Ok, how about this for a mantra:
“UChicago Medicine: Falling Behind”
Doesn’t that summarize what’s happening?
Only two schools are top 3 in all 3 major professional schools (Law,. Business and Medicine) – Harvard and Stanford.
Only three schools are top 5 in at least 2 of the 3 major professional schools: Harvard, Stanford and UChicago
Yale remains the leader in law but not even top ten in Business or Medicine .
Columbia has only one top 5 – fifth in law. Business and Medicine continue slipping.
Even with the unacceptable 18 rank in Medicine, UChicago is still t third overall in key graduate schools. That is a major achievement in light of its relatively small endowment.
You can’t dismiss one ranking (medical school & hospital) but embrace another (business or law) simply because the former shows results you don’t like. I still remember the giant banner UCMC proudly displayed at the Ellis entrance when I walked into the medical center almost a decade ago. It read “Top Hospital in Illinois” with a US News and World Report logo displayed. I am student at a top 5 hospital, and sure enough, you can see that same banner (albeit in a different state) everywhere in the hospital, along with their 16 specialty rankings and national standing ostentatiously shown. They even shamelessly advertise themselves as #1 hospital nationwide for all ages (combined adult & pediatrics).
Administration at every hospital cares about these rankings because they know their patients do.
Agree. The question is how can they fix it.
I think we all agree the medical plant is declining.
Further, I think we all agree that the medical plant is a vital part of the University.
So, what are answers to how they can fix the decline? @Poplicola or @Chrchill or others - any ideas? How do you take a hospital that used to be in the top 20 in the nation back to prominence?
@Cue7 The solution is simple. The medical center / BSD leadership needs to change. In my opinion, the current ones are not good at their jobs. Unapproachable and dead set in their ways that are clearly not working. When was the last time UC was in the top 20 hospitals, and what year did the current administrators start? Based on rumors/gossip Ive heard. Many long time attendings in multiple departments have left for other chicago institutions. In some sections, multiple attendings have left in close succession or as a group to go elsewhere. Demoting dept chiefs/section chairs when they dont agree with the direction the dept/section is going. Turning down multimillion dollar donation that have reasonable contingencies for the betterment of the dept/section. Those of us at UC can tell there has been an obvious decline, and I dont think things are going to change for the better anytime soon.
Fire them all!
I am actually surprised that heads have not rolled.
@megabusbus That’s precisely what I’ve heard and seen at UCMC (i.e. huge personnel turnover, lots of people leaving for hospitals in the Greater Chicago area and elsewhere). Glad to see someone backing me up. Looks like I won’t be going back to my alma mater for residency. Saddens me to see the medical center in this state. 
You’re so right about the current leadership. President O’Keefe and Dean Polonsky seem to have been there forever.
If we casual observers can see that, you bet the rich guys on Board of Trustee can draw the same conclusion. Zimmer still has a few years in his contract. He will have to act or the donors will revolt.
Yeah I’ve heard the leadership for Chicago Med has been bad - and it hasn’t just been one or two bad leaders. The last exec (James Madera) wasn’t great, and Polonsky has been lackluster, too.
Zimmer has proven to be hyper-rankings conscious. If Pritzker ever falls below Northwestern (which could happen), expect some heads to roll.
This happened one year with the Law School. I think in 07 or 08, the Law School dropped from #4 to #7 or 8. Soon after that, lots of donations came in, and the school went back up.
Moving a med school and a hospital up the rankings is a LOT harder to do though…
It won’t be an one year turn around project. It took Theo Epstein five years to turn the Cubs from an 100 games loser and 100 + years failure into World Series Champion. I dare to say turning Cubs into a winning franchise is easier than vastly improving a medical school as the latter is far more capital (finance and human) intensive. And you can’t sign just 4 doctors for $100 million and think the majority of your problem is solved. Zimmer can start the process but it will take time to reverse the decline.
Good thing (or bad depends your political orientation ) The Board of Trustee is filled with business (especially finance) magnates who are likely very bottom line oriented. They likely are already asking Zimmer : “What the xyz#@% is wrong with the Medical School?” So I do expect remedial action.
@85bears46 - that’s the issue. It takes a lot of money, a lot of resources, and some good luck to turn around a declining medical plant. Also, this space is hyper-competitive, with docs and faculty being poached all the time.
This will take a huge infusion of cash - and I’m just not seeing lots of money from the campaign flowing to the medical plant.
Unfortunately, I worry Chicago Med will become a sort of cautionary tale at other top hospitals - a once-proud hospital system that now languishes in mediocrity.
The big problem is, it’s tales like Chicago Med that cause other med schools/plants to pedal even more ferociously. No one wants to be like Chicago Med - a hospital system that used to be in the top 20, and now isn’t even in the top 50 for most specialties, and a med school that used to be top 10, and is now in danger of falling out of the top 20.
The downward spiral is very, very hard to stop. With good leadership, what’s the price tag? Maybe $1B? $1.5B? I’m guessing most adroit businessmen/women wouldn’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole. Much easier to donate $125M to Chicago Economics and reap the benefits.
Note the Penn dropped out of top 5 and Columbia and Yale dropped out of the top ten. Mayo, NYU shot up. What explains these drastic changes ?
@Chrchill they changed the methodology. Funding is now critical, and Mayo has a huge amount of funding.
@Cue7 I am not in the medical field and so I don’t know whether it takes $100 million, $500 million or 1 billion to reverse the decline. I am not into corporate turnaround but my guess will be for Pritzker to start with smaller achievable objectives first. IIRC, Pritzker was never above 8th or 9th on the USNWR ranking even in the best of time. So the whole idea is to make Pritzker more respectable than it is right now. I don’t think it is as hopeless as you think. Besides, U of C raised $3.9 billion in the last few years. So there is money flowing into the school and Zimmer just has to put forward his fund raising ability to channel more money to Pritzker.
Sometimes it takes patience and a little faith to invest in something that is not doing too well right now. Do you want to buy Apple stock when Steve Jobs came back in 1997 (when the company was supposed to be teetering on bankruptcy) or a few weeks ago when it made all time high at $180? As long as Zimmer has a definite plan for turnaround, I would like to think he can convince donors to put in a sizable donation to “rescue” Pritzker. There are enough billionaire on the Board of Trustee who will not be afraid to take some short term heat for the long term investment in U of C.
Agreed that they need a large donation from someone. Except there are no takers. When CCD was being built, the going price for naming rights was around $50-75 million if i remember. no takers.
is zimmer even worried? he just gave polonsky and okeefe new titles this year.
They changed methodology of ranking to give a greater weight to research funding (40% instead of 30%). They also now include non-NIH funding (other federal sources of funding, state funding, private donations). Mayo rules when it comes to private donations, and NYU rules when it comes to funding from fed and state sources (as well as private donations). Stanford used to be ranked #10 a few years back. They lobbied US News to change the ranking criteria (add in research funding per faculty member); they shot up to #2 (now #3), and no one batted an eye. If NYU did the same thing I really don’t see the problem. If institutions are able diversify their funding sources away from NIH, then more power to them!
@Poplicola - you’re very knowledgeable about this. What’s the path forward for Chicago? What do they need to do to stop the downward spiral?
The drop across so many medical fields (Cancer, nephrology, whatever) has been precipitous and sad.
As stated in Posts #22-23, Mayo and NYU are outliers for their ranking when it comes to peer and residency director assessments - I thought those were key metrics for a medical school. Mayo is a tiny school compared to its clinical practice - not to mention compared to peer institutions - and has jumped to #6 because the ranking metric for fundraising includes “affiliated hospitals” along with fundraising directly for the school. The Clinic overall is a fundraising powerhouse (in part because it caters to world leaders etc), not to mention one of the top medical facilities in the country. Obviously the school leverages off that reputation so it’s surprising that the school is not more highly regarded by peers for research or residency.
Another problem is that total NIH dollars raised (again including affiliated hospitals) seems to be divided by the full-time faculty count - a little less than 900 for Mayo. In general that’s probably a great metric for a med. school, simply because the full-time academic staff is going to be a critical mass of doctors conducting research and applying for grants. Not true at Mayo - there are thousands of part-time (to the med school) affiliated academic staff who obviously apply for and receive NIH grants, but who don’t seem to be counted. As a result, Mayo’s metric here dominates the pack, but we have no idea if ANY of those full-time faculty members are receiving grant money and doing relevant research.
Not trying to pick on Mayo but it’s the clinic that’s being ranked here, not the med. school itself. Perhaps that’s appropriate and you really can’t separate the two. But again, I keep returning to those peer and residency metrics . . .
UChicago should take a page from Mayo and treat only VIPs? That will go well.
Close the new expensive money sinking trauma center? That will go really well.
Resell the naming rights to the school and return Pritzker’s measly donation or have Pritzker recommit to the school by adding more funds to it? I’d like to see this explored a lot more.
Fire the admins, unless there is already a turn-around plan that is being slowly executed then make them stick to their timelines/metrics. This may already be happening, since university admins are neither dumb nor blind