Prescription for Change: Starting, Acquiring, or Merging a Medical School

This article from NACUBO's Business Officer by Sandra R. Sabo is "spot on" for planners who have to cope with massive changes involving medical school expansion, acquisition, and integration. It features case study information from a Florida State expansion, a Drexel University acquisition, and the merger of systems at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and Johns Hopkins Health System (JHHS).

Even limited cultural and organizational change creates some tension and anxiety within an educational institution. Those feelings intensify as the scale of change grows and more people become unnerved by adjustments to the status quo. In fact, big projects and massive shifts can wreak behavioral havoc. “Even people you think you know,” says John Carnaghi, senior vice president of finance and administration, Florida State University (FSU), Tallahassee, “may become overwhelmed by anxiety and emotion, and begin doing or saying things that seem out of character.”

Efforts on the part of a university to start, acquire, or incorporate into its operations something as significant as a medical school certainly qualify as disruptions of a dramatic degree. For insights into the challenges—and rewards—of such massive change, Business Officer talked to representatives of three institutions that have undertaken transformative initiatives related to their medical schools and discovered prescriptions for success.