Owensboro native Dr. Mark Newman joined UK HealthCare as executive vice president of health affairs in 2017.
April marks the 60th anniversary of the University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital. It held its grand opening on April 24, 1962, after four years of construction.
Today the hospital is part of UK HealthCare, a multibillion-dollar clinical enterprise, which also includes UK Good Samaritan Hospital, Kentucky Children’s Hospital, UK Markey Cancer Center, clinics, institutes, regional partnerships and the clinical activities of all six health sciences colleges, including the UK College of Medicine.
Dr. Mark F. Newman joined the University of Kentucky in 2017 as executive vice president of health affairs, leading UK HealthCare. On the academic side he oversees, with university president Eli Capilouto, the UK College of Medicine.
A native of Owensboro, Kentucky, Newman’s career has specialized in anesthesiology and health care management. He also served several tours of duty in the Air Force.
How will UK Chandler Hospital mark its 60th anniversary?
We will have a celebration for our own people in April. We want to celebrate the great things UK HealthCare and Chandler have brought to the state. We will celebrate our people; they’ve done a great job with COVID, and it is time for me to continue to thank them and celebrate the great work they’ve done. We will also have a gala in October to bring people together from across the state to thank them. We’ve got great partnerships across the state.
How has Chandler Hospital responded to the pandemic?
We designed this hospital to be pre- pared for communicable diseases. You want to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Our huge ICU can support the state. Early on, we put up Nutter Field House, a 400-bed field hospital that could help manage additional patients. The goal was to be prepared and hope we wouldn’t need it. The initial surge wasn’t as large as projected. Then there were two more surges.
We’ve had to first, prepare. Second, work on prevention and do what we did at Kroger Field to get as many people as possible vaccinated — close to half a million. We have a pediatric vaccination clinic ongoing now, to make it easier to support peds. There are not a lot of those locations. We are meeting those needs. As a large transfer center, we took people from all over the state, from all but three or four counties in Kentucky, during COVID. That’s the kind of reach we have.
"Our people have been nothing short of amazing; they’ve been resilient; they’re putting themselves at risk to come here and take care of patients, even as they worry about their own families and themselves."
Our people have been nothing short of amazing; they’ve been resilient; they’re putting themselves at risk to come here and take care of patients, even as they worry about their own families and themselves. We’re on the downward part of this omicron surge, so we hope to get back to having more of the elective cases. One of the secondary effects of a COVID surge is people are delaying normal care. We have a lot of people getting way sicker when they come to us because they’ve delayed preventative care.
UK Chandler Hospital has been voted best hospital in Ken- tucky for the sixth year in a row and a recent Top 50 hospital in the U.S. for cancer care, among other national accolades. How important are these rankings for the community?
Rankings are important because they are an indication of quality. If it were my family — my mom in Owensboro turned 100 in November — how would I like her to be taken care of ?
The College of Medicine received more than 2,430 applicants for 203 available seats in the Class of 2023. How does this bode for medical workforce?
How do we build enough workforce for the future of health care? That’s the challenge for us as a trainer, to make sure medical students feel appreciated and want to stay here and work here.
Through the College of Medicine, we’ve added a campus in Bowling Green [in partnership with Med Center Health] and a campus in Northern Kentucky [with partner St. Elizabeth Healthcare]. The goal is to meet the needs of the state and train enough physicians. The more we reach out and partner, the better off we will be. One opportunity, too, is to reach down to the high school level and lower grades, to show people the impact they can have when they choose to have a career that makes a difference for other people.
Central Bank’s $10 million donation in February, via majority owner Joan Kincaid and Luther Deaton, president, chairman and CEO, is the largest gift in UK HealthCare history. What does this mean for the expansion of UK Markey Cancer Center?
Luther has been a community member of UK HealthCare for years. He has a commitment to this community and to Kentucky and an absolute commitment to cancer because of the impact it has had on his friends and his family. When we asked for an individual to stand up and be a leader, he agreed to take on that role. He wanted Central Bank to be able to start this and take a leadership role, to see how we can raise funds for a new cancer center.
We hope to be breaking ground in early 2023 for the new outpatient cancer treatment center. We are in the middle of a campaign now to raise dollars, the majority of which will come from UK Health- Care. We want the new cancer treatment center to be a one-stop shop for all outpatient cancer care. We do an excellent job of care now, but you may need to go to three or four different buildings. A new cancer center will make it easier for our patients. They’re already in a difficult time of their lives; we want to make it easier for someone coming into the city.
We focus on patients in Kentucky, that’s our obligation. We bring in those from West Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee. Depending on the complexity of our programs, we may pull from the east coast. Specifically, we have physicians who treat pediatric neuroendocrine tumors, so patients from other countries come here for that kind of specialty care. The UK Markey Cancer Center is the only comprehensive NCI [National Cancer Institute] designated cancer center in the state. We have more demand than sometimes we can meet.
Another obligation, when we talk about a gift, is to make sure there’s a strong return for that gift in terms of education, clinical care and research. I feel that obligation. If they invest with us, there’s going to be a substantial return for the state and something they can see and be proud of. We take that very seriously.