Notes from the President

One Loma Linda

The idea sounds deceptively simple, even obvious. And for most who don’t work here, they may think we are already One Loma Linda. But in fact, this campus is made up of over 35 different corporations, some of necessity and some of historical significance, with occasionally overlapping responsibilities and personnel. The three “core” corporations are the University with its eight professional schools, the Medical Center with its six hospitals, and the Faculty Medical Group with over 800 physicians.

Over the past several decades we have made great progress in bringing many of these corporations closer together. At one point we had around 18 different physician practice groups, organized around each specialty area. As of January this year, these practice groups were all united into one corporation, the Loma Linda University Faculty Medical Group. This has made many issues much easier to handle, such as contracts for clinical services, benefit packages for employees, billing of professional fees, etc. Kudos to each clinical department and the School of Medicine leadership for accomplishing this strategic move.

But now we are faced with an even bigger challenge. To be truly efficient and compete in the new world of health care, we need our hospitals and doctors to pull even closer together, collaborating on protocols and saving costs wherever possible. This will require new management systems that integrate our health professionals and hospital administrators at multiple different levels, all pursuing common objectives. The university can also benefit from closer involvement in the clinical world as well as inter-professional collaboration in the classroom and laboratories.

To accomplish this, our board is now considering a very bold move for Loma Linda. This initiative would unify our three core corporations into one, under one Board of Trustees. In fact, this would finally accomplish what we have talked about for years, but could only take as small steps in the past. Over the years, many of our key departments have gradually expanded to cover the whole enterprise, such as human resources (now called talent management), payroll, legal affairs, risk management, and a number of support services. Before we launched Vision 2020, we took several more steps in this direction by creating the office of advancement, which unified marketing, public relations and philanthropy across campus. We even changed our name to Loma Linda University Health, indicating that the university, hospitals, and doctors were in fact one enterprise. More areas of integration are now in the implementation stage, such as our access call center, our website, and our patient billing offices.

For several months now we have been giving intense study to this One Loma Linda strategy, looking for both the benefits and the risks. This is not a strategy of centralization, but rather one of unification. Few organizations can claim to be following exactly the same mission after 100-plus years. Loma Linda can clearly make that claim, and our intent is to keep that mission at our core into the future. It has served us well as an anchor for all our decisions and will continue to do so. The new integrated corporation will enable us to be even more strategic about our mission of educating quality professionals, providing excellent patient care, and pushing the boundaries of discovery through our research initiatives. As campus leadership and our board discuss this idea, we invite input from each of you on this critical issue for our future development. Our trustees and administration will be conducting due diligence on this issue and expect to make a final decision in the coming months.

Ebola crisis

Before closing, I must update you on our work in West Africa with the Ebola crisis. The hospital there is managed by Adventist Health International (AHI), also based here in Loma Linda. As I mentioned last month, Drs. Gillian Seton and James Appel, along with about 50 local staff, were holding our hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, together, offering surgical services to the many patients who do not have Ebola infections. This became increasingly difficult as patients struggled to find access to any level of health care. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, several of the hospital staff became infected with Ebola. One has passed away and the others are being treated. We are not sure if their contact came from the community or patients at the hospital. Because of this, the hospital has been temporarily closed, and Gillian and James are now home for some much needed rest. They are fine and are now past the incubation period themselves. They will be sharing their stories at Loma Linda on Friday evening, October 17, at 7:00 p.m. in the Damazo Amphitheater at the Centennial Complex. We are inviting the local community and you are welcome to attend.

Our plans are to reopen the hospital in several more weeks, as the needs are only intensifying. Gillian is prepared to return while James waits for the birth of his third child and then goes back to developing a new hospital in eastern Chad. Several more surgeons have offered to go and help Gillian with what we expect will be an incredible workload for the indefinite future. Please keep these brave young alumni in your prayers, along with all the others in West Africa who are struggling to deal with this modern-day plague of historic proportions.

New school year

Back at Loma Linda, the new academic year has now started in earnest. It always feels good to see the campus bustling with eager students, seeking Loma Linda’s unique offering of mission-focused learning. Our enrollment remains strong at 4,629. We can only house 10 percent of these students in our residence halls, so the remainder of our students are living throughout the community. We need to expand our housing soon!

At our Convocation service last week, starting the new school year, we invited representatives from the nine high schools in the San Bernardino City Unified School District to worship with us. These teachers and students are as excited as we are about our new San Bernardino Campus, where we expect to break ground on December 10. Thank you for your interest and commitment to this incredible place.

Sincerely,

Richard H. Hart, MD, DrPH
President
Loma Linda University Health