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Published in the Home News Tribune 6/08/04
By SARAH GREENBLATT
STAFF WRITER
NEW BRUNSWICK: Saint Peter's University Hospital will begin a partnership with Drexel University College of Medicine in 2005, ending a 38-year relationship with Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
The New Brunswick hospital will become a clinical campus of the Philadelphia-based institution, under an agreement announced yesterday.
Physicians at Saint Peter's who now hold faculty appointments with Robert Wood Johnson Medical School will be designated as clinical professors at Drexel and will be employed by the hospital under the pact.
"Saint Peter's affiliation with Drexel University will strengthen the hospital's teaching mission and enable its students to reap the benefits of the most technologically advanced medical school in the nation," Diocese of Metuchen Bishop Paul Bootkoski said yesterday.
The move comes in the wake of a bitter rift between RWJMS and Saint Peter's, which announced that it planned to sever its ties to the medical school in 2002.
At the time, Saint Peter's officials said the existing pact diverted funds toward the medical school, which in turn funneled money to the Catholic hospital's arch-rival, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
Saint Peter's launched a drive in 2002 to lure RWJMS faculty doctors to its payroll with salary offers up to $505,000, prompting a lawsuit by the medical school that remains unresolved.
Last year, the medical school pulled some faculty doctors and residents out of Saint Peter's and reassigned them to other hospitals.
Saint Peter's President Sheryl Slonim said the switch reflects a mix of financial and programmatic concerns that have arisen over the years.
"We did due diligence to try to make the relationship work, and it didn't," she said. "Because incorporated within our mission is the mission to teach, we were bound and determined to find another school."
Slonim added, however, that the new affiliation serves Saint Peter's aims of exerting more control over its residency program and enhancing educational and research opportunities.
The hospital will operate its own residency programs in obstetrics, pediatrics and internal medicine, enabling it to hire and assign residents as it sees fit, Slonim said.
The number of third- and fourth-year medical students completing rotations at Saint Peter's will double, from 30 to 60.
Saint Peter's will also cover housing costs for medical students and some residents who work at the hospital.
Among the assets that Drexel brings to the table, Saint Peter's Senior Vice President John Rauner said, is advanced technology. Through Drexel's wireless capabilities, medical students and interns will be able to observe lectures and grand rounds through streaming video transmitted via hand-held devices.
"The technology helps to facilitate education," said Dr. Nayan Kothari, chairman of Saint Peter's Department of Medicine. "This opens up a lot of opportunities to do research."
Drexel's College of Medicine -- which resulted from consolidating the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University -- has been designated one of 19 Vanguard National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Citing Saint Peter's annual delivery of some 7,000 newborns, Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, dean of the college, said the affiliation will create an "unprecedented model of health care for this community."
A partnership launched last year by Saint Peter's, Drexel and the New Jersey Institute of Technology to create the MedTech Center for Infants and Children points to a new approach to education and research that the pact will promote, said center Director Dr. Harel Rosen, the former director of neonatology services at Robert Wood Johnson medical School.
"It's the largest private medical school in the United States and has the technological resouces of a well-established engineering school combined with the clinical resources, all under one umbrella," Rosen said.
RWJMS Dean Dr. Harold Paz said the New Brunswick-based medical school tried unsuccessfully to maintain a working relationship with Saint Peter's but crafted contingency plans in the event that the hospital followed through with its threat to end the long-standing alliance.
The medical school has strengthened its ties with other hospitals in Central New Jersey, enabling it to provide placements for residents and to fulfill its educational, research and service missions, Paz said.
"We are very comfortable that we can continue the outstanding educational and research programs that have been established by the medical school," Paz said. "We respect their decision to affiliate with another medical school. We wish them the best."
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