'U' classrooms grow shabby as bonding bill languishes at Capitol

Star Tribune (6/14/04)
By Frank Cerra

Imagine a future in which health care is truly about health rather than illness. Imagine a health care team in which nurses, physicians, pharmacists and even dentists work together on your behalf to improve the health of you and your family. And now, imagine that in the future, the overall costs of this health care are lower than current systems of delivering care.

That is the future we imagine and are working to develop at the University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center, home to the Medical School, Colleges of Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine and Schools of Dentistry, Nursing and Public Health. As one of the nation's most comprehensive Academic Health Centers, we are well-positioned to prepare the next generation of health professionals who understand and value not only their own education but also that of the other health disciplines they will rely on in practice.

But our ability to continue delivering on that future of great potential took a direct hit this year when our public partners in the Legislature failed to pass a bonding bill. Our work takes place in an environment that benefits from rich support from the community and commitment from the faculty. Yet the campus' physical environment needs upkeep and renovation. We cannot educate tomorrow's physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, veterinarians and public health professionals in yesterday's classrooms.

As head of the Academic Health Center, I've been challenged by my colleagues in the private sector to think and act more like a business person. After all, this is a $650 million enterprise with many of the same business issues found in the private sector. We have human resources issues, including a salary freeze that will be lifted only at the end of this fiscal year and that makes it difficult to retain valuable faculty. We have customers to serve, including the clinics and hospitals who hire our graduates; the people of Minnesota, who expect well-prepared health professionals; and our students, who expect a top-flight education that will prepare them for practice. And we have facilities to manage, maintain and improve.

This year, a smart businessperson would take a look at our fraying facilities that desperately need maintenance and make the capital investments needed to meet the expectations of those customers. Interest rates are at historic lows, and now is the time to invest in capital assets. But we can't take that action alone. Despite having considerable accountability for the outcomes of this enterprise, neither I nor any other leader at this university has the ability to raise the capital needed to invest in core maintenance without the action of our historic partners -- the state Legislature.

There is a cost to this delay -- and we have a recent example to illustrate this fact. The Translational Research Facility taking shape on campus was delayed a year when the previous governor vetoed our bonding authority. That one-year delay added $1 million to the overall cost of the project -- money that wasn't provided when the bonding was finally approved. To cover the costs of the building, we cut funding from other important areas. For a relatively modest investment of $18 million, the health sciences educational facilities on the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses would gain major improvements.

The current delay in bonding could increase the cost of rehabbing classrooms by 20 percent. Those expenses either will be added to the bonding request we make of our state partners or will be absorbed by our strapped academic programs.

These are not decisions a businessperson is forced to make.

The enterprise we run is designed to position and prepare Minnesota for the future. That's what this strong public research university accomplishes on behalf of this state. Unlike a business, however, our public status requires us to partner with elected leaders to accomplish many of our goals.

This year, we managed our portion of the partnership by graduating nearly 750 new doctors, pharmacists, veterinarians, nurses, dentists and public health professionals. Our faculty competed successfully for $260 million in research funding that benefits Minnesota and its economy. And our clinics cared for about 638,000 patients, including nearly 44,000 that were cared for at our Veterinary Medical Center.

Our elected partners in the Legislature, however, didn't manage their portion of the work portfolio. The failure to act on needed capital investments would, in the private sector, lead to a dissolution of the partnership. For us, that's not an option we can or would pursue.

What this institution needs to meet the hopes of the future is elected leaders who are truly interested in a viable partnership with us. The health care sector and the future health of this state are too important for any other alternative.

Frank Cerra is senior vice president for health sciences at the Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota.

Posted by mpdean at June 14, 2004 09:58 AM