Finalist to lead UI Health Care stresses communication, collaboration, community

IOWA CITY — Although the first of two finalists for the top job leading University of Iowa Health Care and its Carver College of Medicine has no experience as a public academic medical center administrator, she has extensive medical, research, leadership, and emergency response experience that she believes qualifies her for the post.

Much of that experience has required the finalist — retired U.S. Public Health Service Capt. Denise J. Jamieson — to be a fast learner and a strong communicator, she told an in-person and online audience of more than 600 Monday during a UI campus forum.

“Are there things, like being in charge of Ebola, that you think can translate into your current job and the job here?” one audience member asked Jamieson, referencing her decades of experience with the public health service and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responding to national threats like monkeypox, Ebola, Zika, and potential outbreaks following Hurricane Katrina.

“I think what you're asking is how does my CDC experience translate to this position?” Jamieson said. “And I would argue that all the principles are the same.”

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She offered a specific example of her experience leading the CDC Medical Care Task Force for the 2014 Ebola response — through which she oversaw 11 teams and more than 200 CDC staff responding to the Ebola crisis nationally and internationally.

Emory University School of Medicine and its health care operation, where Jamieson remains on faculty — today as Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics professor and chair — was among the few U.S. hospitals to treat Ebola patients during the crisis.

Among the challenges of providing that care was disposing of waste, she said, recounting the need to work with state leaders and cut through red tape.

“They had piles and piles of Ebola waste that they didn't know what to do with, because it's category X waste so it can't be transported easily across state lines,” Jamieson said. “There were only, at that time, two or three incinerators in the country that could handle category X waste. And there were no contracts in place to ensure that waste could get there.”

Jamieson said she didn’t know anything about waste or how to handle it.

“So I found this guy who was literally in the basement of the old CDC building that's now been knocked down who knew everything there was to know about waste, but couldn't really talk to anybody,” she said. “And he educated me.”

By learning and then communicating that knowledge to leaders in affected states, Jamieson said, she established trust in herself as an effective leader.

“Those kinds of experiences have been really transformative in terms of understanding that you don't necessarily have to be the expert, but you better know the expert, and you better talk to the expert, and you better be comfortable with your knowledge and your plan,” she said.

Listening, learning, delegating, communicating, and prioritizing culture were among themes Jamieson highlighted in answering the UI prompt asking “what you believe are the imperatives for success for an academic health system in 2023 and beyond” given growing financial, operational, and competitive hurdles to achieving clinical, research, academic, and community service missions.

Clinical

Focusing first on clinical challenges facing academic medical centers — including labor shortages and rising costs — Jamieson stressed the need to, among other things, recruit and develop key leaders and establish community partners.

“I think for Iowa it's going to be important to develop and expand primary care in rural areas and to continue to support and grow and add additional clinical centers of excellence,” she said. “I'm familiar with the cancer center, the stroke center, the diabetes center, the neuroscience center. So I think there are many examples here that can be grown and expanded.”

Citing her own experience keeping Emory’s OB/GYN department in the black despite the larger health care enterprise’s $63.4 million operating loss in 2022, Jamieson said she focused on growth through the COVID disruption and ensuing fiscal headwinds — upping outpatient visits 40 percent from 2018 to 2022 and increasing deliveries 60 percent over that span.

“I think the principles of building that success in the clinical arena are to build teams, build partnerships, and build a positive culture,” she said.

Culture

During COVID, Jamieson said, “people were really down and out and disconnected.” She tried to combat that initially by sending out emails, which her team never read, prompting her to pivot toward a weekly update where she talks with them about good news in their department.

“It's really brought people together in a way that I had not seen,” Jamieson said. “They're excited to see their name. They're excited to see what their colleagues are doing. And it's created so much positive energy.”

Given the Emory system has nine hospitals, Jamieson said, every Tuesday she dedicates to visiting the campuses, walking around, and talking with staff.

“I’ve learned more from those walking-arounds than I ever do in any meeting,” she said.

In discussing the import of research, Jamieson said, she’s managed to push her department up the ranks in funding from the National Institutes of Health by, among other things, motivating non-research-centered clinicians to take part.

“There's been a sixfold increase in funding,” she said. “And that has come about by careful recruitment, careful retention, providing people with time, selecting the right people to do the right research that they're passionate about, supporting innovation, and having some supplemental funds available in the department for innovative ideas that maybe aren't quite at the level of federal funding.”

Community

Addressing UIHC’s community service mission, Jamieson said rural outreach is increasingly important in a state like Iowa.

“One of the things that is really attractive about Iowa and this position is I feel like Iowa really has a very clear mission to care for 3.2 million Iowans across 99 counties,” she said. “That resonates with me, and I think there's a lot of opportunity to do that.”

When Jamieson first visited the UIHC campus in February, she was taken by the region’s beauty, its people, and the rich history of the medical operation — after, of course, she emerged from the frigid dark of night under which she arrived.

“It is very cold, and it is very dark,” Jamieson recalled telling her spouse, who had asked what she thought of Iowa right after she arrived at 10 p.m. “Then I went home, and I was riveted by the women's basketball tournament. I mean holy cow.”

When Jamieson flew back into town this week for her on-campus visit as a finalist, her wife again asked what she thought of Iowa.

“And I said, ‘Well, I'm thinking that I might want to be a Hawkeye.’”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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