MARCH 2005
Volume 29 • No. 3

Funds flow work group
recommends reimbursement plan

Dean Philip A. Pizzo in his Feb. 22 newsletter reports recommendations of a Medical Center Funds Flow Working Group charged with "reinvent[ing] the funds flow to better align SHC and the School of Medicine into a more integrated and functional relationship."

Proposals of the working group are currently being refined for potential implementation for the 2006 fiscal year, the dean said.

The group has recommended that SHC operate the inpatient and outpatient facilities, manage the revenue cycle, and pay the School (and hence faculty) for the professional services based on a formula derived from U.S. private practice compensation standards.

The recommendations were based on several "guiding principles" which the group adapted. These include:

- Align incentives.

- Be simple, formula driven, stable, predictable and transparent.

- Be inclusive of medical direction, essential services, program development, graduate medical education, profit sharing, and mission based funding.

- Support productivity and market-based compensation for physicians.

- Support financial sustainability for both SHC and the School of Medicine.

Members of the working group included Norman Rizk, senior associate dean for clinical affairs; Gerald Shefren, SHC vice president for ambulatory care; Michael Hindery, the medical school's senior associate dean for finance and administration; David Kiehn, SHC vice president for financial operations; Marcia Cohen, the medical school's assistant dean for fiscal affairs; and Robert Jackler, professor and chair of head and neck surgery.

The working group was augmented in January by four departmental chairs, including Thomas M. Krummel, surgery; Alfred T. Lane, dermatology; William Maloney, orthopedics; and Ronald G. Pearl, anesthesiology.

Courtesy of Dean Philip A. Pizzo's e-newsletter http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/02_22_05.html

Additional background available at: http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/ archive/04_14_03.html