J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy and a worldwide authority on health outcomes, has been named UA’s new senior vice president for health sciences. In his new role, Dr. Bootman will oversee the university’s colleges of nursing, medicine, pharmacy, and public health, including operations in both Tucson and on the downtown Phoenix Biomedical Campus.
Dr. Bootman, who has guided the College of Pharmacy for more almost 25 years, will take over many of the responsibilities of the retiring William Crist, who has served as UA’s vice president of health affairs for almost three years. During a brief transition period lasting until September 5, the two administrators will work together closely, UA said in news releases.
“Lyle Bootman is an internationally respected health-care leader, scholar, educator, and administrator,” said UA President Eugene Sander. “His vast experience and accomplishments in the health-care arena will serve the University of Arizona and its health-sciences colleges extremely well.”
UA remains in a period of substantial transition in the health sciences, as the College of Medicine-Phoenix grows to full capacity, the Arizona Cancer Center establishes an outpatient clinic in downtown Phoenix, and stable management is implemented for UA Healthcare, the nonprofit entity created from the merger of University Medical Center and University Physicians Healthcare.
“I look forward to working with the other health-sciences deans and the faculty and staff of the Arizona Health Sciences Center to reach our potential as a leading academic health center,” Dr. Bootman said. “We plan to marshal our creativity, skills, and resources to keep improving our services and programs for the benefit of Arizona and beyond.”
Dr. Crist said that he assumed his post intending on a relatively short stay at UA; his family has remained in Missouri, where he previously served as dean of the University of Missouri School of Medicine.
“It was not a long-term job plan. I was a guy they hired to help fix some things,” Dr. Crist said in the Arizona Daily Star. “I saw things that we could improve, particularly the functionality and quality of the medical center, which is why I took the job.”
In Dr. Bootman, UA is turning to a longstanding asset. Since becoming dean in 1987, he has helped the College of Pharmacy emerge as one of the most highly regarded pharmacy schools in the country. His research, documented in close to 300 publications, has concentrated on health outcomes, especially the management and avoidance of medical errors, and pharmacoeconomics, which performs health-economics assessments, such as cost-utility analyses of particular drugs, from the perspective of a payer, a health-care system, a government, or an entire society. He founded and directs the Center for Health Outcomes and PharmacoEconomic Research at UA.
With the United States’ ever-increasing healthcare costs and stagnant performance on measures of health-care outcomes, appreciation has grown in recent years for Dr. Bootman’s expertise. He is one of only a handful of pharmacists admitted to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and in 2008 he was awarded the Joseph P. Remington Honor Medal, the highest award in the pharmacy profession.
Dr. Bootman is also a director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute, a collaboration between Arizona State University, UA, and the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation. Led by the health-care entrepreneur and philanthropist Patrick Soon-Shiong and the former Mayo Clinic President and CEO Denis Cortese, the HTI aims to “include access to and delivery of the best health care to all people at minimal expense, with demonstrable results.”
For more information:
“Crist says time at UA was meant to be brief,” Arizona Daily Star, 08/11/2011
“UA’s health VP retiring; replacement named,” Arizona Daily Star, 08/10/2011
“J. Lyle Bootman Appointed UA Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, Effective Sept. 5,” University of Arizona news release, 08/10/2011