'We need to focus on our core businesses'

As interim CEO of the Health System, Peter Traber hopes to resotre Penn to fiscal health. As interim CEO of the Health System, Peter Traber hopes to resotre Penn to fiscal health.The Daily Pennsylvanian · DP: What have you spent most of your time doing over the past three weeks? Peter Traber: I spend a lot of time communicating, letting people know about the change, about what it means in their particular situation, and to really tell everybody the mission and the core values of the School of Medicine and the Health System haven't changed with the change in leadership. The School of Medicine has been here for 250 years-- it's going to do OK even if we're having some problems right now in terms of financially. Everything is going great except for the bottom line of some of the Health System things. DP: What do you think you can accomplish in this position that Kelley was unable to do? PT: It would be premature for me to set out what my impact is going to be separate from what Dr. Kelley's impact has been.? I think it's important for everybody to remember that the decade of the '90s in the School of Medicine and Health System is maybe the most prolific and important one in our history. I've taken some time to read the history of the School of Medicine and, if you look at the entire history, you know, every institution has ups and downs, but the 1990s would be a pinnacle of the School of Medicine and it's Bill Kelley's vision that helped develop that. I think you have to look at the overall, big picture of what's happened. DP: Could you speak about the trouble Penn is facing with respect to gene therapy? PT: Suffice it to say that there is nothing more important than to protect all the rights and the health of the individuals who are going to volunteer to be part of the study. And that means making sure that the study is designed properly, that everybody is involved in it and that there's auditing of the study as it goes along to make sure that all the rules are being kept and so forth. There is no substitute for doing that exactly right. I think that there is, in any clinical research endeavor, the possibility that things could be done improperly, either innocently or otherwise. And I think we need to make sure that we have the systems in place to identify those things and make sure that we get on top of them. DP: At what point do you, or the people above you, say that the costs of a continued association with James Wilson and the Institute for Human Gene Therapy outweigh the benefits? PT: I can assure you that every single claim, or every single complaint, whether it comes from externally or internally, about the gene therapy institute or the trials is going to be looked into very carefully by both the School of Medicine, the Health System and the University. There's going to be no cutting corners there. DP: Your predecessor focused much of his tenure on the expansion of the Health System, under the belief that integration of different aspects of health care delivery would make the entire system stronger. Do you share his vision of integration? PT: Well, I think the answer to that is that we need to focus on our core businesses and core assets, both here at the medical center. And that's critical that we focus on that?. The idea of an integrated academic health system is not, at its fundamental, flawed. It is a robust concept of integrating care across all of the times of life and all of the possible problems that you would have?. So I, fundamentally, agree with the concept of an integrated health system. I think that you have to then overlay, though, some of the realities of life in the year 2000, and that is that some of the information systems that we have and can afford are not necessarily up to the quality that we need to do that?. You have to also consider the marketplace and how we get reimbursed for our services, and what the competition is in the region. You have to consider other health systems and competition. You have to consider the communities that you're serving?. So the short answer is, 'Yes I believe in an integrated health system.' And I think it is going to be how we practice medicine. [We] are going to need to be flexible and based in the realities of the marketplace. DP: Dr. Kelley was also a believer in close ties between the Health System and the Medical School. How do you view the relationship? PT: The integration between what we do at this medical center and what we do at the School of Medicine -- just attached by bridges -- is so important that I think we have to get more and more aligned in that than farther apart. I think that if you completely separate a healthcare delivery system from a school of medicine you then set up a constant period of negotiations between the two that will take up 20, or 30 percent or 40 percent of the effort in the two sides to kind of keep everybody on the same page. I think that you need to have that integration to really get things done?. That doesn't mean that the School of Medicine has to be everywhere in the Health System. But it definitely has to be overlapping and interlinked in a way that aligns all of the centers. DP: Could you talk a little bit about the role of David Hunter and the Hunter Group at UPHS? PT: David Hunter and the major person who was here during the Hunter Group engagement, Dan Stickler, are consultants to me as the CEO?. If I and the executive directors of various parts of the Health System feel that they'll be helpful in any way, then we'll ask additional individuals from the Hunter Group to come in and help us. DP: Are there plans for further cuts in the workforce? PT: We have no plans for further cuts in the workforce. There's no plans for that. DP: Where do you see the future of cost reductions? PT: Well, resource utilization in the hospitals. You know, doing things more efficiently and effectively. There is a lot of opportunity for that.