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University of Iowa Health Care marks year of significant leadership, facilities change
Many top executives joined UIHC within the last 12 months
Jul. 21, 2024 5:30 am, Updated: Jul. 22, 2024 8:02 am
IOWA CITY — The last 12 months have brought massive change across University of Iowa Health Care — from its name and brand to its expanding footprint to its leadership, with at least seven of the growing enterprise’s top administrators either joining the executive team or being invited to since Aug. 1, 2023.
The head of all UI Health Care — Vice President for Medical Affairs Denise Jamieson, who also serves as dean of the UI Carver College of Medicine — last August succeeded Brooks Jackson, who resigned about six years after stepping into that dual leadership role in November 2017.
In resigning, Jackson joined the UI faculty as a pathology professor, making for the first year an annual salary of $525,000. While that’s about half the nearly $1.1 million he made as vice president, it’s much higher than the pay of other professors in his department and across the College of Medicine, which in the 2023-24 budget year reported an average professor salary of $200,910.
Reporting to Jamieson is Associate Vice President of UI Health Care Brad Haws — also serving as chief executive officer of the clinical enterprise formerly known as UI Hospitals and Clinics — who on Nov. 29 replaced Suresh Gunasekaran nearly two years after he left in early 2022 three years into the job.
Jody Reyes, chief operating officer of the clinical enterprise, started June 28 — replacing Emily Blomberg, brought in from Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis two years ago in 2022.
Jim Leste, new chief administrative officer over the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital, will start July 29 — filling a position that’s been covered on an interim basis since Pamela Johnson-Carlson left in January 2023, three years after starting in 2020. Her appointment four years ago followed nearly three years of interim leadership, after former Children’s Hospital head Scott Turner’s departure in 2017.
Mark Burkard on Oct. 1 will begin his tenure directing the UI Holden Comprehensive Center, replacing George Weiner after 26 years in the role.
And Jennifer Miller in late June was named chief administrative officer of UIHC’s new Downtown Campus beginning July 8 after Deborah Berini for five months served as chief integration officer and interim chief administrative officer over what became the Downtown Campus.
Frederick Frank, new associate chief medical officer of UIHC’s Downtown Campus, was chief medical officer of Mercy Iowa City — before that 150-year-old community hospital sold to UIHC at the start of the year through a bankruptcy auction. Kim Volk, who in April was named associate chief nursing officer for UIHC’s Downtown Campus, had been with Mercy Iowa City for decades before the transition.
UIHC’s new downtown site — emerging from its $28 million bankruptcy auction bid — typifies massive facility-related changes across UIHC. Among its hundreds of millions of upgrades in the works — including to its Children’s Hospital, emergency room, and existing inpatient tower — the university is building a $525.6 million campus in North Liberty and designing an 842,000-square-foot new inpatient tower expected to top $1 billion.
Orthopedics hospital
The new 469,000-square-foot hospital in North Liberty — scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2025 — will serve as the new home for the UI Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, providing a “full range of musculoskeletal care in one location.”
“This new campus will be a real game-changer for orthopedics patients, with convenient parking and access to services and treatments on site, plus collaboration and connection with the university campus for any services or care needs not available at the North Liberty location,” Orthopedics Department Chair Larry Marsh said in a July update on the burgeoning facility.
In addition to offering orthopedics — a prospect community hospitals, including the former Mercy Iowa City, strongly opposed when UIHC first applied for state approval to build years ago — the new North Liberty site will feature an emergency room, 24-hour drive-through pharmacy, lab and pathology services, diagnostic imaging, and cafeteria, among other things.
Although UIHC — in amending its first-denied state application — removed all mention of orthopedic plans for the site in a revised application that garnered approval from the State Health Facilities Council in 2021, officials this month reported the site will feature sports medicine, physical therapy, and rehabilitation services with indoor and outdoor therapy and rehab spaces.
It will offer orthopedic surgery across a full range of musculoskeletal subspecialties including spine, trauma, joints, hand, elbow, shoulder, foot, ankle, pediatrics, bone health, and oncology — plus non-surgical procedures like spine injections.
In reapplying to the state council that denied its first application based on concerns UIHC’s new North Liberty campus was veering into primary-care territory and would take patients from community hospitals and providers, the university stressed its focus on complex care.
Jamieson this month noted the North Liberty site will allow UIHC to focus on tertiary and quaternary care by freeing up space on the main campus, where orthopedics currently resides.
“Complex care involves specialized care teams across multiple medical specialties. It’s a level of coordination and expertise — and the right equipment, technology, and space — not available at every hospital,” Jamieson said in the update. “Opening of the North Liberty campus will mean greater access and convenience for patients. It will also allow us to increase our capacity on the university campus to accept patients with complex and critical care needs being transferred from hospitals across Iowa.”
New hires’ compensation
Although UIHC didn’t publicly announce a search for or appointment of a new leader atop its impending North Liberty campus, UIHC on May 30 — in an update on site construction — referred to longtime administrator Amy O’Deen as chief administrative officer for the North Liberty campus.
O’Deen has served in many roles over her 40-plus years in the UIHC administration — including recent stints as interim chief operating officer and interim executive director of the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
Although an administrative offer letter for O’Deen tied to the North Liberty position wasn’t immediately available, the university did provide The Gazette with contracts and offer letters for many of its recent executive hires — spelling out salary, incentive, benefits, and transition terms.
Jamieson’s annual salary — including $400,000 in administrative stipends — was set at $1.3 million, a 23 percent increase over Jackson’s $1.056 when he left the post in August 2023. She also was offered the chance to participate annually in a three-year-old “Health Care Leadership Incentive Program” UI President Barbara Wilson approved in October 2021 that could pay her up to 35 percent of her base compensation — depending on her work toward institutional goals and financial performance.
With that incentive of up to $455,000, Jamieson could make nearly $1.8 million in the budget year that ended June 30.
Haws, making an annual salary of $1.1 million, also was offered 35 percent incentive pay — potentially bringing his full compensation for the 2025 budget year to $1.5 million. Per the program, Chief Operating Officer Reyes can make an incentive up to 20 percent of her $585,000 base pay — bringing her compensation for 2025 to $702,000.
The same 20 percent incentive was offered to both Downtown Campus Chief Administrative Officer Miller, who’s making a base pay of $285,000, and Children’s Hospital Chief Administrative Officer Jim Leste, making $435,000.
Those administrators and North Liberty campus administrative head Amy O’Deen — making $323,610 — earned less in the 2024 budget year than former Vice President Jackson in his new role as a pathology professor.
For his first year as a tenured professor in the UI College of Medicine, focused entirely on research, Jackson earned $525,000 — with a majority 80 percent covered by the UI Health Care operation and 20 percent covered by the medical college.
Starting July 1, Jackson’s salary will revert to the 75th percentile of a full pathology professor, as determined by the most recent Association of American Medical Colleges benchmark. It will be covered by the medical college going forward. Should Jamieson leave her vice presidential post but remain on the UI faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the UI College of Medicine, her salary will be set at the 90th percentile of the benchmark, according to her offer letter.
In a letter accepting Jackson’s “resignation from both of your leadership roles” last summer, UI President Wilson and Provost Kevin Kregel thanked him for his service during the period of transition.
“You have been an important part of the university’s leadership team and can be very proud of your many accomplishments.”
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com
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