Why Cigarroa?

December 11, 2008

What!

University of Texas regents have narrowed their search for a new chancellor to two San Antonio finalists — AT&T executive John Montford and Francisco Cigarroa, outgoing president of the UT Health Science Center, sources said Wednesday.

Why would Cigarroa be considered?

UT regents focus on 2 from S.A.

Under his leadership, the health science center’s budget almost doubled from $351 million in 2000 to $668 million this year. Research grew from an $84 million enterprise to $210 million.

Okay, if the only purspose of the chancellor is to raise money, maybe there’s something there. But surely he didn’t go out and raise that money all by himself? I’m pretty sure there were some researchers involved using their connections to get grants and funding.

Ahhh, but he set the atmosphere to make it all happen. Is this the same atmosphere that has generated a culture of “silo” thinking and petty turf battles at the Health Science Center? That’s going to be a great way to effectively use increasingly scarce resources.

Is it the leadership that has allowed “Fort Bratten” to flourish where police priorities when merging with a new organization are to identify speeders and replace all locks without providing keys to the necessary personnel?

Is this why Cigarroa stepped down as president? Not because the new Medical Arts and Research Center facility (the MARC) is being built based on wildly unrealistic assumptions on the number of patients that will be seen? Before the regents make their decision, they should really get someone to look at the projections for the MARC’s operations.

And then just wait until it opens. The powers that be at the UTHSCSA proved that they have no clue how to run a clinical enterprise in their continuing mishandling of the “merger” of CTRC. The silo mentality hasn’t yet been able to comprehend that patients are involved in research projects as well as the clinical side–the two sides are not separate entities. This is reflected in all the administrative procedures that are designed to deal with department research rather than real clinical practices.

This is the person that allowed the excuse, “sorry, that’s UT System policy” when procedures were questioned rather than admit that it was UTHSCSA policy and therefore they could do something about it if they wanted to. I do believe this falls under the atmosphere created or tolerated (does it really matter which?) by Cigarroa.

I don’t have a clue about the other candidate, John Montford. But I do know that who ever the new chancellor is will have to work hard to increase cooperation between the various elements of the UT System to maximize available resources and Cigarroa hasn’t demonstrated that ability.

Francisco Cigarroa, University of Texas Chancellor, UT Health Science Center San Antonio, UTHSCSA