Interesting Info about Memphis VA Hospital

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http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/busines...871809,00.html VA hospital chief sets retirement
Mulholland improved quality

By Mark Watson
watson@gomemphis.com
April 8, 2003

New buildings and awards have marked Kenneth L. Mulholland Jr.'s 17-plus years as director and chief executive of Memphis Veterans Medical Center, which will end on May 3.

But perhaps his proudest achievement at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs facility was when - after much coaxing and prodding - his medical staff acknowledged that to improve patient results, they must integrate their specialties under an individual patient's primary care physician at the VA.

"When I arrived here in 1985, the VA health system at the medical center traditionally was oriented to inpatient healthcare," Mulholland said.

This meant a single specialist mainly treated a patient's specific problem.

"Very quickly, we began to identify some very vexing problems in the lack of continuity of care," Mulholland said. "One physician didn't know what the other specialist was doing with the patient. That's bad medicine. The patient was the one who was suffering."

Mulholland came to Memphis from the Bronx VA Medical Center, where he had tried to implement a system that integrated specialties under a single primary care doctor.

So when the Memphis VA medical leadership finally acknowledged that such an integrated system could work, Mulholland said, "I thought, 'Thank God, they said it.' "

Memphis Veterans Medical Center employs about 2,000 people and has an annual budget of about $200 million. During Mulholland's tenure, the center got a new hospital and closed a skilled nursing home unit.

Mulholland's imminent retirement may not mark the end of his work with Memphis's medical community.

"We came to Memphis with the idea that we were going to plant roots here," said Mulholland, originally from Chicago.

Therefore, he plans to retire here and is interested in helping the Medical Center Alliance develop its institutions into something that leads the region in health care quality.

"We are collaborating very closely to enhance quality of patient care in the university and the Downtown Medical Center, and for us to become the benchmarks for quality healthcare delivery for the rest of the Memphis regional healthcare community," Mulholland said.

Quality improvement is an area of deep interest for Mulholland, who helped his organization win the Greater Memphis Award for Quality in 1997. In 1998, Memphis Veterans Medical Center received the state's second-highest award for quality.

Mulholland said these events were among his proudest moments.

"You need things like that, as you are driving your staff to keep at these time-consuming tasks, looking for opportunities for improvement," he said. "Whenever you get one of these recognitions, it gives the staff a shot in the arm, that we'll keep on our journey for quality."

The Greater Memphis Association for Quality will announce award winners today.

Bill Rice, executive director of the University Medical Center Alliance, said, "The health care improvement program at the VA Medical Center is just outstanding."

Jim Gibb Johnson, interim chancellor of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, said Mulholland "has been very helpful to the quality of the Medical Center."

Memphis economic developers promote the area as the Memphis BioWorks, a place where biomedical research and industry are strong and growing.

More than $15 million worth of research is done at Memphis Veterans Medical Center in fields such as infectious disease, cancer, heart disease and arthritis.

"Out of the 164 VA medical centers, the research program here at Memphis consistently ranks near the top in the number of investigators and number of funded studies," Mulholland said.

Dr. Andy Kang, UT Health Science Center professor and director of the Research Center of Excellence on Connective Tissue Disease, said Mulholland has helped improve patient care and research by supporting the VA's research mission and making the staff-sharing arrangement between the VA and UT "work a lot smoother."

Mulholland finds the state's plan to cut funding for the UT Health Science Center particularly troubling for Memphis's bioscience future.

"In order for a research program to be successful, you need to attract a very high caliber of scientist," he said. "Scientists are attracted to a particular geography based upon the available collaborators there. Also, they're looking for a very strong academic base, because that's where they get a lot of their technicians and assistants in research."