Commitment to Excellence
The mission of an academic institution is ...
The Medical College of Wisconsin is ...
Opportunity and challenge await us in the 21st century.
Improving health involves more than merely providing care.
New challenges face us in the future.
This strateic plan defines our commitment ...
Inspired leadership, innovation, resourcefulness ...
The planning process ...
The mission of an academic institution is to advance knowledge and transfer that knowledge to others. At the Medical College of Wisconsin, we apply these principles to the improvement of human health by staying on the leading edge of scientific discovery, translating these discoveries into clinical practice, providing outstanding educational programs, bringing expert, compassionate care to patients, and collaborating with the community to improve the overall well-being of our citizens.
The Medical College of Wisconsin is a private, freestanding academic institution,
unfettered by a large bureaucracy, strongly committed to academic freedom, and proud of our entrepreneurial heritage. Our continued success is intertwined with that of our affiliated partners, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Froedtert Hospital, Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Blood Research Institute.
Our academic programs attract distinguished clinicians and scientists to our faculty and exceptional students, residents, fellows, and postdoctoral fellows. This provides a dynamic academic environment in which the best scientific evidence is delivered at the patient's bedside, strengthening our ability to advance the quality and effectiveness of health care to improve the lives of our patients.
Our goal is to be the medical school where the quality and efficacy of medical care is analyzed and enhanced with a precision that is unsurpassed.
Opportunity and challenge await us in the 21st century. The enormous investment in science that occurred in the last half-century has led us into a new millennium that holds unforeseeable promise in the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and healing of human disease. Discoveries in biomedical research will continue to amaze us as new principles of molecular medicine and science, supported by rapid developments in technology, are put into practice.
Advances in medical care have transformed the environment in which we practice medicine. New sciences have evolved that examine and improve how we deliver health care, including health outcomes research, quality improvement research, and error reduction research. They hold the promise of increasing the value and quality of the health care we deliver.
The rapid pace of change presents opportunities, accompanied by responsibilities, across all of our missions. The challenges are immense, and require us to respond to continuous transformations in science, technology, and the regulatory and societal landscape. New discoveries are expanding the ability of health care providers to treat diseases that were previously untreatable and alleviate suffering.
Innovative therapies have allowed us to more effectively treat most cancers, congenital heart disease, HIV/AIDS, inflammatory bowel disease, and many types of arthritis. Organ transplantation is routine in major academic medical centers. The partnership between biotechnology and medicine has led to new approaches to joint replacement, stroke management, and heart failure, to name a few. These advances have occurred as a direct result of the biomedical research continuum that begins at the "bench" with basic research, transitions to a clinical application, moves into clinical trials and ends with a new treatment protocol.
Improving health involves more than merely providing care. Knowledge beyond the biomedical sciences has become increasingly important for health care providers to master: improving quality and ensuring the safety of care, promoting health and preventing disease, effectively utilizing technology, and functioning efficiently in a complex health care environment are all critical components in patient care.
There is a growing understanding of the important role that a healthy lifestyle, environment and genetics have on one's well-being. Our challenge is to translate this knowledge into an improved understanding of the barriers to healthy lifestyles, the role of genetics and health status, and the causes, prevention, and treatment of disease.
New challenges face us in the future. There is a projected shortage of physicians at a time when a decreasing number of students are interested in pursuing a career in science. We have a rapidly aging population that will require considerable health care resources and we face increasingly complex medical needs of patients accompanied by accelerating health care costs.
The rapid pace of discovery in biomedical research and technology and the changing environment of health care delivery demands we create new ways to prepare our students and trainees. We must train and support them for life-long learning. We must teach them to manage a rapidly expanding body of information, comprehend new sciences, and participate in inter and multidisciplinary teams.
Additionally, the legal and regulatory environment will increasingly influence our operations. We must develop and implement appropriate safeguards as new concerns or issues arise and integrate this information into our training programs to ensure our graduates are equipped to practice proper compliance as they enter their professional careers.
This strategic plan defines our commitment to explore innovative ways to accelerate biomedical discoveries, improve patient care, enrich education and training, and provide the broad outreach that measurably impacts the health of our community.
The Medical College of Wisconsin is in a unique stewardship position to address the health needs of our state. In 2004, the College received approximately $300 million from the proceeds of Blue Cross and Blue Shield United of Wisconsin's conversion to a for-profit entity. The proceeds are invested in an endowment fund that will allow the College to play a key role in the development of research, educational programs, and community partnerships to improve the health of Wisconsin's citizens. The endowment funds, disbursed through the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Program (AHW), are used according to its five-year plan which incorporates the College's strategic plan and will propel our vision of integrating medicine and public health.
Philanthropy, often referred to as "the margin of excellence", will also play a critical role in the advancement of our strategic objectives by:
- increasing endowed and expendable funds to strengthen the College's ability to recruit and retain outstanding faculty, upon whom the excellence of our programs depend;
- attracting outstanding medical and graduate students by providing additional scholarships, low interest loans, educational support; and
- enhancing existing multidisciplinary Centers of Excellence, which coalesce research, teaching, and patient care around focused health care problems and diseases.
Inspired leadership, innovation, resourcefulness, creativity and collaboration will distinguish the Medical College of Wisconsin in the 21st century. We will realize our vision of a healthier tomorrow by developing a seamless transformation of scientific discoveries to the care we deliver. The College's resources and philanthropy, coupled with the education and research funding from the AHW Program, will have a measurable impact on our ability to accomplish our goals.
We rely on the talents that each individual brings to the College every day – from investigators who take us into the new frontiers of science, to the physicians and staff who translate these discoveries into clinical applications to provide the most effective care to our patients, and to all members of the College who ultimately use the knowledge we create to make a difference in the well-being of people worldwide. We are not simply teachers of the works of others, but active contributors to what is thought, taught, and practiced.
The planning process for the Medical College's 2007–2012 strategic plan began in early 2006 with the distribution of a strategic planning survey to all faculty, staff, students and trainees. The survey gathered their thoughts on which strategic directions from the current plan should continue and which ones should be considered in the new plan. Nearly 20 percent of those polled responded to the survey.
The plan was developed by four strategic planning task forces: Education, Clinical Practice, Public and Community Health, and Research; reporting to a 10-member Steering Committee, chaired by Dean Dunn. The Steering Committee included senior leadership of the College and the Immediate Past Chairman of the College's Board of Trustees. Charged with oversight of the planning process, the committee's responsibilities included guiding the task forces' deliberations and reviewing and synthesizing the task force reports into a final draft of the plan.
The task forces comprised more than 80 department chairmen, senior and junior faculty members, administrative staff, and students. The initial survey responses, along with specific charges from Dean Dunn, formed the foundation for task force deliberations. The task forces also considered trends in medical and graduate school education, patient care, the conduct of biomedical research, and community partnerships in the development of the College's new strategic directions. The task forces met over a four-month period. Task force chairmen met periodically with the Steering Committee to review and receive comments on the task forces' progress and recommended strategies.
In fall 2006, an initial draft of the 2007-2012 strategic plan was posted on the College's internal web site for review and comment by all faculty, staff, students and trainees. An updated draft was reviewed by the College's Board of Trustees at its November 2006 retreat. The final plan was presented to and endorsed by the Executive Committee of the Faculty and the Faculty Council, with final approval by the Medical College of Wisconsin Board of Trustees.
The strategic actions in this document do not include specific formulas. Rather, they provide the framework for subsequent tactical decisions and implementation. The major benefits of the plan will accrue when it is put into operation. The further development, prioritization, and implementation of these strategic initiatives will be pursued through
the establishment of Implementation Teams and an Implementation Council, chaired by
the Dean.
Reporting to the Implementation Council and working from the detailed task force reports, the Implementation Teams will organize and track the progress toward accomplishing our strategic initiatives. The Dean will annually report on progress made in achieving the plan's initiatives.
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