Note: this editorial was published in the April 19, 2020 edition of the Toledo Blade.
When the merger of the former Medical College of Ohio with the University of Toledo was proposed it was sold to the Greater Toledo Community as a win-win proposition.
We were told the Medical College would lift up the University of Toledo and benefit the university financially. In turn, the Medical College would gain the support of an entire university and enjoy various organizational synergies.
Hindsight is 20/20. But it is quite clear, in retrospect, that the merger was a mistake. The medical school has been degraded, and its custom-built campus has been significantly depopulated.
Similarly, when the university struck a partnership with ProMedica back in 2015, we were told that the medical college and its hospital would be augmented by Toledo Hospital and subsidized by ProMedica.
Hindsight makes clear that this too was a mistake. The subsidy never came, and the university hospital was not augmented but superseded and marginalized.
Why did these two steps, announced with such optimism and fanfare, go so wrong?
There is no one explanation. Market forces played a role and some would argue bad faith did. But without question the merger (with the University) and the partnership (with ProMedica) went wrong because of a lack of interest, expertise, and management skill on the part of the UT administration and Board of Trustees.
In short, no one in charge or doing oversight looked out for the medical college and its hospital, at least after Lloyd Jacobs, who ran the medical college and then the university, left the scene.
No one in authority made it his or her business to take care of the medical college campus, its faculty, or medical research.
And no one cared that the university hospital was being abandoned and dismantled.
Now the hospital is for sale, and the president of the university and the board of trustees have made a final decision to sell it without a public process of deliberation or even disclosure, forgetting what the medical college means to the community and how its hospital serves the community, particularly South Toledo.
The whole story is one of indifference and unforgivable incompetence.
What has also been forgotten is that the medical school and its hospital actually belong to the state of Ohio.
So Gov. Mike DeWine has something to say here.
The governor should move to re-establish an independent board for the medical college, even if it stays subservient to the UT board. This board would include people with knowledge of medical education and health care and with a commitment to UTMC. Depending on the breadth and depth of its authority, action by the General Assembly might be required to create the board. It would be worth the effort.
The state must obviously take great interest in who buys the UTMC hospital and under what conditions. But the greatest need now is to establish decent governance and an umbrella of independence and protection for Toledo’s crown jewel.