Until this year it was highly unlikely that the University of South Florida and Ohio State University would show up in the same sentence. It might have taken a Bulls-Buckeyes matchup in a bowl game.
That all changed when Charles Lockwood, MD, former dean of OSU’s College of Medicine, signed on earlier this year as senior vice president of rapidly growing USF Health–as well as dean of the Morsani College of Medicine. Besides the College of Medicine, USF Health includes the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, the Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute, the Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), the colleges of Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy as well as the schools of Biomedical Sciences and Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Sciences. It’s that wide-ranging, that impacting.
Dr. Lockwood, internationally known for his research in obstetrics and gynecology, also oversees patient care provided through the USF Physicians Group.
It was a very important hire: for USF Health and for Tampa Bay health. Moreover, the key cog in USF Health is also a de facto economic-synergy honcho for the region.
As USF President Judy Genshaft put it, “Dr. Lockwood is not only an innovative medical educator, but he is an accomplished researcher and entrepreneurial thinker who will be a leader for our region, state and nation.”
Not surprising, one of Dr. Lockwood’s foremost priorities is addressing an issue that is as much about money as it is about medicine: the critical shortage of primary care doctors. Medical students, typically burdened with 6-figure med-school debt, are increasingly opting for better paying specialties.
This is a paradigm, in effect, that needs shattering–not shifting, says Dr. Lockwood. Better primary care–keeping people healthy and out of hospitals in the post fee-for-service era–is critical for America’s baseline health and pocketbook.
“The biggest single deterrent for students going into primary care is their level of debt,” underscores Dr. Lockwood. “It’s something I take personally.”
As a result, he is committed to reducing med school tuition and putting the arm on alumni to underwrite more scholarships. He has a track record for doing just that at OSU. He also wants to train tomorrow’s doctors to routinely weigh pricey drug-and-test needs against patients’ costs.
And USF Health’s new go-to doc is hardly averse to wearing a lobbyist’s hat for the right cause. For example, he thinks Florida’s medical schools need to work in concert to more forcefully make the case that this state’s political leaders really, really need to accept that $50 billion in federal Medicaid expansion funds.
“If I were a Tea Partier,” rhetorically asks Dr. Lockwood, “I’d have to say to myself: ‘Why is it Florida is sending its federal tax dollars to New York so they can expand Medicaid?'”
No, this is not the time for ivory tower MDs on college campuses. The envelopes of medicine, politics and economics need simultaneous pushing. Think Joseph Lister, Howard Dean and Sanjah Gupta.
And this just in: another reason to include USF and OSU in a sentence.
The Moffitt Cancer Center, the foremost component of USF Health, and the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center will be teaming up to create a mega database of patients for research. They will form the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network with the goal of developing more targeted treatments.
USF Health and OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center. How coincidental.