UT to tap next head of MD Anderson
University of Texas System regents are expected Friday to tap MD Anderson Cancer Center’s next president, who will be tasked with bringing the elite Houston hospital out of fiscal and cultural crises and navigating the complexities of a changing health care landscape.
The regents will select the next president for what arguably is the nation’s top job in cancer research and treatment at a specially called meeting in Austin, where they will go behind doors to interview finalists and deliberate. The finalists were winnowed down by an 18-member search committee earlier this month.
“The cancer center is very excited at the prospect of a new leader,” said Dr. Stephen Hahn, MD Anderson’s chief
operating officer. “We’re looking forward to having new leadership establish new directions for the institution.”
The regents are expected to vote Friday to select a “sole finalist,” whose deal cannot be finalized under state law for at least 21 days. The person selected will become just the fifth president in the 76-year history of MD Anderson.
The selection will cap a search process marked by great secrecy and quick work. No finalists’ names have leaked, and the search committee wrapped up its work in less than three months, about half the time academic searches typically take.
The new president will succeed Dr. Ronald DePinho, who resigned in March after years of tumult. His 5 ½-year-long presidency began with high ambitions and a “Moon Shots” initiative to dramatically improve the treatment of difficult cancers but soon became mired in faculty unrest and conflict of interest questions regarding his drug company ties and attempted influence of grant awards. It hit a breaking point more recently, after heavy financial losses led to layoffs and a system audit found serious financial irregularities in its project to enlist IBM supercomputer Watson in the Moon Shots program.
The institution has made significant financial improvement since the January layoffs, getting its operating margins into the black on a year-to-date basis last month for the first time since January 2016. Last fall, Hahn had warned fellow leaders that the center was on track to lose as much as $450 million in the current fiscal year if it did not gain control of its finances.
Experts said it will be a challenge for the new MD Anderson president to sustain that improvement.
“MD Anderson may have solved their shortterm budget problems but they haven’t solved their long-term financial problems,” said Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C. “How are they going to balance their clinical and research portfolios? How does the new president fit in financial commitments made under DePinho with his or her own strategic vision? Where will additional patients come from?”
Vivian Ho, a health care economist at Rice University, said “it’s nice to see” MD Anderson’s financial improvement, but added that “cost pressures will be a continual challenge for whoever takes the helm,” Among those pressures, she said, are “employers pushing more of their payment burden to insured workers and sometimes choosing to remove highcost providers like MD Anderson.”
Hahn agreed that sustaining the fiscal improvement will be a challenge, but said he was happy the center was able to provide a stronger foundation than seven months ago, when it was $169 million in the hole. He said there’s “definitely room” for the new leader to set new directions and fund MD Anderson’s academic mission.