Program to continue as part of Palmetto Health
USC dropped the School of Medicine’s neurosurgery department at a special board of trustees meeting, moving it to Palmetto Health and removing 23 employees from its payroll.
The department, which included five surgeons, saw little student activity in its time associated with the university since 2006, Provost Michael Amiridis said. It will move to Palmetto Health on Feb. 15.
“None of them is a long-term employee of the university,” Amiridis said.
Along with ophthalmology and orthopedics, neurosurgery is one of the school’s three “non-core” departments, according to Amiridis, but unlike the other two, it doesn’t have a residency program for medical school graduates.
Unlike other university clinics, no students were required to do rotations — training for third- and fourth-year students — in the department, but students could elect to study there.
The result: Only three USC students did rotations in neurosurgery last year for a total of six weeks of instruction, Amiridis said, making the department more clinical than educational.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Amiridis said. “It’s a better operation to leave to the hospital.”
The program is one of a number of clinical departments — called University Specialty Clinics — subsidized by the hospital, according to Amiridis.
Palmetto Health had provided USC $3.4 million per year for the clinic, he said, and the university didn’t provide all of the faculty’s salaries, which are generally high because of the relative scarcity of neurosurgeons.
The department’s three assistant professors received between $82,400 and $92,700 from state funds, according to state Budget and Control Board records. Information about the neurosurgery chair and associate professor were not available.
Under the new structure, the department’s employees will work for Palmetto Health, and the five neurosurgeons will continue as adjunct faculty at the School of Medicine, so students can still opt to study in the field, according to Amiridis.
The surgeons won’t be paid for that work, according to university spokesman Wes Hickman.
The move won’t affect how much Palmetto Health spends on the program, according to Tammie Epps, a spokeswoman for the hospital, but it was spurred, in part, by financial concerns, Amiridis said.
“Six years ago, finances were different,” he said. “We’re looking at every penny, and so is the hospital, actually, because we’re two sectors that have been hit very hard. ... It helps efficiency without sacrificing anything.”
USC didn’t lose money operating the department, Amiridis said, but over the past few months, salary increases have made finances tight. Most of its funds came from revenue generated by tests, procedures and its other operations.
Still, the university hasn’t made any plans to drop its associations with other branches of the University Specialty Clinics, according to Amiridis.
“There is always an ongoing dialogue about a better utilization of the resources of both sides in this long-term relationship,” Amiridis wrote in a later email response.