Chapter 25: Creating Growth and Supporting Values
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Description
In this Chapter Dr. Mendelsohn discusses his most meaningful accomplishments as MD Anderson’s third president. He is very pleased that the number of patients served doubled during his tenure and that he build up the institutions research, education, and prevention initiatives in parallel with patient care. MD Anderson, he says, is saving a lot more people and doing a lot more research. He is pleased that the institution is rated number one by rating agencies and by the cancer community. He is also pleased at the levels of grant supported research and the increase in the research budget. MD Anderson is number one in receiving funds from the National Cancer Institute and especially strong in grants supporting translational and clinical work. This means that the institution can attract patients and also attract excellent faculty. He is also pleased that MD Anderson is “a happy place to work” and that he had a part in formally articulating the institution’s values. Finally he says that he is pleased with the spirit of collaboration that he had a part in developing, particularly as collaboration is so important in bad economic times.
Identifier
MendelsohnJ_03_20121017_C25
Publication Date
10-17-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
John Mendelsohn, MD, Oral History Interview, October 17, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - A View on Career and AccomplishmentsCareer and Accomplishments The Administrator The Educator The Leader Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose Professional Practice The Professional at Work Career and Accomplishments Critical Perspectives MD Anderson Culture Personal Reflections on MD Anderson The MD Anderson Ethos On the Nature of Institutions
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
As you look back over your contributions to MD Anderson as president and all that you’ve done, what are some things that you’re especially proud of accomplishing?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
I’m proud that we’ve been able to more than double the number of patients we can treat and that we greatly expanded the institution’s ability to achieve its mission. When we grew, we agreed we were going to build research and education and prevention in parallel with patient care and to keep the balance, so we were able to grow not only our patient population. We were able to grow tremendously in the faculty and the staff and physical plant. This organization is serving a lot more people, and it’s doing a lot more research. I think you can’t but be proud that we’re rated as the number 1 hospital for cancer treatment almost invariably now by different rating agencies and even more than that by the cancer community. They look to us as the leader, so that’s something I’m proud of.
I’m not going to name specific research projects that the faculty accomplished. A lot of great research went on during this period, and there has been a four-fold increase in our research budget. I think it went up from grants and philanthropy and hospital margins. We’re the number 1 institution in the country in funding from the National Cancer Institute, partly because we’re big, and partly because we’re doing great work. I’m proud of that and the whole research enterprise, especially the strengthening we were able to do in translational and clinical research. Routinely now we’re studying about 10,000 patients a year on therapeutic clinical trials, which is probably double what it was. The trials are getting more sophisticated in the direction we’ve been talking about. I think the reason MD Anderson is able to attract the faculty that work here and the patients that come here is because we do offer something special to the sick patient with cancer, and that is research-driven patient care. We’ve emphasized that. I’m proud that this has been a happy place to work during the 15 years that I served as president. We worked hard to develop and practice our values: caring, integrity, and discovery. There are written statements for each of those values that I had a role in developing. For instance, we care for our patients and each other. I think it was part of the culture, but I think we worked hard to make it even more so. It’s alleged that patients used to feel they were like cattle. They’d come in and get a number and waited, and they’d sometimes have to wait 3 or 4 hours. We wanted to be a place that’s very user friendly for patients. We worked on that. And we also want to be a place that’s user friendly for each other. We worked on that, too, and this is a place where there’s a spirit that I’m proud I contributed to. We do patient surveys, and we do employee surveys. We pay outside groups to come in, and they ask lots of questions. There are always people unhappy about something, but when they ask the questions “Why are you here?” and “Do you know what the mission of this place is?” these outside agencies tell us we’re at the top of the chart; even if they’re unhappy with their boss, they’re proud to be working here, making cancer history. We’ve created an environment that’s different from most academic medical centers, which are more tense places, and I hope that continues. Another thing is extramural, for example, interactions between MD Anderson and the Board of Visitors. The Board of Visitors is much more national and even international than it was. We’re raising friends and funds from places outside Texas more than we were. We’re also doing more collaborations, and the outreach program we talked about that became MD Anderson Global and is continuing to expand. So, this was a really great place in Houston, Texas, and now it’s considered a really great place in the world, and I think I had a role in creating that difference. Those are some of the things I’m proud of.Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything else you’d like to say about your impressions of or your hopes for MD Anderson?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
I’ve been to a lot of academic medical centers, and I think there is an esprit here that encourages many kinds of collaborations: between different doctors taking care of a type of cancer; between laboratory scientists and clinical investigators; a collaborative approach between the patient and the doctor; the team of doctors; collaboration between the doctors and the nurses taking care of the patient. It’s a “team sport.” Nobody’s perfect at it, but I think we’re as good at it as anywhere I’ve ever seen. So, that’s something very special about MD Anderson, and it is important when things are getting tough like in bad economic times. There was one year when we were halfway through the year, and there was barely a positive margin. You need your margin in order to continue excellence and growth, and we communicated this to the faculty. We set targets of seeing more patients and cutting down waiting times to get appointments and things like that. Seeing more patients isn’t just the doctors volunteering to go to the clinic. You have to get the pipeline going. Everybody rolled up their sleeves, and we turned that margin around within 6 months. We ended up with a higher margin at the end of that year than we had projected, and at mid-year we had only $4 million. It was a remarkable turn around. Well, that’s a team effort that you can’t do unless everybody is rowing together, and it proved to me that it was worth the time and effort invested in building the esprit and the commitment of everyone who works at MD Anderson,
Recommended Citation
Mendelsohn, John MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 25: Creating Growth and Supporting Values" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1441.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1441
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