Multi-topic

Good morning. Today, I will share brief updates on several topics.

Coming soon: Seeing patients at our new location, Colony Park South. We will have a ribbon cutting and open house at the new facility in Ridgeland on March 27 at 4 p.m., but patient care will begin early next month in a staggered clinic opening with all clinics operational by mid-March.

The UMMC services represented there – 20(!) specialties as well as lab and radiology – are listed here. Many of the clinics in Colony Park South are currently at the Pavilion. Once the clinics that are relocating have moved out, we’ll be able to refresh the Pavilion in preparation for moving adult cancer services back to the main campus from the Medical Mall.

Also coming soon: FY26 budget planning season. All Medical Center units will soon put together their budgets for the next fiscal year. Currently, we are in a positive position for the FY25 budget, which is good news. This makes planning for next year a little easier.

With a positive financial bottom line, we can invest in three vital components:

• First, our employees through merit and market compensation adjustments.
• Second, our facilities through much needed infrastructure upgrades to existing spaces. Current examples are the new pediatric PT/OT clinic in Sanderson, the adolescent psychiatry unit going into the circle tower, the Mississippi Burn Unit and the build out of the sixth floors of the Conerly Critical Care Tower and Adult Tower.
• Third, areas of key strategic growth.

We are ahead in our current fiscal year budget mostly because patient care revenue is exceeding budget. This is a result of your hard work, including our revenue cycle and finance teams. Kudos to Jennifer Sinclair, chief financial officer, for her leadership and to all of you for fostering an extraordinary, high-quality patient experience.

On the flip side, an expense line in FY25 that is exceeding budget is supplies. That is to be expected when patient revenue is up. Higher expenses go hand in hand with more patient care. But anytime an expense exceeds budget, we have to pay close attention.

The bottom line is that we are doing better financially than budgeted for the first half of the current year. We must maintain the discipline, control and accountability that have created this outcome for us to ensure continued investment and growth are possible.

Earlier this week, we were thrilled to announce a transformative lead gift to the campaign to build a new UMMC Cancer Center and Research Institute facility. Sandy and John Black, who have supported UMMC and the University of Mississippi in the past, kicked off the campaign with an amazing $25M gift. The fundraising effort is currently in the “quiet phase.” The goal is to raise $125M toward the cost of a new cancer facility. Mississippi, which leads the nation in cancer deaths per capita, sorely needs this, and as the state’s only academic medical center, we are the only entity that can get it done.

As you know, a new Congress convened this month, and President Donald Trump was sworn in on Monday. We will continue to work with our elected officials at the federal level on any proposed policy that could have an impact on UMMC. Agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are critically important to us and all academic medical centers/health systems, and funding for these and other agencies is controlled by Congress. This is a critical time to engage with our Mississippi delegation to ensure that UMMC continues to thrive.

Closer to home, we anticipate our state legislature will take up several bills this term focused on health care topics such as Medicaid expansion, certificate of need, components of the Medicaid technical bills and trauma system funding. We also expect topics such as income tax, school choice and PERS to be addressed. We look forward to working with our state leaders and legislators on these and other important issues.

While speaking to a leadership group last week, I reflected that, in my role as vice chancellor, I get credit for good work that I am not fully responsible for – and also blame for things that I’m not fully responsible for, all of which comes with the job. In the good works category, I’m lucky to have a team around me leading the way for positive outcomes to be possible. I want to give a shout-out to Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for health affairs, Dr. Scott Rodgers, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, and Dr. Lee Bidwell, associate vice chancellor for research. As they lead their respective mission areas, they are doing the hard work of pushing key initiatives forward and making sure we stay on track toward A Healthier Mississippi.