New corporation to reorganize Wake Forest medical school, subsidiaries
The Wake Forest University Board of Trustees has created a new corporation, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, as a wholly owned non-profit subsidiary of the university.
Richard Dean, M.D., senior vice president for health affairs of Wake Forest, has been appointed president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences. The new corporation will include Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a number of other operations: co-ownership of Wake Forest University Baptist Behavioral Health (formerly Charter Hospital), ownership of One Technology Place downtown, ownership of ten dialysis centers throughout the region, and Amos Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital.
The creation of the new corporation “simply formalizes the way we do business,” said Wake Forest President Thomas K. Hearn Jr. “The medical school administration has for a long time managed the medical enterprise for the university.”
Wake Forest University Health Sciences will have its own board of directors. An eight-member Health Affairs Committee of the Wake Forest Board of Trustees now oversees the medical school. These eight trustees will constitute the core of the subsidiary board, which can have up to 13 additional members.
The larger board is needed because of the size and complexity of medical school functions: educating and training 1,500 students, residents, fellows and allied health students, a budget approaching $500 million, a research enterprise with more than $100 million in grants annually, more than 70 satellite clinics in numerous communities and more than 700 faculty and 4,000 other employees.
“Providing oversight for all of these activities was a large task for a small group of trustees,” said Dean. “The new board can more easily govern the entirety of the medical school’s activities.”
The Wake Forest University Board will elect the directors of the new corporation and will approve the budget and any major actions taken by the subsidiary board.
Hearn, as president of the university, will be an officer of Wake Forest University Health Sciences, and the person responsible for appointing the president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences. Hearn also has the responsibility to assure that Wake Forest University Health Sciences continues to be an integral part of the university, according to the resolution approved by the University Trustees on Oct. 5.
Under the new structure, the dean of the medical school will report to the president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences, although appointment of the dean will involve both the university president and the health sciences president. The dean will serve at the pleasure of the president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences and the president of the university.
The medical school faculty will continue to be part of the Wake Forest University faculty and the degrees from all the graduate and professional programs of the school of medicine will continue to be awarded by the university.
(At Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, contact Robert Conn, Jim Steele or Mark Wright at 336-716-4587.)
