Open Letter to Dr. Gregory Postel, M.D., Interim President, University of Toledo

Dear Dr. Postel,

We, in the Save UTMC group, wish you a warm welcome to Toledo!

We are very pleased that the University of Toledo (UToledo) Board selected you and believe that, based on your background, you are strongly prepared to address the serious problems faced by the UToledo academic medical center and UToledo.

As you are aware, the UToledo academic medical center, located on the Health Sciences Campus in South Toledo, includes the College of Medicine and Life Sciences (COMLS) research buildings and classrooms, the University of Toledo Medical Center (UTMC), the Dana Cancer Center, the Orthopedics Center, and the George Isaac Minimally Invasive Surgery Center.

A key concern of Save UTMC is that, since the merger between the UToledo and the Medical College of Ohio, there has not been a single member on the UToledo Board of Trustees who had any familiarity with academic medical centers.

We believe that mediocre UToledo leadership of the academic medical center was exacerbated following the 2015 UToledo/ProMedica Affiliation agreement. The Affiliation Agreement was initially enthusiastically supported by UToledo. However, within two years, the Academic Affiliation Organizing Group (AAOG) began to make decisions that severely harmed the solvency of UTMC, the education and research capability of UToledo COMLS, and the metrics that affect ranking of COMLS, especially NIH-funding. Unfortunately, there were no UToledo Board members who could properly evaluate the wisdom of these harmful decisions.

As an example of poor decisions made by the AAOG, following the Affiliation the AAOG decided to eliminate resident and medical student education at UTMC. As a consequence, education and research opportunities for medical students and residents have markedly decreased.

Further, the financial solvency of UTMC was severely harmed by transfer of many faculty and residents to Toledo Hospital with no plan to replace with community physicians. UTMC solvency was further harmed by UToledo Board decisions to levy extraordinary and inappropriate overhead expenses on UTMC in order to address financial shortfalls in other UToledo departments. As you may have heard, this issue is now the subject of currently ongoing audits.

Moreover, COMLS funding to support NIH-funded research, including recruitment of faculty capable of writing NIH grants, actually decreased. Since the Affiliation began in 2015, only $5 million/year has been spent by COMLS to recruit faculty, remodeled labs, and purchase equipment. This is significantly lower than in the years prior to the affiliation!

Thus, there are many issues, specific to academic medical centers, that have grown over the years without effective intervention.

The Save UTMC group, comprising doctors, nurses, elected officials and citizens, looks forward to working with you to find appropriate management solutions to these problems. As we do so, we are confident that UToledo and South Toledo will benefit from your experience, skill, and judgment.

Sincerely,

Representative of the Save UTMC Coalition

Teresa Fedor, Ohio State Senator
Paula Hicks-Hudson, Ohio State Representative and former Mayor of City of Toledo
Matt Cherry, President, Toledo City Council
Rob Ludeman, At-Large Councilman, Toledo City Council
Carty Finkbeiner, former Mayor, City of Toledo
Kevin Dalton, President, Toledo Federation of Teachers
Theresa M. Gabriel, Executive Board, NAACP and former Toledo City Councilman
James C. Willey, M.D., Professor of Medicine
Randy Desposito, President, AFSCME Local #2425
Shaun Enright, President, Greater NWO AFL-CIO
Eric Zgodsonski, MPH, Health Commissioner, Toledo-Lucas County Health Department
John McSweeney, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry
Honorary Chair, Marcy Kaptur, U.S. Representative