Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994                   TAG: 9406140139
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

UVA BUDGET TOPS $900 MILLION

The 1994-95 budget of $902.7 million represents an increase of 2.2 percent - $19.4 million - from last year's budget.

"This is the first time we've reached over $900 million," Leonard Sandridge Jr., executive vice president and chief financial officer, told the school's governing board Friday.

State funds for UVa have dropped from about 28 percent of the school's budget 10 years ago to 13.6 percent of the 1994-95 budget.

In part to compensate for that cut, tuition, fees and room and board for an in-state student will increase 2.3 percent, to $8,272, for the 1994-95 academic year.

In-state students who do not want room and board will pay $4,480 for tuition and fees, or 3 percent more than this year.

Despite the bigger budget, the school has the lowest number of employees in recent years, according to school officials.

"We have seen employment over the last five years go down," Sandridge said. In 1995, UVa will employ 10,595 people, compared with 11,025 this academic year. Most of the decrease will come through attrition.

At the UVa hospital complex, whose operating costs are part of the budget, a hiring freeze has been in effect for months as officials search for ways to cut costs.

As insurance companies attempt to reduce costs through managed care programs, use of inpatient beds has declined, said Dr. Don Detmer, vice president and provost for health sciences.

"In addition, technology that lowers the overall cost of care is being incorporated more quickly as standard practice," he said.

The average length of stay at the hospital declined from 7.3 days in February 1993 to 6.8 days in February 1994. Admissions fell 3.7 percent during the same period, mirroring national trends, Detmer told board members.

Those factors mean UVa's hospital soon will consolidate the inpatient program at Blue Ridge Hospital, Detmer said. UVa has operated the small hospital, which has programs for psychiatry, epilepsy and physical medicine and rehabilitation, since 1978.

Detmer said the cost of moving the inpatient program from two buildings at Blue Ridge to the main UVa hospital could save $3 million a year.