July 20, 2011
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Patients/Health: Key to What We Do

A Message from the Chancellor

We recently surveyed a random sample of UCSF Medical Center patients, asking them this question: “Would you recommend UCSF Medical Center to friends and family?” For nine out of ten, the response was an unequivocal “Yes.”

It’s easy for me to name patient care as my top priority at UCSF. While growing up in Reno, Nevada, I saw patient care in action nearly every day. My father, a pharmacist, owned the local Keystone Owl Rexall Drugstore. I was a bookkeeper there, and from where I sat I could hear him talk with patients about their illnesses. The compassion with which he performed his job made a lasting impression on me. If someone needed a prescription but couldn’t come into the store, he made sure it got delivered. My siblings were equally affected: Four out of seven of us now work in the fields of health or science. 

A hospital rotation in a cancer ward during medical school helped crystallize my decision to focus on oncology, and much of my career has been spent developing better weapons against cancer, first at Bristol-Myers Squibb, then Genentech.

But before I left for industry, I was in private practice in oncology, in Lexington, Kentucky. If ever there was a low point in my career it was when I left my practice. Leaving my patients was heartbreaking; I felt like I was abandoning them. But I promised them that through my new work in cancer drug development I would try my hardest to save the lives of many, many cancer patients, most of whom I would never meet.

 

I’ve spent my career not hoping but knowing that we can transform diseases that were once death sentences into chronic, manageable conditions. In 1982, when I arrived at UCSF as a resident, the new disease called AIDS was incurable; a decade later, new discoveries had changed everything, and patients were able to live long, productive lives. I’ve seen the same thing happen with certain cancers.

Now all of my former professional lives – doctor, researcher, educator, administrator – have merged in this one infinitely rewarding job. And I am in a better position than ever to focus on my first and abiding priority: patient care.

Part of my job is to maintain UCSF a leading light in academic medicine, showing the rest of the world that there’s a way to have the best research and training programs, while still providing the highest-quality, most satisfying patient care.

As educational institutions go, UCSF and other medical schools are unique – you might even say odd – in how they are set up. The fact that we own a hospital at all (UCSF Medical Center), and have exclusive and vital relationships with others (such as the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and San Francisco General Hospital), is a byproduct of the way medicine is taught and clinical research is conducted. Law schools don’t run law firms. Business schools don’t operate consulting companies. And engineering schools don’t bid on construction jobs.

Yet medical schools run health care organizations because we need places to train future generations of health professionals and conduct clinical research. Our hospitals and clinics are here in part to serve our other missions of training and conducting research. And for a long time, although we were certainly committed to providing high-quality care, this goal sometimes took a back seat to our education and science.

Today UCSF’s medical facilities and staff are widely acclaimed for excellence in patient care and consistently ranked among the nation’s best. In its 2010-2011 review of hospitals, U.S. News & World Report ranked UCSF seventh. Many of our clinical services are ranked among the best in the US – rankings born of both objective data and on the reputation among our peers.

“I am in a better position than ever to focus on my first and abiding priority: patient care.”

When a patient needs a liver or kidney transplant, UCSF is the place people go. When it comes to treating breast or prostate cancer, or leukemia, UCSF is among the best in the world. Ditto dozens of other specialties. UCSF is a place where people and innovative practice don’t stand still, and if you’re a patient, that’s the kind of place you want to be.

In the 1990s, when UCSF faculty recognized the need for a generalist physician to serve as the orchestra conductor for the care of complex hospitalized patients, we became the epicenter of the hospitalist movement, which soon became the fastest-growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. We’ve pioneered new approaches to analyzing medical mistakes and implementing solutions that work. We’re also making great strides in implementing electronic patient records.

And here’s the best part: because of our emphasis on excellence and innovation, the demand for our patient services is growing sharply, and we’re working to expand the range of health and medical services we bring to the community.

Now we have Mission Bay, a world-class, integrated clinical, teaching and research campus that complements our other facilities. Last June, Marc and Lynne Benioff gave a $100 million gift for our UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Based on this kind of generosity and an amazing fundraising effort, the UC Regents unanimously greenlighted our medical center project at Mission Bay. Within five years, in addition to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, there will be a state-of-the-art women’s hospital and a cancer hospital. There are people who have been working on the Mission Bay hospitals project for a decade, and to be achieving so much traction now is especially gratifying.

But we aren’t resting on our laurels. Mission Bay will be home to a new medical center in 2014, but we will still deliver the bulk of our care at Parnassus Heights and our other clinical sites. As we build sparkling new facilities for clinical care and research, not only do we have to make sure we continue to invest in our traditional sites, but we must come up with ways of retaining the sense of collegial exchange and community that has always made UCSF so special.

I remember my first visit to UCSF as a medical student, and how impressed I was by the spirit of collaboration, and the integration of science and education into patient care.

In the next decade, our health care delivery system will be challenged by the imperative to improve quality, safety and efficiency, and I’m thrilled that, with new tools, competencies, and facilities, we are poised to remain leaders in patient care.

Photo by Cindy Chew