Harry Jacobson Md Begin Again Now
The Jacobson Legacy
Vanderbilt Academy Medical Center was at a critical turning betoken in 1997 when a 50-year-former nephrologist and health care entrepreneur named Harry Jacobson, K.D., took over every bit CEO.
His predecessor, the legendary Roscoe "Ike" Robinson, Grand.D., had led the Medical Center through a major growth spurt. But now, because of dwindling reimbursement nether Medicare, Medicaid and managed care, "the operating margins for the clinical enterprise were pretty thin," Jacobson recalled. The first imperative was to cut costs and negotiate better reimbursement rates. That wouldn't be enough, however, to preserve and strengthen VUMC's three missions: patient care, education and inquiry. Then Jacobson, a farsighted doc-scientist who's as comfortable in the corporate lath room as he is in the laboratory, pursued an aggressive, multi-pronged strategy that tin be summed upwardly in one discussion: growth. "Growth is just the right affair to exercise," he told Vanderbilt'due south student newspaper, The Hustler. "The research done in academic centers will determine the future of health care." Jacobson, now 61, retired in June after achieving much of what he gear up out to accomplish. VUMC not but weathered what he dubbed a "financial perfect storm," but its growth since so has been nothing short of astonishing.
During the past 12 years that Jacobson served as the university'southward vice chancellor for Health Diplomacy, almanac enquiry funding quadrupled to more than $400 million. VUMC's performance exceeded expectations by nearly every measure – annual cyberspace revenue, the number of kinesthesia and staff, space for research and patient intendance, and national rankings.
"Nosotros're on the cusp of true greatness," said Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., manager of the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology. "In proteomics, in chemical biological science, in drug discovery, in clinical translation, we're major players in all of that."
"Vanderbilt is now viewed nationally equally the academic center that is moving the fastest in terms of steps toward more constructive science, toward more effective wellness care," added Vanderbilt's information science guru, Neb Stead, M.D., who chairs the Centre for Better Health. "We're at that stepping stone. Hopefully, nosotros will deport forward and finish it."
What is information technology well-nigh this out-of-the-box thinker that fabricated Jacobson such an effective leader?
When asked to name his greatest strengths and near enduring legacy, his colleagues more often than not point to his people skills rather than to the bricks and mortar he leaves backside.
Harry Jacobson relaxing in his office; enjoying the VUSM start-year orientation with colleagues; hosting the State of the Medical Center address.
"In spite of all his outward success, information technology is what is inside of him that makes him so special – his character, generosity, high standards, personal warmth," said Thomas Burish, Ph.D., provost of the University of Notre Dame, who served as Vanderbilt Provost from 1993 to 2002.
"Harry knows the value of reasoned positions, financial projections, information and effect metrics, benchmarking, and all the approaches that our era values," Burish continued. "But he also knows that no appeal is stronger than one built upon candor, conviction, fairness, personal relationships and cadre principles."
"He'southward an inspiring leader," added Joe B. Wyatt, Vanderbilt's chancellor from 1982 to 2000. "He supports his people at all levels. He doesn't undercut them … and he's certainly willing to stand up for what is right."
Jacobson admitted that he has the ability to "energize people." But he added quickly, "I don't like people to make a commotion over me. It embarrasses me a little bit … I feel like I'grand expected to do well, and if I do the correct thing and I practice well, so I've washed what I'm supposed to do. It's not something special."
Jacobson's view of the earth was forged in the band-aid neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where he grew up. Born outside of Munich in 1947, he emigrated with his parents, Rudy and Lisa, and his 3 siblings when he was 4.
His father had been drafted into the German army during the war and survived a Soviet prisoner-of-war campsite. In his adopted state he became an accountant, ultimately retiring every bit master tax accountant for Amoco. He challenged his children to practise well academically. Jacobson said his parents, who died in 1996, "were very, very proud and supportive of their children."
The children in their integrated neighborhood were another matter. Jacobson remembers how they picked on his older brothers because they couldn't speak English when they offset enrolled in public school. But rather than angering or frightening him, the experience taught him tolerance. "I just view people as people," he said. "Prejudice is something I have no room for."
The only member of his family to go to medical schoolhouse, Jacobson earned his G.D. from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1972, and met his wife, Jan, in the laboratory when he started his nephrology fellowship at the University of Texas Health Scientific discipline Eye in Dallas.
Jacobson was recruited to Vanderbilt in 1985. Within a decade he had moved upward to the executive suite as deputy vice chancellor for Wellness Affairs.
Forth the way, he held more than than $1.5 million in active grant back up, published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and a textbook on kidney disease, served on and chaired national informational committees, and explored the corporate side of medicine through such companies as Nashville's Renal Intendance Group, which he co-founded.
All that prepared him for the one thousand challenge he gear up for himself and his squad when he became vice chancellor – to transform VUMC into the "No. 1 wellness system" in Centre Tennessee.
VUMC employed several strategies to accomplish the goal. Information technology forged strategic partnerships with physician groups in Williamson County, established the multi-specialty Vanderbilt Medical Group, expanded fundamental service lines like cancer and middle disease, raised the bar on philanthropy (a motion that made possible the establishment of a freestanding children's infirmary), improved both the system's financial performance and its focus on customer service, and launched branding and advertising campaigns.
It wasn't only well-nigh competition for patients and health intendance dollars. Jacobson – and those who subscribed to his vision – realized that a thriving clinical operation was essential to growing the Medical Middle's research enterprise, and to attracting top-notch kinesthesia and students.
"We owe a lot of our ability to grow as a inquiry enterprise … to the growth of the infirmary and the clinics," Marnett said. "It has been the engine that has driven it."
Growing the clinical functioning was one of the prongs of Jacobson's strategy. Another was the employ of venture capital to encourage development and commercialization of intellectual property.
In 1999, Jacobson helped plant the $10 1000000 "Chancellor'south Fund," which, in conjunction with the university's engineering transfer office, helped launch 18 companies. A later version, the Academic Venture Capital Fund, nurtured cross-institutional projects including the institutes of Chemical Biology and Imaging Science.
While commercialization in the academic world can raise concerns nearly conflicts of interest, that wasn't a trouble for Jacobson, say those who know him well.
"He is 1 of the nearly ethical individuals you'll e'er come up across," said Thomas Cigarran, chairman of the Nashville-based illness management company, Healthways Inc., who has worked with Jacobson on the Nashville Health Care Council.
"Was he pushing the university to innovate more?" Cigarran connected. "Admittedly. Just it was never a existent conflict of interest."
(left to correct) U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, Martha Ingram, Jim Shmerling, Monroe Carell Jr., and Harry Jacobson lead the ribbon cutting anniversary at the opening of the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in December 2003.
Entrepreneur is not the only label i tin can apply to Jacobson. Visionary is another.
Jacobson believes that wellness care reform tin can be achieved by a "bottom-up" approach, driven by academic medical centers.
"In that location are other alternative approaches to addressing the health care bug in this country than endlessly pushing reimbursement cuts," he told federal officials in 1999.
"The technology required to improve the quality and cost efficiency of health care in this country is available. It's called clinical judgment, testify-based practice, disease management and disease prevention."
Biomedical informatics has been both an bookish discipline and an integral part of VUMC's clinical operations since the early 1990s. In a sense, the unabridged Medical Eye has been a laboratory, a demonstration project for the power and potential of health information technology to ameliorate wellness outcomes that has attracted national, and fifty-fifty international, attention.
"When the president flies to Nashville but to inspect that kind of figurer system (every bit George W. Bush did in 2004), you know that it has influence beyond Vanderbilt," Cigarran said.
Although Jacobson handed over the reins of the Medical Center to Medical School dean Jeff Balser, K.D., Ph.D., in June, he said he will find other ways to contribute.
"I dear wellness intendance. I love science. I honey the business organization world. And I think the blend of science, health care and business concern to really ameliorate the lives of people is a lot of fun," he said. "I'll go on to do it."
Nonetheless, Jacobson's retirement, announced March 30 in the midst of the well-nigh severe economic crunch since the Nifty Depression, has acquired dismay and consternation in some quarters of the Medical Center.
Marnett, for one, isn't worried near the transition. Balser is "a very smart guy" with "a huge corporeality of free energy," he said. "He'south going to exercise really well."
Stead, too, is optimistic. "Fifty-fifty in this environment it is within our reach to execute on where Harry got us," he said, "in terms of loftier operation, in terms of impact, in terms of caring …
"But nosotros will really have to be skillful."
Source: https://vm.newsarchive.vumc.org/?article=7356
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