Regents: separate chancellor for Med School not feasible

              Regents: separate chancellor
for Med School not feasible
By SALLY REESE
Times Medical Writer
It is neither feasible nor desirable at
this time for the medical school in
Shreveport to have its own chancellor,
says the Board of Regents for higher
education in Louisiana.
The joint legislative committee on
education endorses that view. It
adopted the board's report late last
week, following subcommittee hearings
on the issue.
Thus, a setback for those of the
Shreveport faculty who favor separate
chancellorship. They had hoped to
counter the board's position with
testimony before the joint legislative
subcommittee last week.
The Board of Regents sees the pro-posed
chancellorship as a move to make
LSUMC-Shreveport "a separate
medical center unto itself, divorced
from the LSU Medical Center as it
exists today."
It made its position clear last
February in a report on a feasibility
study requested by the joint legislative
committee on education.
That position is that a second,
autonomous, state-supported medical
center would accelerate costs of
medical and health education in
Louisiana, jeopardize or disrupt the
accreditation status of ongoing pro-grams,
be counterproductive to cost
effectiveness and tend to sap strength,
diversity and vitality of LSU Medical
Center.
Specifically, the board maintains:
A medical center in Shreveport, with
its own chancellor and separate ad-ministrative
unit, would promptly en-,
tail the creation of nine new posts: a
chancellor, vice chancellor for
academic affairs, vice chancellor for
business affairs, a dean of graduate
studies, a dean of allied health and a
new head for each of the departments of
audiology and speech pathology,
respiratory therapy, medical
technology and physical therapy.
These costs alone would likely exceed
$500,000 in the first full year of opera-tion,
presuming a new medical center
would have an administrative structure
comparable to the existing Medical
Center.
A less measurable cost, "but one that
could very real," would be the dismantl-ing
of a unified, statewide medical
center, fostering of competition for
limited resources and possibly polariz-ing
two medical centers supported by
taxpayers.
Accreditation of programs in
Shreveport and New Orleans is based on
evaluation of resources within the en-tire
medical center system. A change
could jeopardize accreditation,
"particularly at a time when standards
are being elevated in many of the health
professions." A separate entity in
Shreveport also would limit resources
for graduate programs offered in both
locations through the existing Medical
Center.
It is estimated that self-studies for
accreditation of the medical center's
seven allied-health programs would
cost $196,000.
The larger cost, however, would be in
meeting the standards of each dis-cipline.
The department of radiology in
Shreveport "is a prime example." Here,
$3 million was spent for new equipment
and thousands more for a full-time
department head and additional facul-ty,
"all in the interest of gaining pro-visional
accreditation for a three-year
period." That effort succeeded.
All four allied-health programs of-fered
in Shreveport — audiology,
speech pathology, medical technology
and respiratory therapy — exist as
parts of programs offered in New Or-leans,
and the faculty exchange works
both ways. Sharing enables the Medical
Center to cope with a shortage of
qualified faculty in the allied health
fields.
Accreditation essentials for
respiratory therapy illustrate the
benefits of the present administrative
arrangement. These require a separate
budgetary unit for the program, a con-tract
between each institution and its
clinical affiliates for placement of stu-dents
in clinical assignments, and a
faculty with at least a full-time pro-gram
director, clinical education direc-tor
and medical director. To place
respiratory therapy in two separate
entities would result in duplication and
higher educational costs.
The medical center plans to expand
the physical therapy program to
Shreveport in May. Physical therapy is
a field in which there is an extreme
shortage of qualified faculty and
limited clinical opportunities for stu-dents.
"These shortages demonstrate
the need for active coordination and
cooperation."
As the National Commission on Allied
Health Education has stressed, "Costs
are saved when program components
are not unncessarily duplicated or when
resources are shared."
And finally, the board said, "The
Legislature, in our judgment, showed
great foresight when it stated in LRS
17:3215 that the Medical Center 'shall
be composed of and shall administer the
medical and related health schools and
programs located in New Orleans,
Shreveport and elsewhere in the state