Hello and Welcome to the USF College of Medicine

As the dean of the college, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you about the transformation USF Health is engaged in.

Thirty four years ago, the University of South Florida College of Medicine was granted LCME accreditation as the second public university medical school in Florida. We began our life as a student centered community academic medical school and have excelled over that period of time in that mission. In 2004, the USF College of Medicine began a program of strategic change. Founded to train physicians for a growing region, it now seeks to lead health care through creative models for patient centered care, for emerging fields of research, and for integrated education.

The first step required the greatest cultural change--to propose that medicine, nursing and public health form a partnership to change the fundamentals of health care. The partnership was founded on the idea that health care can only be transformed when it is understood in the context of the full spectrum of health -- From the environment, to policy, to the community, to the family, to individual behavior, to acute care, to chronic care, and lastly to end-of-life care. To stimulate this creativity and innovation, we created USF Health -- the partnership of the colleges of public health, nursing and medicine. USF Health facilitates interdisciplinary creativity by faculty, and it symbolizes our commitment to co-create an optimistic future for health and health care.

The Results

• Because of our initiatives across medicine, nursing and public health, USF Health was accepted into the Institute for Healthcare Improvement consortium to change rates of medical error through new curricula.
• USF Health built a joint Center for Advanced Clinical Learning, where students across disciplines can learn communication and clinical skills for their futures in team-based care.
• Development of a patient/community resource library to create personal learning plans for one's own health and treatment planning.
• International initiatives resulting in USF Health public health, nursing and medicine programs in Asia, Latin America and Europe with our first full service USF Health office outside of the United States at the City of Knowledge in Panama.

Within the College of Medicine, several hundred faculty have engaged in the challenge to lead the future of health care.  Working with Maverick Healthcare Consulting, a nationally recognized healthcare consulting firm, an innovative Blueprint for Strategic Action was produced that has guided the College of Medicine's transformation.

The Results

• Teaching medical students in integrated courses beginning with the very first course--the profession of medicine. Students learn basic science in integration with clinical experience. Faculty now organize clinical experiences from a patient-centered perspective rather than rotations.
• The college combined basic science departments to create a flexible, focused research engine. It focuses on emerging fields of research -- high-risk areas such as nanobiology that will reframe how science improves human health
• The college brought an entrepreneurial model to its clinical services, rebuilding cardiology and orthopedics, and launching programs in high-need arenas such as fetal surgery.
• Construction started on new outpatient centers ($100 million plus) to use state-of-the-art technology for patient safety, service and superior education
• Endorsement by our community through multi-million dollar gifts, including recent gifts worth over $30 million for wide ranging initiatives from outpatient care to neonatal intensive care.
• For the first time in our history, two clinical departments, pediatrics at #3 and neurosurgery at #9, reached the top ten nationally in NIH funding.
• The USF Health Leadership Institute has gained national recognition as an innovative faculty development tool and will graduate its first class of emerging leaders.

The Tampa Bay area is one of the fastest growing, most beautiful regions in the country. Florida is exerting its dominance in bioscience and biotechnology. The University of South Florida has evolved into a premier research university and is now among the elite research universities in the most recent Carnegie classification and was one of the two fastest growing research universities during the last fiscal year. The USF college of medicine has been a major drive of that success. Despite all the changes occurring in academic health care, our faculty, students and administration believe that our best efforts and results are still to come. We are developing leaders, not just followers, in health care reform. Most importantly, we are moving forward toward research, clinical and academic excellence without forgetting our birthright—providing a world class medical education for students in Florida and beyond in a student friendly environment.

My thanks to Academic Medicine for the opportunity to share our strategic blueprint.