Issue of
October 21, 1998
 
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Bauer presents revised pay
plan to faculty senate
BY RUTHANN RICHTER
Some 80 medical faculty
members, most from clinical departments, crowded into a
lecture hall last Wednesday for a senate meeting devoted
to the school's new faculty compensation plan, whose
basic framework was implemented in September.
At the Oct. 14 session,
Dean Eugene Bauer, MD, gave an overview of the
much-debated plan and fielded questions from faculty, who
said they remain concerned about such issues as the
plan's impact on academic freedom, administrative control
over salaries, and the school's ability to continue to
fund teaching.
It was the first medical
faculty senate meeting of the academic year, a special
session devoted strictly to discussion of the new pay
program. The first regularly scheduled medical senate
meeting will take place Wednesday, Oct. 28.
The new compensation plan
is designed to provide consistency in how salaries are
set for all School of Medicine faculty, including
clinical as well as basic science faculty and those in
the Medical Center Line (MCL) as well as those in the
University Tenure Line (UTL). In the works for more than
two years, the plan was revised last March, based on
feedback received from faculty during departmental
meetings, and was approved by all department chairs in
the Executive Session last June.
The new plan, which
revamps the system for compensating all faculty within
the school, will be phased in over two years. Faculty
paychecks won't reflect any changes as a result of the
plan until fiscal year 2000.
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Information:
Bauer said he had
initiated a review of the school's compensation program
in 1996, foreseeing a need to adapt to the growing
financial pressures of managed care, reduced federal
reimbursement, tighter research dollars and other market
forces. "Despite our health as a school, and I mean
that quite sincerely, we continue to face ... a clinical
marketplace that is indifferent to academic medical
centers, to say the least," he told the senate
audience last week.
Another driving force for
reevaluating the compensation plan was the desire to
reduce pay distinctions between MCL and UTL faculty.
"[The plan] creates a consistent base [salary level]
for Tenure Line and Medical Center Line faculty in a
[prospective] way," Bauer said. "It does so in
the belief that ... we had a situation with the Medical
Center Line in which the base compensation of $30,000,
$35,000 and $40,000 for rank-adjusted assistant,
associate and full professors was not sending a message
that said we valued members of the Medical Center
Line."
In July 1996, Bauer
convened a 12-member Compensation Task Force, composed of
faculty members and staff, who met monthly to develop
alternatives to the school's traditional compensation
program. The group came up with a proposal designed to
reward faculty members who do well and who contribute to
the success of the institution as a whole, said Bauer.
One of the key elements of the plan is a system in which
each faculty member's performance will be reviewed
annually according to criteria set by each department,
within established guidelines. The evaluations will take
into account the sustained contributions of each faculty
member in the areas of teaching, research, patient care
and administration or service to the institution.
"I think the plan
gives us a better opportunity to evaluate faculty members
because it establishes clear communication criteria
between the faculty and the department chairs,"
Michael Hindery, senior associate dean for finance and
administration, said in an interview before the Oct. 14
meeting. "It identifies the expectations and
evaluates performance against those expectations. It
gives us an opportunity to reward those faculty making
the greater contributions to teaching, research and
clinical care."
Hindery noted that many
academic medical centers, including Johns Hopkins,
Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke and
Washington University, have gone through a similar
process in recent years. Last February, the Association
of American Medical Colleges reported survey data showing
that about half of all U.S. medical schools are changing
the way in which they evaluate and compensate faculty.
Schools are tying pay more directly to measures of
productivity, and some are discussing the possibility of
post-tenure review, according to the survey, published in
the February issue of Academic Medicine.
"I think this is
something that is very much in keeping with national
trends," Bruce Reitz, MD, Shumway Professor and
chair of cardiothoracic surgery, said in an interview
before the meeting. "Stanford would be unique if it
didn't [make this change], but any change like this is
threatening to some portion of the faculty who haven't
worked this way in the past."
When the plan was first
presented to the faculty last winter, it met with some
opposition, particularly from longtime faculty members
who said they were largely concerned about the impact on
tenure and academic freedom. The Dean's Office responded
with some changes to the plan, which brought it wider
acceptance. In June, the revised plan was approved by a
unanimous vote of the Executive Session, after receiving
the official sanction of Provost Condoleezza Rice and
President Gerhard Casper in May.
At last week's senate
meeting, Saul Rosenberg, MD, emeritus professor of
medicine, told the group that he believes the revised
plan addresses many of his initial concerns, but that he
still objects to the idea of annual faculty reviews. He
urged that the plan be submitted for a written vote of
the faculty.
"To have an annual
review where salary is used to measure your performance,
in my opinion, has an impact on academic freedom. Now,
that's different from any other faculty within this
university, at least the tenured faculty. And before one
accepts that, I believe it's very important for the
faculty to express their opinions to the dean and his
leadership," Rosenberg said to applause from the
audience.
In response to Rosenberg's
comments, Bauer noted that annual faculty reviews are
conducted in other schools in the university, including
the schools of business, earth sciences and engineering.
Raymond Hintz, MD,
professor of pediatrics, raised the issue of
administrative control, noting that the Compensation
Board the group that will oversee the program
consists exclusively of individuals appointed by the
administration. He suggested that at least some members
of the board be elected by the faculty.
"It's the difference
between this being our plan and this being your
plan," Hintz told the dean.
Bauer said the board was
designed to represent the broad spectrum of school
interests. In addition to the dean, another standing
member and up to three staff, the board includes five to
seven faculty. Among these are faculty from the MCL and
the UTL, some chairs and some nonchairs, and physicians
treating adults and children. Bauer said he would not
object to enlarging the board to include some elected
members, provided there is not frequent turnover in the
group. Compensation Board members, he explained, will
need some perspective to maintain consistent
implementation of the plan.
Other faculty members
raised the question of continued support for teaching,
noting that the system provides little economic incentive
for this important function.
Alan Krensky, MD,
professor of pediatrics, said, "I think people are
changing what they do with their time. People who know
the clinical dollars are going to speak for them are not
doing the things they used to do. People run from
teaching because they don't feel they're being reimbursed
for that."
Bauer echoed the concern
and said it will be discussed in a retreat on medical
education issues, scheduled for early 1999. "I'm
just as troubled as you are about where the funds are
going to come from in the future so that we continue to
value education," he said. He added that issues such
as this, related to the flow of funds, will have to be
addressed separately, and he committed to establishing a
faculty task force to begin work on "revising the
operating-budget algorithm."
In summarizing the new
plan, Bauer emphasized that while the changes are more
evolutionary than revolutionary, they represent an
improvement over the old plan and have been developed and
revised based on the "broad ranges of opinion"
of many faculty groups.
"We tried to be quite
responsive, within the bounds of prudence for the future
of the school, to take into account the concerns that
people raised," Bauer said. "[The new plan] is
an attempt to balance the realities of the world we find
ourselves in with the goals of recruiting and retaining
the very best people."
The Committee of Five, a
faculty group that sets the senate agenda, will meet in
the next week or so to formulate a senate response to the
issues raised, said Ken Melmon, MD, chair of the medical
faculty senate, associate dean for postgraduate medical
education and professor of medicine and of molecular
pharmacology. Melmon said he welcomes faculty input. SR
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