Abstract
Providing a research environment that entwines new medical knowledge with education, training, and clinical care is one of the most important things a medical school can do to improve human health. With new regulations governing compliance with effort reporting on grants, expenditure timing, conflicts of interest, model systems, and clinical trials, research administration has become increasingly more costly, requires specialized knowledge, and can no longer languish without expectations of high-level performance. While our school of medicine is built around a responsibility-centered budget with the university, several years ago we migrated individual units in the school from responsibility-centered budgeting to one where appropriations are made from the dean's office in service of larger academic goals. Many of our units were realigned under new management structures using pods or groupings for research administration to both maximize cost-effectiveness and take advantage of cross-trained administrative talent. We also adopted new management metrics based on transparent data. The most promising approach to growing and managing the research enterprise is wisely investing resources to meet the long-range financial plan of the school and configure that plan to support the goals of the university. In our experience, these objectives are best met through a targeted appropriations model that feeds the intellectual curiosity of faculty in service of our trainees and patients.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Transformation of Academic Health Centers |
| Subtitle of host publication | Meeting the Challenges of Healthcare's Changing Landscape |
| Publisher | Elsevier Inc |
| Pages | 149-158 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780128010044 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780128007624 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 7 2015 |
Funding
At Feinberg, like many other schools of medicine, our approach to effective research management began with the restructuring of the financial model between the medical school and the central administration of the university. Prior to 2001, the school was on an appropriated financial model, where the university center provided a net expense budget or appropriation to the medical school and retained nearly all revenues. The main income and expense components of research—indirect cost recovery, faculty and staff salary expenses, and research facilities space costs—were managed and funded by the university. Several of the school’s clinical departments were allowed to supplement this support with their excess clinical revenues. This, however, did not occur that often, and doing so invited the university administration to reduce departmental appropriations in subsequent years.
Keywords
- Research administration
- Research metrics
- Research models
- Research space
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine
