Reflections from the Chair

This is an exciting time to be the Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Rochester. This year marks my 25th year in the Department (I arrived as a resident in 1979), and I cannot think of a time when there were so many opportunities for Family Medicine at the University and in the community. It is a great honor to be able to serve the department.

Our Family Medicine department web site is undergoing a major redesign to incorporate the expansion of both the department and the integration of many components (i.e., Teaching, Research, Patient Care, Programs, etc.). It will continue to expand with us to serve as a state-of-the art information tool for both internal and external visitors.

Our newly published department newsletter (Fall 2004 issue) captures some of the exciting events and opportunities. Family Medicine and Primary Care are receiving tremendous support and recognition from the leadership of the Medical Center and Medical School. Our new Senior VP and Vice Provost of Health Affairs, C. McCollister (Mac) Evarts has been stressing the importance of primary care to academic health centers and has established the Center for Primary Care. Our department will play a critical role in the new Center.

After more than a decade of effort, we will be moving into our new “state of the art” practice in early 2005. We are developing an innovative new practice model and will implement an electronic health record (Touchworks) over the next two years. Under the leadership of Steve Schultz (‘95), our residency is flourishing and, despite national declines in medical student interest in Family Medicine, the Residency Program successfully filled with ten superb interns in the 2004 Match. Part of our success has been due to a very successful International Health Program, lead by Doug Stockman (‘89). We passed our RRC review with flying colors and received a full 5-year re-accreditation for our residency.

Highland Hospital is flourishing as the community hospital in partnership with Strong Memorial Hospital and continues to be an ideal training site for our residents.

We strive for excellence in all the missions of our department. In our new practice site, we will offer the highest quality of care using innovations to primary care (advanced access, chronic care models, group visits) with a particular focus on providing care to vulnerable and under served populations and on reducing health disparities.

Our residency will continue to be one of the top programs in the country, offering the best of a university program located at an excellent community hospital. We will strengthen the program with our new clinical site, expand our International Health and Social and Community Medicine programs, and build on our areas of longstanding strengths.

We will continue to grow our Rochester Center to Improve Communication in Health Care.. We will play a central role in the development of a new Primary Care Research Institute (within the Center for Primary Care) and expand our Practice Based Research Network.

With all the exciting developments in our department and at the Medical Center, the future of Family Medicine in Rochester looks very positive and exhilarating. We are pleased to share these developments with you in this newsletter.

Thomas L. Campbell, MD
William Rocktaschel Professor and Chair of Family Medicine

Back to top