School of Medicine was ranked twenty-seventh nationally in education and twenty-eighth in research.
In addition, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine awarded the University's Department of Emergency Medicine its Level One Emergency Center categorization. The department is only the second in the country to receive the SAEM Category I certification, which places it in the highest category possible for patient care, overall quality, and disaster preparedness.
This was also a successful year financially for the Medical Center, yielding net operating income of $652 million. In 2002-2003, the Medical Center logged 27,542 inpatient admissions, 590,577 outpatient visits, and 57,623 emergency room visits. It added nine beds to the hospital and increased its operating room capacity by more than 10 percent.