Second finalist to head University of Iowa Health Care tackles questions on growth, staffing

IOWA CITY — The second of two finalists for the highest job atop University of Iowa Health Care and the UI College of Medicine on Monday spoke directly to key concerns, issues, and incentives presently before the enterprise he aims to lead — including physical growth, community collaboration, patient satisfaction, and staffing.

Among issues University of Illinois College of Medicine Executive Dean Mark I. Rosenblatt addressed during a public forum as finalist for UIHC vice president for medical affairs and medical college dean was UIHC’s capacity constraints.

The university, he said, endeavors to "provide Iowans with access to world class care — this is the tertiary or quaternary center that Iowans turn to when they need that very, very high level of care.“

But, Rosenblatt said, “It seems to be the place that patients with primary and secondary conditions also come, which means that your health system is overrun with patients.”

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In his current role, Rosenblatt — who also serves as associate vice chancellor for physician affairs at University of Illinois Health — reported he too has experienced firsthand the “unquenchable demand for care in academic health centers more broadly, even as many community hospitals in cities including Chicago are relatively empty.”

Acknowledging UIHC also has neighboring hospitals without the same capacity constraints, he suggested both building — like UIHC is doing — and collaborating.

“The University of Iowa has a very aspirational, but I think realistic, capital plan to build capacity for the health system,” he said. “There’s a need to expand, and I think that’s part of the solution. The other issue is how can we partner with our community hospitals?”

Just two miles east of the main UIHC campus, Mercy Iowa City is enduring management upheaval — as it exits a partnership with MercyOne in Des Moines and looks for a new collaborator. UIHC last year offered to take over Mercy — although that deal never materialized.

“I know that there's been some attempts by University of Iowa Health Care to create partnerships, to maybe perhaps acquire local hospitals,” Rosenblatt said. “I think that needs to be another part of the solution. Patients trust the brand of University of Iowa, they want to be taken care of by the world-class physicians and get care within the University of Iowa facilities … So that's, I think, something we need to look at.”

Innovative building

Referencing a massive new 842,000 gross-square-foot inpatient tower UIHC is planning on its main campus — in addition to a new $525 million hospital in North Liberty, new academic and ambulatory facilities, and numerous renovations and upgrades including to its current inpatient tower and crammed emergency room — Rosenblatt said he too has overseen significant building projects.

“This is a new ambulatory care building, a specialty care building, that we built in Chicago,” he said, describing a photo of the project. “As dean of the College of Medicine and head the practice plan, I had a chance to be part of the leadership group that was involved with planning this building.”

That project involved innovation and broad-strokes thinking about how it could operate more efficiently and with the latest technology.

"If there's going to be, let's say, $2 billion worth of investment in new facilities at the University of Iowa, what can be done here that’s special?“ he said. ”Instead of building hospitals that look like every other hospital, or the existing hospital, what are the innovative things that could or should be done to create the hospital of the future?“

It could involve technology, digitally-enabled functions, and robotics.

"I think this is a unique opportunity for the University of Iowa to actually set the tone for what is possible for the future of health care and be innovative in this space.“

Two finalists

Rosenblatt — who's been with the University of Illinois Health system since 2014, first as a professor and head of its Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences — was the second of two finalists to visit the UI campus in its search for a new UIHC and College of Medicine head.

His visit comes a week after UI welcomed the first named finalist — Denise Jamieson, professor and chair for the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine and chief of gynecology and obstetrics for Emory Healthcare. Jamieson also spent nearly two decades with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Both were named as finalists after a first search to replace outgoing Vice President for Medical Affairs and Carver College of Medicine Dean Brooks Jackson failed to secure a hire. Although that first search brought four finalists to campus in August, the chosen candidate turned down the job “due to family obligations,” and UI restarted the process.

Big questions

Rosenblatt during his public forum Monday tackled big questions like how he has supported diversity; what he would do to “protect access to abortion”; what lessons were learned from COVID; and how UI Health Care plans to staff its new buildings.

Addressing the issue of staffing, Rosenblatt acknowledged rising labor costs and UIHC’s reliance, to some degree, on traveling nurses. To keep and attract more UIHC staff, he said, “You need to value people.”

“There's the monetary part, but also there's the ability to create a place where people want to work and enjoy working,” he said.

UIHC could create a bigger pipeline of nurses, pharmacists, and dentists, for example, by collaborating with more colleges and universities.

“And then using technology, how could we potentially use smart hospitals and robots to do this sort of work?” he said. “It debulks the health system, in terms of having to provide more routine care, and then frees up nurses and others to provide the high level of care that they're capable of delivering.”

As to a question of how UIHC will staff its new North Liberty campus, specifically, Rosenblatt said, “It certainly will continue to put some pressure on the labor market in an already tight labor market.”

“It's going to be a new hospital, is likely to be a beautiful, engaging place to work, so that should hopefully be enticing for folks to work there,” he said. “But it is it is a challenging endeavor.”

When asked about abortion, Rosenblatt said — essentially — he’s learned to tread carefully on political issues.

“There are many times as a dean of a college of medicine I've been asked to delve into political areas, and I can say we've consistently tried to avoid political areas — because we're not politicians,” he said. “We're not lawyers. We’re health care professionals. We’re doctors.”

Because abortion is legal in Illinois, Rosenblatt said, “We’ve made it very clear that we provide care to women, to the extent that the law allows.”

Trainees have even come in from other states to do “important training” on his campus.

“But if we do start to delve into the political, I think it actually threatens our ability to make a real difference,” he said. “Because once whatever we seem to do starts to become politicized, we're probably not trusted by at least half the folks in the country.”

COVID lessons

Trust — or lack thereof — is among the less-than-positive results of the pandemic, even as it forced health care operations to become nimble, innovative, and resourceful — churning out a vaccine in historic time.

“The flip side, it's almost a paradox, is that even as science and medicine delivered such cures, what might be the most disappointing part of the COVID-19 pandemic is the lack of trust in science,” he said. "Even as we had these cures or vaccines, there was — I'll call it — disinformation, frankly, probably often politically-motivated, to undermine our attempts to save people, save populations.

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“The disappointment is that the loss of faith and science how, how easy it was to erode that even in the midst of a pandemic,” he said. “And I think that needs to be a major focus of medicine and science in general — is how do we restore that confidence that trust?”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com