Note: this editorial was published in the May 11, 2022 edition of the Toledo Blade.
Today I wish to report on a success story. In an era of doom and gloom, preoccupation with the ongoing scourge of the coronavirus and the drumbeat of spurious slogans to make America great again, there is positive news about something in our own backyard. It is about the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio Hospital.
Three years ago, the hospital was in dire straits. As a small free–standing academic hospital, it was feeling market pressure. It was assumed that unless it found a partner it would not survive. Efforts to find a suitor were made as early as 2012 but nothing materialized. In 2015 the University of Toledo entered into an academic affiliation agreement with ProMedica, the large local health-care system, to train students and resident physicians.
A bit of background:
The Medical College of Ohio Hospital was built in 1964. At the time it was thought that a small, 300-bed hospital would be sufficient to meet the needs of the medical college. And it did by providing excellent patient care, teaching, and robust research in the clinical and basic sciences. The founders had not realized, they could not have, the changing health-care scene in the United States. Soon it became evident that the days of a small free-standing teaching hospital were fast disappearing.
By 2010 it was becoming clear that UTMC, as a stand-alone facility, could not survive for long. Some visionaries had realized early on that in a highly competitive atmosphere, mergers were the only way to cut costs and continue the mission. Such mergers and acquisitions happened all across the United States.
The dilemma for UTMC was that there were no viable options to join a bigger hospital. ProMedica was gun shy after its attempted acquisition of St. Luke’s Hospital in 2010. That deal was challenged, and the Federal Trade Commission ruled that the merger was ‘illegal and anti- competitive’. ProMedica had to divest itself of St. Luke’s.
In 2015 the University of Toledo signed an academic affiliation with ProMedica in which ProMedica committed a large sum of money for the affiliation. It offered hundreds of millions of dollars up front and then $50 million yearly for 50 years. According to the agreement, the Toledo Hospital would become the main academic hospital for the UT College of Medicine.
Left out of the negotiation was the fate of the UTMC. Some people at ProMedica did not shy away from saying that UTMC should be closed. And it came precariously close to being shuttered up.
Here one must acknowledge the community effort led by the former Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner and the local unions that started a campaign to save the hospital.
Enter Dr. Gregory Postel, the new president of the University of Toledo. Soon after his arrival as the interim president of the University of Toledo he put an end to the process of selling or leasing the hospital. He brought with him the experience of two academic affiliations that he presided over in Louisville.
A neuro-radiologist by training, Dr. Postel is a visionary and possesses a decisive mind. And he can read the proverbial tea leaves with uncanny insight and accuracy. Within a year, thanks to his efforts, the hospital became solvent.
Instead of considering UTMC a liability for the university, Dr. Postel called it an asset.
The operating rooms, providing a bulk of revenue for the hospital, are busy providing surgical care that was once the hallmark of UTMC. Though functioning at a lower-bed capacity, the hospital is busy in all areas providing excellent university-standard care and in certain areas specialized care that is not available elsewhere in Toledo. Cardiac-surgery services that some pundits on North Cove Boulevard wanted to shut down has resurged and is leading the way in innovative heart surgeries.
Most recently the hospital received level 2 designation for trauma.
And there is something else that I observed during my recent hospitalization at UTMC. It was a sense of pride exhibited by physicians and health-care workers in their work. They take care of patients beyond the call of duty. I remember this spirit so well during my long association with the medical college and the teaching hospital.
It is much easier to demolish and dismantle than build something from scratch. My argument to retain UTMC as a teaching hospital is based on ground realities, a continuum of excellence, and the continued need for such a facility in South Toledo. It is not based on nostalgic longing for a past that has long passed.
S. Amjad Hussain is an emeritus professor of surgery and humanities at the University of Toledo. His column runs every other week in The Blade. Contact him at aghaji3@icloud.com.