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TGH, Not USF, Leading The Way

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By JAMES NORMAN and DOUGLAS POLITZ Special To The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 3, 2008

We read with interest your position that the University of South Florida should be leveraged in an attempt to "enhance the stature of our region" by creating one of the nation's best hospitals. Unfortunately, it seems you haven't really been paying as close attention to this situation as you want to imply in your editorial ("To Grow Ranks Of 'Best Hospitals' Region Must Leverage USF's Assets," Commentary, July 27).

You are quite correct to point out that Tampa General was listed as a "Top U.S. Hospital" in seven different categories in U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of the best hospitals in the country. For this, Tampa General and its employees deserve tremendous accolades. We contend that your assessment of why and how this has come to be may be a bit off base. Possibly way off base.

We have been on the surgical staff in one form or another at Tampa General for a combined 30 years, dating back to 1986. We've been affiliated with USF for a combined 18 years, including nine years on the USF faculty as professor of surgery and internal medicine. We currently admit nearly 1,800 patients annually to Tampa General for surgical procedures. It is from this point of reference we would like to help you and your readership understand a little more about the expertise at Tampa General, and from where it emanates.

You are correct in pointing out that Tampa General's expertise in orthopedics is due to private practice surgeons who have little or no connection to USF. Interestingly, this large orthopedic group was a part of USF for many years, but for various reasons decided to break the bonds with USF and begin practicing medicine without the confines of the university system while still taking great care of patients at Tampa General.

They could have chosen to take their patients to St. Joseph's Hospital or University Community Hospital, but they did not. The bottom line was that Tampa General provided the leadership and ancillary services that allowed this group to be successful. These services were in no way tied to USF; rather, it was Tampa General that provided the environment for excellence.

While it is true that the past few years have seen an increase in the number of areas of expertise at Tampa General that are recognized as the best in the United States, your assumption that this increase is attributed to the hard work of the administration of USF medical school and its "high octane" dean is only partially correct.

The phenomenon of excellent physicians and surgeons leaving the USF faculty while continuing to practice medicine at Tampa General is not isolated to orthopedics. In fact, two other areas of excellence recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the best in the United States (endocrinology and head and neck surgery) are the results of private practice physicians nearly exclusively.

You may find it most interesting that the physicians who have made head and neck surgery endocrinology so successful at Tampa General have all been professors at USF in the past and decided to leave the confines of the university.

Just like our colleagues working on broken bones, we decided to continue taking our patients to Tampa General rather than move our practices to another local hospital. Our reason was the same: The leadership of Tampa General provided us and our patients with the best nursing and other ancillary services that allowed us to provide some of the best medical care in the country.

In the interest of fairness to your readership don't you think you should have mentioned that USF has lost more residency training programs in the past three years than it has gained? There are 10,000 or so operations being performed at Tampa General annually, none of them being used to train anesthesiologists. None being used to train USF orthopedic residents. The list goes on and on.

Your admiration for USF health care leadership is interesting given the fact that Moffitt Cancer Center - sitting on the USF campus - has recently dissolved itself of its relationship with USF in order to join forces with the University of Florida in Gainesville. Yep, your point of "branding" the local hospital's affiliation with the local medical school is driven home quite well when we may be soon referring to Tampa's great cancer hospital as the "Moffitt Cancer Center at the University of Florida" (no longer South Florida).

If the doctors who are at the center of "excellence" you so desire have not embraced USF Health as the center of our medical universe, how can we expect the leadership of our community or even the patients of our region to embrace this concept? Perhaps the problem is bigger than you perceive.

James Norman and Douglas Politz are Tampa surgeons.

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