Chapter 18: MD Anderson Presidents

Chapter 18: MD Anderson Presidents

Loading...

Media is loading
 

Description

Here Dr. Goepfert gives his views of the leadership styles of MD Anderson’s first three presidents. He describes R. Lee Clark as a “unique leader” with a strong character and decisive leadership style. (He observes that Clark advocated thinking big, but “built small” when it came to the inpatient unit.) Dr. LeMaistre was a very gentlemanly man, a good delegator, who was able to put smoking cessation at the forefront of MD Anderson’s initiatives and also made the first connections with other institutions such as MD Anderson Orlando. Dr. Goepfert next describes the search process (including some internal political strife) that resulted in Dr. John Mendelsohn’s presidency, describing him as the most “eccentric” of all the presidents and a significant physician-scientist who conducted valuable work on epidermal growth factors and antibodies. Dr. Goepfert notes that Dr. Mendelsohn’s name was associated with an insider trading scandal and that Dr. Mendolsohn did not support him in his efforts to develop the Head and Neck physician-scientist program. He observes that Dr. Mendelsohn was able to stimulate significant philanthropy for MD Anderson. Dr. Goepfert also explains that he advised Dr. Mendelsohn to step away from MD Anderson once Dr. DePinho assumed the role of president (though he notes that Dr. Mendelsohn appears to be reestablishing his connection with the institution). Dr. Goepfert emphasizes his own philosophy and practice of stepping away once an administrative role is done: he could have continued in his department after retiring, but advocates that one should “go before they make you go” and that younger people in “the pipeline” need to have their chance.

Identifier

GeopfertH_02_20120828_C18

Publication Date

8-28-2012

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Key MD Anderson Figures; Portraits; MD Anderson History; Funny Stories; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; Controversy; Institutional Politics; On Leadership

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I wanted to ask you for some observations about the different MD Anderson presidents that you’ve worked with—sort of a compare and contrast of what you think they offered the institution and their leadership styles.

Helmuth Goepfert, MD:

At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth, Dr. Clark was certainly a very unique leader. He saw the need for a cancer hospital, but interestingly enough, even though some of his motto was “Don’t dream small dreams. Think big,”—you may have heard that—when it came to building the inpatient unit he said, “We are not going to build for too many beds because we just saw the example of what happened to the tuberculosis hospitals.” You know there were all the sanitariums back in the ‘30s? Streptomycin came on board and they disappeared. So, he was worried about that, which was interesting. So, there was a dichotomy in his thinking, although he was a big communicator and a very strong character. At the same time that he was a good communicator. He had a very efficient style in the sense that when he thought something was right, he would just order it to be done, so there was little hesitation in it. [Redacted] It was interesting that he was respected so widely that even though the legislature had some trepidation in creating this MD Anderson institute, the private practitioners out there were so worried about the influence of this big elephant suddenly that they requested an amendment to the law that created MD Anderson that the physicians had to be referred by physicians. And you know that lasted until the ‘90s. As I say, that was an issue, but on the other side, the legislature loved this man because he was basically honest and was doing something new. He would go up in front of the legislature and say, “I need this many dollars,” and there was more than one legislator that would get up and say, “Dr. Clark, do you really have enough?” That was the type of relationship that existed then. Dr. LeMaistre had a different style. He came from a different background. He was a very gentleman-like person. He was a good delegator in the sense of delegating responsibilities and letting people run with it even though some of these folks became unpopular. He basically stuck with what he had decided. He put at the forefront the issue of cigarettes and sort of made it his main theme during his administration—smoking cessation. Dr. LeMasitre created the first attempts to have affiliations with other organizations. That is why MD Anderson Orlando was formed and developed. Even though he was sort of a mellow man, the presence of Dr. Clark still, to some extent, caused certain friction within, in that, though not visible, people that were around long enough sort of remarked on it that when Ben Love gave money and you had now the three buildings—the Clark Building, the Love Building, and the LeMaistre Building. If you look at it from Holcombe, you see that—the Clark Building, the Love Building, and the LeMaistre Building. So, there was a department Chairman, his name escapes me right now, he said, “Finally we have Love between LeMaistre and Clark. (laughs) So, then Dr. LeMaistre finished his tenure, and basically, as an administrator of a major institution, they cannot remove you for age purposes, but at age seventy the University of Texas required an annual reappointment. I think he went through two of them but decided this was enough. When his successor came about, of course they created, among other things, a national search committee with the board of regents heavily involved. There was a faculty committee too. One of the members of the faculty committee was Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach. He was the Chairman of urology then. He then went on to have other functions in national government. But he decided to throw his hat into the ring of president of the institution, so he was one of the faculty representatives in this committee of the institution. Now, the call to take the job fell on me, and I said, “Okay. I’m going to take this seriously, and I’m going to use it for the best purpose of the institution.” One of the candidates then was Dr. Charles Balch. Charles Balch was the Chairman of surgery, and for a while he was the director of the hospital and so forth. He was not a very much beloved surgeon because he could not operate himself out of a wet paper bag. That’s an expression among surgeons for somebody that’s not a very good surgeon, but basically that was the joke. He wanted to become president of the organization, and I made sure that all the problems that he had caused during his tenure would be discussed with the members of the board of visitors. The Board of Visitors was very much influenced by Red McComb. Red McComb is a man from San Antonio who owns several car dealerships. [Redacted] Now, I took it upon myself to do a little bit of education and stuck my neck out at the risk of being fired later that Dr. Balch was not the better candidate, that they should look at other candidates as well. That is how eventually Dr. Mendelsohn was chosen. Now, Dr. Mendelsohn certainly has an interesting tenure in this institution. Among all the presidents, he is the most egocentric of all of them, so far. I think DePinho may overcome that too—or pass him too. A significant physician-scientist—he really was a physician-scientist—that after he had been in San Diego where he developed his initial studies with the epidermal growth factor and the antibodies for epidermal growth factor, he created sort of a new paradigm for cancer treatment. His laboratory continued functioning up in New York, and when he came to the institution, he brought it all with him. He did not divest himself of any of the companies that he had ownership of, ImClone specifically. I’m still surprised, in the whole Enron/ImClone debacle that occurred in which he definitely had inside information and inside trading knowledge that sent Martha Stewart into prison, he was able to survive that. I mean, it was common knowledge that he made $6 million on selling his investment in Enron a couple days before the whole palace collapsed, and ImClone was in a similar situation, so I think that it’s still unclear how that all unfolded and how it fell in favor of Dr. Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn and I could not see eye-to-eye, that’s for sure. I repeatedly showed him what had been accomplished by the physician-scientist program in Head and Neck, and I asked him if he would be favorable to get some of the donors to fund this program. I didn’t want him to continue my name on it. I said, “Take my name out of it if you don’t want to,” but that never happened. Yes, by judging the size of the shrine, you can sort of judge the personalities of the three people that were presidents of this institution. If you would find a bigger wall, a bigger wall would have been plastered with everything. That’s my view. That is my view, but, as I say, he did a great deal for the institution. He was a wonderful salesman. He certainly was able to get water out of a turnip and got a lot of philanthropy into the organization—significant philanthropy—more than anybody else before, but during his tenure certain things happened that the institution may regret later. I’m not going to dwell on that. But, as I say, I think that having him as a Chairman of a major program under Dr. DePinho, be it called what they may—it’s right now called the Institute of Personalized Medicine—something like that—will cause some friction certainly with Dr. [Linda] Chin eventually. It will cause friction with Dr. DePinho because they both are strong personalities. At the present time, Mendelsohn is sort of feeling his footway again into the organization. Nothing has happened, but I can see that sooner or later something will happen. I wrote a letter to Mendelsohn when he announced his retirement and what he was going to do. I said, “I appreciate that you are open about your retirement, but I strongly advise you to stay away from the institution as such and don’t take a department Chairmanship for a major development. That may cause the new president some headaches.” Of course, he said, “I don’t care what you say.” He never told me that, but I know that’s what he felt because, as I say, I wrote him a letter about that specifically. I myself feel very strongly—I’ve always felt strongly—that once you leave a position of leadership, the best thing is to not have anything to do anymore with them because people come to you for serious reasons or for not-so-serious reasons and think that you can influence the chair. That undoubtedly, in one form or another, may happen. I remember when Randy [Randal Weber] got here as the new chairman of Head and Neck Surgery, and any occasion that I would come around, faculty would come to me and say, “I’m having a terrible time with Randy’s way of management.” I’d say, “Listen, guys, work through it. I’m not going to interfere with this. It’s not my place, not my position.” But I can see that if I would have been in the department that would have been hard to live with. So, as I say, I’m always of the principle that you have to leave things before they ask you to leave. I never have set goals. I’ve always been a victim and the beneficiary of being there at the right time for the right occasion, yes, but there were certain goals I set myself. One of them was that if I took on something extra like the Head and Neck Journal, there were certain principles I wanted to abide by. Head and Neck, before that, was sort of a solicited publication type of journal that had plastic surgery in it and all sorts of other subspecialties. I thought this was the opportunity to give impetus to a journal that would be devoted to head and neck cancer, number one. Number two, I said I wanted to make it such a journal that it can survive on peer review, because before that it was just solicited publication. And number three, I wanted to accomplish this within ten years, and I was able to do that. The journal now is really only head and neck cancer, and this is two editors beyond me—Dr. Weber first and now Dr. Hanna. So, that was one. Then, with the issue of retirement too, I could have continued, but I decided, no. I had to deal with the retirement of my father from 5000 miles distance. He didn’t want to retire. I had to sort of say, “Dad, it’s time that you quit surgery because people are telling me that you are getting not as sharp as you were before.” I had to deal with asking Dr. Ballantyne to retire, which can you imagine the clan of the Mitchells—George Mitchell? They were ready to get my guts, because how could I do that? But the man was not anymore—and the nurses were starting to complain. So, as I say, yes, he had been a great man, but to let somebody get into the latter part of their life and still be there and you have to ask them to leave is horrible.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Now, did you step away from clinical practice because you felt you were at the point where—?

Helmuth Goepfert, MD:

No, I said it’s time for somebody else to take care of this. And I told the guys, “Listen, when do you want me to stop seeing patients?” They said, “For us who have to take on the load, it’s best if you do such-and-such,” and I did such-and-such. So, as I say, since I’ve retired, I haven’t touched a patient. I participate in some of the educational venues, but less and less because I am away from the clinical practice and things have changed. But one principle is you have to go before they make you go. And on the other side, there are so many people that are in what I call the pipeline that need to ascend and become Chairman and do something different. I mean, what Randy has developed is totally different from what I was doing and has been very successful.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What is it that he’s doing that’s a different direction?

Helmuth Goepfert, MD:

He certainly has increased the number of subspecialties in the department, has created some additional clinical, I would say, teams that work in base-of-skull and ear surgery and so forth, and he definitely has put on the national billboard the issue of quality of care. He has made it his presidential address when he became president of the Head and Neck Society and has created multiple programs here at this department, plus, for example, the head and neck program down in Orlando that was super biased by this department and sort of made sure that the same principles would be applied over there that were applied here. So, in that sense, he has done quite a bit. There is one new staff member now, Carol Lewis, who is predominantly devoted to quality of care and measurement thereof.

Conditions Governing Access

Redacted

Chapter 18: MD Anderson Presidents

Share

COinS