It’s more difficult than ever to successfully compete for research funding these days, making the research funding announcements in this month’s issue of InterCOM all the more remarkable.
Medical center researchers in the College of Medicine garnered four major grants totaling more than $20 million in funding. Two of the grants will each bring $10 million to UNMC.
This is tremendously impressive and reflects the quality of our research enterprise, as well as the talent and outstanding work ethic of our investigators.
The first award is a successful competing renewal of the program project grant that addresses basic mechanisms of pathogenesis of infections caused by staphylococci and is led by Dr. Ken Bayles.
In order to have their grant renewed a research team must not only have been highly successful in accomplishing the goals of their initial award, but they have to have developed compelling new ideas and directions to further advance knowledge in the research area. Furthermore, the work of the individual projects must yield results that are more than the sum of the individual parts – a true team effort. This is not an easy task and Dr. Bayles and his team are to be congratulated for their success.
The second grant focuses on telemedicine. This is especially significant, as telemedicine promises to be extremely vital in the new world of health care.
As we have been repeatedly emphasizing over the past couple years, there is a paradigm shift taking place in health care. Instead of treating people just when they get sick, the ultimate goal is to keep people healthy and out of the hospital. That is one of the potential values of telemedicine.
This telemedicine grant is geared toward diabetes patients in urban Omaha. Using remote monitors, its goal is to allow us to identify diabetes-related problems in their early stages – before they become serious enough to require an ER visit or a hospital stay.
It’s a perfect example of what we are striving to do – provide the highest quality care at the lowest possible cost. My heartiest congratulations to the dozen or more members of the clinical enterprise involved in securing the grant.
Also in this issue, you will see that The Nebraska Medical Center fared quite well in the latest hospital rankings of U.S. News & World Report. Not only was The Nebraska Medical Center ranked as the No. 1 hospital in the state, but it also was ranked nationally in six different categories – cancer, nephrology, gastroenterology/GI surgery, neurology/neurosurgery, pulmonology and urology.
The hospital also performed well in six other specialties – cardiology/heart surgery, diabetes/endocrinology, ear/nose/throat, geriatrics, gynecology and orthopedics. Although the methodology used by U.S. News & World Report is subject to some criticism and skepticism, it nevertheless is used widely by the public as an important and influential factor in their medical decision-making. This year, the methodology used to calculate the rankings relied more heavily on objective data and less on “reputation” which will benefit rising programs such as ours.
As a final comment and thank you, we are looking forward to the transition to 24/7 trauma service on Aug. 1. We were recently site visited by a committee of experts as part of the application for state designation as a level 1 trauma center independent of our current partnership with CHI. I believe the visit went very well. We look forward to the final recommendations from the state.
Thanks to Dr. P.J. Schenarts, Julie Lazure and their enterprise-wide team for an outstanding effort in preparing for the site visit and the launch of 24/7 trauma service later this week. This is another great example of what a highly motivated, talented and effective team can accomplish.
In this hectic world, we are bombarded with new messages throughout the day. I encourage all of you to take a few minutes to read through InterCOM and learn more about the exciting things happening at our campus. I guarantee it will make you proud. I think you also will take away the increasing importance of successful teamwork in all of our key missions – research, education, and patient care.
Finally, take some time to enjoy the remaining weeks of summer.