CARROLLTON -- The University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson is a growing, dynamic institution with a proud legacy of service to people throughout the state, says its vice chancellor for health affairs.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward, a Carroll County native who also is dean of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, spoke to the Carroll County Development Association on Tuesday. About 75 people attended, including Woodward’s father, Bruce Heath.
Woodward, who was named Outstanding Businesswoman of the year in 2008 by the Mississippi Business Journal, has been at the medical center since 1987, when she started medical school there.
“I feel like I kind of grew up at the medical center,” she said. “I started school there. I did my residency there in emergency medicine. I stayed on the faculty and have been there ever since. It’s a great place to have a career.”
Woodward said the medical center started in 1903 as a two-year medical school on the university’s Oxford campus. From 1903 until 1955, students would go there for their first two years of training and then would go out of state to complete their final two years of study.
“It was decided at some point in the late ’40s or early ’50s to move the medical school to Jackson, to expand it to a four-year school and build a teaching hospital,” Woodward said.
In the past 62 years, the medical center and teaching hospital have expanded. Today, “we’ve got six schools of our own on that campus,” which does not include the Pharmacy School, she said.
The medical center employs 10,000 people across the state. The medical schools combined have more than 3,000 students. This Friday, 971 students will graduate.
The medical center has a $1.7 billion annual budget, of which 10 to 11 percent comes from state appropriations. That means roughly 90 percent of the center’s budget must come from other sources, she said.
Woodward said there are “three buckets” that the medical center is concerned with:
nEducation. “That’s really the heart of who we are. This is why we were created,” she said.
nResearch enterprise, handling between $55 million and $60 million annually in federal funds directed for research on diseases that affect Mississippians the most, such cancer, cardiovascular and childhood obesity.
nHealth care enterprise, which makes up $1.1 billion of the center’s total budget. “It is the engine that drives us,” Woodward said. The medical center is Mississippi’s only Level I trauma center, the state’s only hospital doing transplant surgeries and its only Level IV neo-natal intensive care unit.
“We see ourselves as a statewide resource. Not just a school in Jackson, not just a hospital in Jackson but as a statewide resource that is part of the whole state,” she said.
Woodward said the “buckets” often mesh together. Students might be participating in patient treatment while patients might be part of a clinical trial.
“It’s always fun and exciting,” she said. “Never a dull day.”
Although institutional red tape might lead to frustration, Woodward said, she is motivated by the dedication of the nurses and students.
“They are so passionate and so exciting and committed to what they are doing, giving 110 percent,” she said.
The medical center is partnering with communities around the state, including Grenada, Vaiden, Tupelo and the Gulf Coast.
“When we are invited, we want to be that resource,” Woodward said.
In fact, with its telemedicine and other programs, the medical center has a presence in all 82 counties in the state, she said.
The $100 million Children’s Hospital capital campaign is now 10 months old and has raised $53 million already, Woodward said.
She also talked about the discovery of some 2,000 graves in the medical center’s green space. Research has established that the graves date back to a state insane asylum that was located on the grounds from 1865 to 1930s, Woodward said.
She said the medical center is weighing options to “preserve the remains but do it in a different way.” That might include a mausoleum-type structure or memorial that families may visit.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
