The University of Arizona’s senior vice president of health sciences says public scrutiny of his office is threatening morale and diverting focus from an important mission.
Dr. Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, who has been at the UA since 2013, issued a statement Wednesday that says he is “deeply troubled” by third-party allegations about his office’s leadership.
In an interview, Garcia said he was surprised by Arizona Board of Regents President Eileen Klein’s remarks at the beginning of a regents health committee meeting in Tucson on Friday, when she talked about allegations of misuse of public funds and alteration of public records.
The special meeting of the regents’ health affairs committee lasted four hours and focused on the UA’s two medical schools — the UA College of Medicine Tucson and the UA College of Medicine Phoenix. A similar meeting was held in Phoenix on Aug. 5. The Arizona Board of Regents is the governing body for Arizona’s public university system.
But Klein never expanded on her remarks and Garcia said he and other leaders have been left wondering what they’re all about. On Monday afternoon, UA President Ann Weaver Hart said she would be asking for an independent third party investigation into the allegations that Klein relayed.
“If there are issues there and they are serious we need to have resolution,” Garcia said. “I’d be surprised if any evidence of impropriety surfaces and if it does we’d want to address it. But it’s hard to do being in the dark. … Perpetuation of these lingering and as yet unclassified accusations is painful and discouraging.”
Phoenix vs. Tucson
Public scrutiny of Garcia and UA Health Sciences goes back to June, when the Phoenix-based Arizona Medical Association took a vote of “no confidence” in the executive leadership at the UA and in the health sciences leadership and its operations of the College of Medicine Phoenix.
A resolution passed by the association’s House of Delegates says the departures of six Phoenix medical school leaders, including Dean Stuart Flynn, as well as recent accreditation issues, are reasons for serious concerns about medical education in the state.
The group publicly called on the Arizona Board of Regents to initiate an investigation into “any U of A organizational impediments or policies that contributed to the departures of the well-respected and quality team that was in place.”
As a result, the regents convened the two special health affairs committee meetings in Phoenix and Tucson to get information about both medical schools. Then on Aug. 7 the Arizona Republic published a story about Garcia, his $870,000 annual salary, and his travel expenses that include chauffeur-driven limos between Tucson and Phoenix.
Ongoing tension and rivalry between Phoenix and Tucson as cities may be at the root of some of the criticism, since the Phoenix medical school is operated by a Tucson-based university, Garcia said Wednesday.
The College of Medicine Phoenix was founded in 2007 and has a smaller class size, faculty and budget than the Tucson medical school, which is nearly 50 years old.
Garcia also cited the timing of accreditation issue, the departure of the deans, and the newness of an academic affiliation between the UA and Phoenix-based Banner Health as a kind of perfect storm of critical eyes on UA health sciences.
$595 million budget
Garcia, who reports directly to Hart, oversees all of the UA’s health colleges — the UA College of Medicine-Tucson, the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix, the UA College of Pharmacy, the UA College of Nursing, and the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. The total health sciences budget is $595 million per year.
Last year, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education wrote a letter to the school saying changes would be needed in order to secure full accreditation.
The accrediting body expressed concern about the recent academic affiliation between Banner Health and the UA. But the Phoenix medical school has since been granted provisional accreditation, which puts it on pace for full accreditation in 2017, UA health science officials say.
Garcia has many supporters who spoke in his favor at both the Tucson and Phoenix meetings, outlining critical improvements he’s made, including winning a $43.3 million, five-year Precision Medicine grant from the National Institutes of Health.
He has created several “enterprise centers” that helped the university win that important grant, he said, including the Center for Biomedical Informatics & Biostatistics and the Center for Population Science & Discovery. He also created a Hispanic Center of Excellence, a Center for Applied Genetics & Genomic Medicine and the Asthma & Airway Disease Center.
The medical schools in Tucson and Phoenix are in better shape than ever to attract top-flight students and give them a world-class medical education, he said.
“We’ve created the opportunities for both colleges to have a path to sustainability that wasn’t there,” Garcia said. “We are on a steep trajectory for growth and success for great medical students and improving health in the state of Arizona.”
As for scrutiny and criticism about his travel expenses, Garcia said it would not have been cost-effective to drive himself to and from Phoenix because of the volume of work he needed to do.
In addition to his duties as vice president of health sciences, he was interim dean for the College of Medicine Tucson for a year, between 2014 and 2015, and all the while was also involved in negotiating the Banner deal.
“I bring in grants myself, unlike other senior vice presidents at other universities. I think it all speaks to the fact that I am pretty good at what I do,” he said.
“I have got to be pretty effective at juggling all these responsibilities and I am trying to do the best job possible. We’re on a national landscape now and I wish there was more focus on that.”
