Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 4, 1995 TAG: 9505040119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Roanoke's College of Health Sciences will no longer be a part of Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley after May 1997.
The hospital will continue to subsidize the college for two years and then will rent the college its current quarters for $1 a year, according to Dorman Fawley, president of the hospital and chairman of the college's board of directors.
Community Hospital provides the college with about $350,000 of its $4 million budget and owns the 10-story building that houses its residence halls, classrooms and offices.
The two-year time frame was chosen because it will protect the class entering this fall, Fawley said Wednesday.
This means that, for the college to be able to recruit students for a two-year program beginning in fall 1996, it will need to determine its future by next spring.
The college has been part of Community Hospital since its founding in 1982. Its board has known for 18 months that it had to move toward independence, Fawley said.
A more competitive health-care market has forced the hospital to examine closely its costs and concentrate resources on delivering health care, he said. Community Hospital is part of Carilion Health System, which is going through a major effort to become more cost-efficient. Budget items must have a relationship to patient care.
A transition committee put ``feelers'' out that it was seeking a partner for the college, Fawley said, and 10 schools, including one out-of-state institution, responded with letters of interest. Only one, however, had a concrete proposal to present to the board Wednesday, he said.
Virginia Western Community College said it could take over management of the college for two years, until the fall 1995 class graduated. That likely would have reduced some costs through elimination of administrative jobs, but it would have meant affiliating with a two-year institution at the same time the College of Health Sciences was adding a four-year degree in nursing.
The transition committee, appointed by Fawley, asked the board to give it time to search for a new affiliation rather than make it a partner with the two-year community college.
``The biggest challenge now,'' Fawley said, ``is to get the institutions to focus their interest into a finite proposal with a formal business plan.''
Fawley said the hospital intends to give the college its equipment and furnishings and provide upkeep on its quarters. Community Hospital also will be available as a practice site for the students, he said. Those commitments, plus the college's $1 million endowment, should make it ``attractive'' to a partner, he said.
``We feel like the College of Health Sciences is a major resource for Southwest Virginia,'' he said.
Ninety percent of the college's nearly 500 students come from Southwest Virginia, and 85 percent of its graduates return to their home areas to work, said Harry Nickens, president of the college.
``The college can stand alone if we meet enrollment levels,'' Nickens said. ``But it needs a big enough financial base to miss projected enrollment.''
An academic partner would give the college a higher profile among students and prospective faculty members, he said. It also could provide the expertise in human resources and other administrative areas to handle functions now done by hospital employees.
While Nickens said he was ``delighted'' at the board's decision to give the college time to chart its own course, it doesn't mean the college won't face any dilemmas in the interim.
Even though Community Hospital will continue to support the college as needed until 1997, the college's budgets will be subject to any overall reductions set at Carilion's corporate level, he said.
``We will have to meet budget targets,'' he said. In recent years, there typically has been a 6 percent annual reduction, he said.
A new budget process begins in a couple of weeks. If the reduction remains the same, the college can meet it by eliminating positions, he said.
``We will keep programs at the same level unless the target comes in higher,'' Nickens said.
by CNB