Five focus areas were considered by this Working Group and they were: | Develop New Vision, Values, and Objectives Statements for MUSC. | Establish the infrastructure to assure the sound fiscal stewardship of MUSC. | Establish key linkages with industry to enhance the research enterprise at MUSC. | Prepare MUSC for future changes in education, health care, research, and administration. | Align our physical plant need with our mission and objective. |
Regarding the first focus area, the Mission statement of MUSC provides an over-arching view of our goals for the university, but the current mission and objectives lack specificity about the vision, values, and precise objectives that underlie our goal of improving health for citizens of our state. As a result, colleges, department heads, faculty, and staff face difficulties in aligning their actions with the overall direction of the University. This goal challenges MUSC to clarify our vision for the next decade, articulate a set of well-defined values that will serve as the foundation to achieve this vision, delineate a set of specific objectives, and to present these objectives to colleges as measures of performance, which units and colleges should be held accountable. As an institution, MUSC has developed in a highly decentralized manner. While this has helped to foster an entrepreneurial spirit within units of the institution, it has also created duplicative services and an environment that makes strategic planning and budgeting for the university as a whole, difficult. A thorough review of budgetary priorities needs to be undertaken. This review would work to link the university mission with the budget. Also, a thorough review of administrative processes (including the budget process) must be completed to identify opportunities to build accountability, standardization and strategic management into the daily operations of the institution. This review may need to be conducted by external consultants and should be based on relevant benchmarks and outcome assessment. With a solid review of both priorities and current procedures it is hoped that changes can be made that will maintain the entrepreneurial spirit while generating efficiencies, increasing accountability and improving strategic decision-making. Academic institutions have traditionally been institutions that provided the basic scientific knowledge, but were not engaged in the process of developing these new discoveries for application in the marketplace. In the last two decades, this has changed. Instead of the “arms-length” relationship between academic institutions and industry that were commonplace at health science academic centers, a new era of collaboration and partnership has helped accelerate the application of new discoveries and enhance the financial stature of academic institutions. MUSC has developed several successful relationships with industries, but lacks a coordinated and focused approach to assure that these relationships prosper and MUSC cannot continue with an uncoordinated strategy towards industry. Furthermore, the University needs to reduce existing impediments and develop institutional incentives to foster these relationships. Changes in the environment are causing clinical practice and faculty priorities to change. A new report from the Commonwealth Fund Task Force on Academic Health Centers concludes that education is no longer the top priority for academic health centers. Included are the following trends: A greater focus on specialty care results in clinical practice trends being less congruent with our educational need to prepare practicing primary health care professionals for SC. | Less exposure to primary care at the center, the desire to expose students to community systems of care, and shorter hospital stays focuses more teaching in ambulatory or community based settings. | Decreasing revenues for indigent care may lessen access to these populations for teaching and potentially reduces student and residents exposure to the important health care issues related to health care disparities. | Needed emphasis on generating clinical and research revenue leaves less time to teach. Faculty incentives are more closely tied to research and clinical practice. | Traditionally, the academic and clinical links that exist focus primarily on the college of medicine. |
Furthermore, MUSC must recognize that our target population is now the world. The virtual classroom is a reality and our competitors are taking advantage of it. The sage-on-the-stage is rapidly becoming extinct and replaced by educators who embrace the opportunities of the information age, both in the traditional setting and in a distributive learning environment. Educators and students are being forced to adapt to this rapidly changing environment and to become innovative in their approaches to teaching and learning. The choices for students who want to pursue a higher level of education are increasing geometrically. Universities, including academic health centers, must remain competitive in this environment in order to attract the best and brightest students. Universities must provide unfettered access to their academic programs as well as easy access to support services to students, faculty, and the community. Reliable, functional and economically efficient facilities and infrastructure are essential to the success of MUSC. We must ensure that we are managing our facilities and limited resources wisely. For the past several years our focus has been on growth, and our organization has been fairly decentralized and entrepreneurial in nature. That strategy has resulted in our facilities related deferred maintenance backlog becoming too large to ensure the level of systems reliability and working environment we need to enjoy. We need to reconsider the way we are organized, the processes we have in place that determine how we use space, how we set priorities, how we get things done, and the level of funding support we need and provide for over-arching support functions. This working group has focused on facilities related functions and processes.
Goals of the Resources & Enviroment Work Group:
First Goal- Resources & Enviroment Work Group
Second Goal- Resources & Enviroment Work Group
Third Goal- Resources & Enviroment Work Group
Fourth Goal- Resources & Enviroment Work Group
Fifth Goal- Resources & Enviroment Work Group
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