Earlier today the Medical Center’s Chief Executive Officer Brad Berk announced that he intends to complete his extraordinary term as CEO on January 1, 2015. I subsequently announced that Mark Taubman has been selected to be Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and the Chief Executive Officer of the Medical Center while continuing as Dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry after Brad completes his service as CEO.
Brad’s leadership has been of historical significance. During his time at the helm, he has transformed clinical care into the coordinated UR Medicine system by adding a number of hospitals and providers and focusing on patient- and family-centered care. UR Medicine is led by Strong Memorial, Highland and F.F. Thompson hospitals and includes Golisano Children’s Hospital, the James P. Wilmot Cancer Institute, Strong West, the Visiting Nurse Service and two senior living centers—Highlands at Pittsford and Highland at Brighton, as well as the University of Rochester Medical Faculty Group currently with approximately 1,000 practitioners. In the last 18 months, Brad has helped establish Accountable Health Partners, an accountable care network, that now includes over 1,600 private and faculty physicians and six affiliated and collaborating institutions. And Brad has strengthened our leadership by recruiting Mark Taubman to be Dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Kathy Rideout to be Dean of the School of Nursing and Eli Eliav to lead the Eastman Institute for Oral Health.
Brad leaves at the top of his game. He has made his decision during a time of record financial success in our clinical system and when the Medical Center is responsible for $2.3 billion of our University’s $3.1 billion budget or 74 percent and employs 18,730 of the University’s total 25,917 employees or 72 percent. In 2013, six adult and one pediatric specialties were ranked in the Top 50 for the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospital lists—the Medical Center’s most impressive performance in history. The prior year, four other pediatric specialties were ranked among the nation’s best hospitals by U.S. News.
Brad’s leadership has touched virtually every aspect of the Medical Center. Our School of Medicine and Dentistry has consistently received strong sponsored research funding and has regularly ranked in the top 15 in NIH funding in Orthopaedics, Neurology, Pediatrics, Public Health Science and Family Medicine. The School of Nursing similarly is highly ranked and has been a leader in recent educational innovation, including its increasing success in hybrid distance and in-class instruction. On Brad’s watch, the Eastman Institute for Oral Health was created to provide an integrated entity responsible for education, research and clinical care in oral health. Brad has been a fervent supporter of the Medical Center’s growing commitment to community service.
Brad has developed an extraordinarily talented senior leadership team and has supervised the investment of more than $965 million in capital and IT projects since the Medical Center’s 2008 strategic plan. Brad’s strategy has been to make the University’s health system the referral center of choice in upstate New York. To that end, he shepherded the University’s participation in a community planning process that resulted in the addition of 80 acute care beds at Strong Memorial Hospital—the single largest expansion since the hospital was built in 1925.
There have been other substantial facilities projects during Brad’s term, including the construction of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center in 2008 and its subsequent expansion; the Saunders Research Building; and the Golisano Children’s Hospital, which, when completed in 2015, will be the most ambitious single project in the University’s history.
The Medical Center has been at the heart of the University’s very successful Meliora Challenge capital campaign, generating $555 million in total cash and commitments of the over $1.1 billion raised to date. During Brad’s time, the Medical Center has added 44 new endowed professorships at the School of Medicine and Dentistry and created notable new programs, including the Del Monte Neuromedicine Institute and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Brad has achieved all this while continuing an outstanding career as a cardiovascular researcher.
In completing eight great years at the Medical Center, Brad is, as he puts it, “all jazzed up” by his next great project, which will be as Director of the Rochester Neurorestorative Institute (RNI). Brad and I believe that the RNI will evolve into the leading institution of its kind in this country for the treatment and associated research on conditions including injuries to degenerative nervous system disorders, spine injuries, stroke and traumatic brain injury. I view the rapid development of the RNI as a new University top priority.
I am delighted today to announce that the University Board of Trustees has approved a Distinguished University Professorship for Brad, effective when he returns to the faculty.
What matters most about leaders is character. Brad is a man of the highest integrity and extraordinary courage. I admire Brad’s reaching out to so many in the Rochester community and building and strengthening bonds. I admire Brad’s honesty and self-awareness. I will always remember our seven hour meeting in my kitchen during the search that led to his initial selection. Brad communicated a vision of how he hoped the Medical Center would evolve in mission and the steps he envisioned to achieve this broader new mission. And I will always remember Brad’s extraordinary courage in responding to his devastating injury in 2009. He became an inspiring and more inclusive leader.
I want to stress today my personal gratitude to Brad for his leadership. He has been everything I hoped he would be when I initially selected him—a brilliant strategist, a practical and methodical problem-solver, a unique individual with the capacity to see and act upon the big picture, a man of impeccably good judgment in assembling his leadership team, a health entrepreneur who balanced the clinical, education, research and community missions of the Medical Center—and someone who led during the most challenging time in memory in health care.
Brad has become something more—a friend. I am proud to have worked with him these past eight years and look forward to working with him long into the future.
I also am delighted to announce that Mark Taubman will succeed Brad as Chief Executive Officer while continuing to serve as Dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry.
This is a well-deserved promotion. Senior Vice President for Research and Hajim School Dean Rob Clark and I recently completed a five year decanal review of Mark with the assistance of Dr. Gabrielle Yeaney, who chairs the Medical Faculty Council. The results were as positive as any I had seen in any earlier decanal review. Mark was praised for his strategic ability with the School of Medicine and Dentistry, his hiring and promotion of outstanding leaders, his implementation of operational plans, his integrity and his ability to engage medical center leaders during the post-2008 recession period of financial challenges. Mark has proven to be unflappable, a straight shooter, a Dean with particular success in working with his research and clinical faculty. He is a man of unquestioned honesty and integrity, whose sense of ethics is of the highest order.
Mark received high praise for orchestrating the Medical Center’s research and education strategic plans which have amplified collaborative research efforts and created the Institute for Innovative Education.
Simultaneously Mark has taken on a broader role than most medical school Deans. He has championed efforts to integrate the Medical Faculty Group with the hospitals that already have led to notable improvements in efficiency, patient-centeredness and greater collaboration with referring clinicians.
Mark served with particular effectiveness as Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Medical Center for nine months while Brad recovered from his accident five years ago.
My decision to promote Mark received the unanimous support of 20 of the top leaders in the Medical Center and the University Board of Trustees who voted to approve Mark’s appointment as Chief Executive Officer and Dean for a renewable term that will begin January 1, 2015, and run through June 30, 2019.
There are also a large number of projects in which Mark is playing a lead role in completing the implementation of the new structure and compensation system for the Medical Faculty Group, several key recruitments, and potential relationships with several health care providers. These and other projects potentially could be undercut if there was any protracted uncertainty about the future of our Medical Center leadership. I have no intention to see our Medical Center lose a moment in its forward progress. We will not skip a beat by naming Mark Taubman to this new role.
I also have been deeply impressed by Mark’s ability to partner with the College of Arts, Sciences & Engineering and the other schools in this University. Mark believes in inter-professional education. He is a champion of the Medical Center as part of One University.
The combination of the roles of CEO and Dean has become increasingly common at leading academic medical centers in recent years. These centers have recognized that the greater interdependence of the academic and clinical missions can be best achieved with a single leader.
I ultimately chose Mark because of my unqualified confidence in his character and belief that he will accelerate the momentum of the Medical Center. Mark will hit the ground running. Within the next few months Mark will develop a revised Medical Center Strategic Plan that focuses on prioritization, sequencing, milestones and metrics. Mark subsequently intends to develop coordinated teams, comprised of medical center leadership, faculty and staff to ensure that strategic priorities are effectively led.
We have made great progress in our Medical Center under Brad’s leadership and established the financial sustainability of our clinical operations.
Mark is the right leader to take the Medical Center to the next level of achievement. I know that I speak for the University Board and the top leadership of the Medical Center in saying that we are all thrilled by this appointment.