University of Florida faculty practice group begins new era with appointment of associate dean

Almost 600 University of Florida doctors will have a new ally Dec. 1, when the UF College of Medicine welcomes its first associate dean responsible solely for clinical business affairs.

Dean C. Craig Tisher, M.D., announced Oct. 28 that Jane T. Schumaker, M.A., will be the college’s first associate dean and chief executive officer for faculty group practice, the organization managing the college’s 42 clinics. Based at 33 locations in Gainesville and other North Florida communities, the clinics used the services of 589 UF physicians during fiscal year 2002-03.

Schumaker currently is chief operating officer of an academic faculty practice plan at the Medical College of Wisconsin, a private institution in Milwaukee, where she supervises a 675-physician clinical practice group with annual revenues of $250 million.

“In our new faculty group practice administrative structure, Schumaker will report directly to me,” Tisher said. “This attests to the importance I place on this position in our organization.”

The college created the position to enhance its clinical operations, which generated more than $392 million in charges in fiscal year 2002-03, Tisher said. Schumaker will be responsible for all aspects of the faculty group practice and will interface with Shands at the University of Florida, where many of the UF clinics are located.

“From an excellent group of candidates for this position, Ms. Schumaker quickly became our first choice based on her extensive experience in the performance of similar duties at two major medical centers,” Tisher said. “Further, her colleagues were uniformly laudatory on her leadership capabilities and management skills.”

The clinical program’s business operations are now led by Holly Creel, M.S.N., R.N., interim vice president for operations UF faculty group practice. She credits Ellen Meier, M.N., M.B.A., who led the organization from April 2000 until she departed UF on July 3, 2003, with building a strong program in which Schumaker can excel.

“I’ve worked for the clinics for many, many years and I have never seen it at the level that it is as far as teamwork and professionalism,” Creel said. “We are so excited to be getting someone of (Schumaker’s) caliber and experience and she is joining our team so quickly so we can get started and just keep the momentum that Ellen Meier has already started.”

Schumaker was selected following a five-month search by a committee led by James Crawford, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of UF’s department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine.

Prior to joining the Medical College of Wisconsin in January 2000, Schumaker directed financial affairs for the University of Nebraska’s faculty practice and the University of Alabama School of Medicine.

She serves on the steering committee of the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Faculty Practice, the executive committee of the Medical Group Management Association’s Academic Practice Assembly and the group practice council of the University HealthSystem Consortium.