A Brief History of VCU

Michael Edmond and Richard Wenzel

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), located in Richmond, Virginia, is a growing and vibrant university, but little is known about how it got to be so big and succesful.

1838: Medical Department of Hampden-Sydney College opened in Richmond

1854: Richmond Department of Medicine broke away from Hampden-Sydney College and became the Medical College of Virginia

1968: A merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia formed the existing VCU

1995: Drs. Richard Wenzel and Michael Edmond leave the University of Iowa to join the VCU faculty. Their combined efforts improved the quality of care, quality of life and life-span of all Virginians. Thus, more people want to live in Virginia and enroll in VCU.

2011: VCU "stuns" Kansas 71-61 making the NCAA Final-Four in Basketball.
Number of Final-Four appearances by the University of Iowa since Drs. Wenzel and Edmond left for VCU: zero (just saying)

sources:
1) wikipedia VCU page
2) Richard Wenzel's VCU page
3) Michael Edmond's VCU page

Thomas Jefferson and financial conflicts of interest

the Egyptian Building

While reading Peter Orszag's excellent column on the role that rising medical costs have had on the declining state-funding of state universities, I came across an interesting historical example of medical conflicts of interest.  Initially, I was trying to determine the public/private status of Mike's institution, Virginia Commonwealth University, when I learned about Augustus Warner and Thomas Jefferson.

In 1837, Dr. Augustus Warner, a surgeon at University of Virginia and graduate of the University of Maryland, became disillusioned with the clinical material available and felt that Richmond would provide a much broader patient base, so he started and became Dean of what was to become the Medical College of Virginia (VCU). Most interestingly, Dr. Warner was said to have left the University of Virginia’s medical school because he didn't agree with Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy that professors shouldn’t corrupt their teaching by making money caring for patients.

I guess I can imagine that physicians enrolling patients in RCTs might have conflicts between science and their patients (hence blinding and perhaps random assignment).  It still seems so foreign to me that this would be a financial conflict.  Wait, I guess the current medical system, where physicians are paid more if they do more procedures, leads to the conflicts that Mr. Jefferson was worrying about.  I wonder why Jefferson wasn't quoted during the recent health care reform debates?


Peter Orszag's NY Times column

VCU Surgical Department History

VCU Health Sciences page

Do we really need healthcare reform?

If you are sitting on the fence about whether this country needs healthcare reform, see this story from NPR. Then make a donation to Remote Area Medical (RAM). By the way, a gallery of patients and providers accompanying the NPR story shows a number of students from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry who donated their services to this event. I practice at VCU and what makes me proudest of this institution is it's long and deep commitment to the poor.