USC searching for senior vice president for health

The university has begun searching for a senior vice president for health, a new position that will involve overseeing the clinical aspects of USC’s academic medical center, ensuring the quality of treatment at the hospitals and helping to recruit more exceptional doctors.

In short, the senior vice president for health will work to increase the capacity of the university’s clinical operations, which include the Doctors of USC, USC CARE ­— an 800 number that allows patients to make appointments with USC doctors, the Norris Cancer Hospital and the USC University Hospital.

“There are a lot of pieces that need to be put together in order to make this enterprise successful, so having someone in charge is necessary,” said Dr. Peter Conti, president of faculty for the Keck School of Medicine.

The senior vice president for health will report directly to President C. L. Max Nikias, and work closely with Provost Elizabeth Garrett and Carmen Puliafito, dean of the Keck School of Medicine. The chief executive officer of USC Hospitals will report to the new senior vice president.

Nikias has formed a search committee for the position that includes Garrett, Senior Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer Robert Abeles, department chairs at the Keck School of Medicine and others. Nikias has also requested that Conti and representatives of the Keck faculty review the final candidates.

The committee is searching for candidates who are entrepreneurial, will establish connections, will work to make USC more attractive for research and are familiar with health care and biomedical sciences, according to Conti.

“This person needs to have a sense that everything we do is driven by academics,” Garrett said.

Nikias is also creating the Medical Enterprise Oversight Committee, which will be in charge of making decisions that will advance USC’s academic, clinical and research priorities.

The committee will be chaired by Garrett and will include the new senior vice president for health. The committee will seek to improve the university’s medical enterprise by training the future generation of doctors and medical professors, providing care in hospitals and providing top-notch research in translational sciences.

“Translational sciences are when you bring research out of the lab and into the bed of the patient,” Garrett said. “You bring the research out into the community.”

To allow the committee to do those things, the senior vice president for health will need to help bring in more revenue.

“We’re trying to increase the overall revenue available for the medical enterprise so we can provide more support for better facilities, research and for more medical students,” Abeles said.

Though the committee and the senior vice president for health won’t have a huge impact on the daily lives of the student body, there are positive opinions.

“I feel this initiative will make it good to stick with USC for graduate school if it brings about more research, connections and opportunities,” said Kunal Bhan, a sophomore majoring in neuroscience. “It would definitely make me want to stay at USC for medical school.”

Garrett, Abeles and Conti all hope to have a final candidate chosen by this summer.