Note: this editorial was published in the March 6, 2020 edition of the Toledo Blade.
The University of Toledo and the UT medical college, formerly the Medical College of Ohio, have a 50-year co-operation agreement with ProMedica.
The part of the agreement that stipulates movement of faculty and trainees to ProMedica facilities includes a transition period of five years, and we are coming to the end of it. In light of threats by the university to close or sell the University of Toledo Medical Center, critics within the medical college and the community are seeking a reassessment.
Longtime faculty at the medical school say that their doctors and medical students have been stolen away. They say UTMC, the 246-bed hospital that is a companion to the medical college, could be sold or closed. They say this jeopardizes the medical college itself.
ProMedica says the ProMedica affiliation is the best thing that has ever happened to the medical college.
Some say a medical school need not have its own hospital. Many fine medical schools do not. But this hospital was built for the medical college.
The debate has just begun, and more argument and evidence must be presented and weighed.
Ultimately, Gov. Mike DeWine will have to weigh in.
Both sides have good points, but both may be, currently, so caught up in their own interests that they are failing to see the big picture: What is best for the community — for greater Toledo?
But we can say a few things definitively, even now.
1) The medical college must be defended and bolstered above all else. It is essential not only to South Toledo, but to greater Toledo and to the state of Ohio.
2) It is equally important that ProMedica flourish, for the city, the region, and, ultimately, the state.
Toledo’s great industries and industrialists are gone. We have no local bank. The other major health-care system in the city is run from Cincinnati.
ProMedica’s CEO, Randy Oostra has, almost singlehandedly, transformed Toledo’s downtown as well as the leadership culture, and cadre of the city. Civic spirit in greater Toledo is more positive than it has been in 40 years, and the city is attracting talent and reversing the brain drain.
Under Mr. Oostra’s leadership ProMedica saved the long-empty Toledo steam plant, restoring it for a new downtown headquarters and simultaneously kicking off a riverfront revival downtown. Mr. Oostra and ProMedica created the Ebeid Institute to boost urban health in Toledo with better diets while directing national attention to the social determinants of health. ProMedica also donated millions to renovate the Toledo Zoo’s historic museum building.
Mr Oostra is deservedly considered a local hero.
Without Mr. Oostra we are in trouble. Without a locally run ProMedica, no Randy Oostra.
His company needs to be able to compete.
Here is the big picture: We need both institutions. One, the medical college, is the educational gem of the city and the other, ProMedica, is the leading enterprise.
The other thing we know is that, since the merger of the University of Toledo and the medical college, the medical college has declined. It has not been been well-administered. It has been mediocritized. In the last 14 years National Institutes of Health funding has fallen from $16 million to $8 million. That’s not progress. It is regress and decline. Those dollars should have been quadrupled, not cut in half.
Surely one reason for decline is that the UT Board of Trustees has no expertise in running a medical school or in medical and scientific research. And there is no reason to think ProMedica brings such expertise to the table, either.
Research is key to the future of the medical college.
As we move past mutual recrimination and begin to establish facts, the heart of our concern must be this: How do we make the medical school stronger and better while not compromising ProMedica’s ability to compete?
First, the medical college needs investment, and that has to start with repopulating the medical center with doctors — mostly new doctors. A partnership with Toledo Clinic seems an obvious option. Toledo Clinic needs a hospital, and the UT hospital needs docs.
Second, we should consider giving the medical school back its own board — a board of scientists and physicians with expertise and real authority.
Finally, the UT board and administration owe the public and the medical college students and faculty an accounting: Where did the money go? When the merger of the university and the medical college occurred, the medical school, largely through its hospital, was a revenue generator. Now it is allegedly losing millions per month — even with a subsidy from ProMedica, which is supposed to be $50 million a year. Where is that money? There may be honest and valid explanations. If so, the UT board and administration should tell us what they are.