“The staff supporting academic programs were impacted the most,” says Dr. Weiss. “Secretaries, administrative assistants, people in central administration, and the MD administrators such as deans saw a higher percentage of their pay disappear because they rely on state support.”
“This has raised a number of problems administratively and within various parts of the program,” he says. “You have all of these incongruities that are very difficult to manage administratively. For instance, you can have two people doing essentially the same job, yet one person is furloughed and another isn’t, based on the source of their salary. This causes not only confusion but also inequities based on where a person’s pay comes from.”
Dr. Firestein says he has not yet lost support staff because of these issues, but that these employees are frustrated and understandably unhappy.
The fact that the furloughs are not being coordinated university wide has added to the confusion. For example, Dr. Firestein was concerned that some offices, such as the one that deals with contracts and grants, would be closed during the times faculty are trying submit grants with firm deadlines.
The staff supporting academic programs were impacted the most. Secretaries, administrative assistants, people in central administration, and the MD administrators such as deans saw a higher percentage of their pay disappear because they rely on state support.
—Arthur Weiss, MD, PhD
Clinical Experiences Intact
So far, clinical experience for the students has not been affected by the budget cuts. All the division chiefs note that medical center staff such as nurses and technicians are not included in the furloughs. Strong business results mean that there has been no need to cut back on patient census, and no units have been closed. There is also concern about the future and how the healthcare bills currently before Congress might change the medical centers’ ability to use this as a funding source.
Another worry is whether research funding will continue to be available to fill in budget holes. “If you don’t have a grant expiring in the next year or two, you should be protected in the interim,” says Dr. Weiss. “Eventually we will have to replace expiring grants, and when you have NIH [National Institutes of Health] paylines of 6–8%, you have to worry about the future of research dollars and the stability they have given us so far.”
There are some early signs, however, that research money already granted may not come through at the levels initially promised. There have been notifications from the NIH that stimulus grants will not be funded at the levels first indicated—some cuts were as high as 30–40%. What additional problems this may cause is still very much an unknown.
Retention and Recruitment
A long-term concern voiced is faculty retention and recruitment. Bevra Hahn, MD, professor of medicine and chief of rheumatology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UC Los Angeles has already lost a well-respected faculty member and is very worried about other universities hiring away her people if the budget cuts continue past their current expiration at the end of California’s fiscal year.
