From the Dean

The Medical School has faced many challenges in its history, but at any given period they have tended to be within a single mission area. Today’s uncertainty portends great changes and affects each area of our tripartite mission of medical education, biomedical research and clinical care. Among the major issues we face today are NIH budget cuts, fundamental changes in clinical payment mechanisms through accountable care organizations and similar shared savings proposals, decreased reimbursement for clinical work, and continuing changes in graduate medical education work-hour regulations — requiring substantial modifications in how we educate our residents and fellows.

The challenges of the 21st century reach across not only missions, but also functions and stakeholders, making them more complex and requiring greater creativity to address. The Medical School is in no way alone in it’s quest for answers to these changes; throughout the nation, the best minds in academic medicine are searching for solutions. But the University of Michigan always strives to lead the way.

The practice of medicine that emerges from this turbulent time will look very different from what we’ve known in the past. Making this transition successfully in large part will depend upon the creativity, vision and determination of the brightest, most capable current and future physicians — and our very best efforts today to prepare them for leading us into a new world of medicine.

Sincerely,

James O. Woolliscroft, M.D. (Residency 1980)
Dean, U-M Medical School
Lyle C. Roll Professor of Medicine