The Georgetown University Medical Center announced March 25 that its Strategic Planning Initiative, which aims to create guidelines for improving the medical center’s education and research programs as well as patient care, has entered its implementation design phase.
Led by Dr. Howard Federoff, executive dean of the School of Medicine, the initiative began last April, and hopes to start fully implementing its plan by the fall of 2009.
GUMC has experienced reduced government funding for research since 2005 and increased costs of research, according to Andrew Deubler, vice president for planning and enterprise development at GUMC. One of the goals of SPI is to create an organization that works to use GUMC funds in the most efficient manner possible.
“Our Strategic Planning Initiative is designed to create a more efficient organization and ensure a financially viable future; foster a more collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment; strengthen and enhance our educational programs; and continually improve our clinical partnership with MedStar Health,” Deubler said in an e-mail.
The Strategic Planning Initiative is composed of committees of faculty and staff from the Georgetown medical community. For each design phase, multiple design teams are formed to help create guidelines. After the committees have completed the plan, their recommendations will be presented to University President John J. DeGioia and the Committee on Medical Center Affairs.
SPI recently launched a Web site that provides information on current progress and future plans. According to Deubler, this Web site will allow the public to access news and updates on SPI and provide opportunities for others to become involved in the process.
According to the Web site, the first phase of the SPI was completed in December of 2008. In this phase, design teams made recommendations on how to carry out the new plans for GUMC. These recommendations included calls for better communication between administration and faculty. The Organization Design Team suggested a new structure for the medical center that will allow for more collaboration on research and education and growth in those areas.
According to the GUMC Web site, the guidelines for the medical center, which were developed last month by the design team, should be completed by this summer, when they can be presented to university administration for approval.
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