Bauer met with the 11-member search committee Friday, Feb. 13, to relaunch the search process he had put on hold last fall. He asked the committee to provide him with a list of approximately four candidates before the end of this academic year.

In addition, at the recommendation of Judith Swain, who had been asked last summer to lead the search committee, Bauer has appointed Bruce Reitz to co-chair the committee.

Swain is chair of the Department of Medicine. Reitz chairs the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and is acting chair of the Department of Surgery.

Bauer said he had put the search on hold last fall while seeking a way to bring surgery and several surgical subspecialties together under a more conventional academic structure. A structural reorganization of this type had been recommended last summer by three senior surgeons from other academic medical centers, whom Bauer had asked to conduct an external review of Stanford's surgery program.

After trying for several months to achieve consensus among key players on a reorganization plan, Bauer decided to leave the existing departmental structure in place and to refocus efforts on swiftly finding a new chair for the department, he said.

Bauer said Reitz's participation is key "because he offers the perspective of both general and cardiothoracic surgery." Reitz said that while the dean has decided not to implement the proposed restructuring, the current plan nonetheless will fulfill a central need emphasized in the reviewers' report - for a unified voice for all the surgical services.

Historically, the surgical departments at Stanford have worked in relative isolation from each other, Reitz said. But now the chairs and division chiefs are starting to work together and - in part because they didn't have a restructuring forced upon them - are beginning to develop that unifying voice, he said.

Swain, said the dean and chairs of all the clinical departments are eager to support the new surgery chair. "All of the chairs are meeting every Friday, and we now work as a group, which is very different from the past. It has become a cohesive group," she said.

Although the search committee's four-month deadline is tight, members believe they will meet it, said committee member Malinda Mitchell, UCSF Stanford Health Care's chief operating officer for adult services at Stanford.

In spite of what the external reviewers called a "difficulty with the recruitment and retention of leadership [in surgery], dating back to the 1960s," Reitz, Swain and Mitchell said they believe the department has remained strong.

"Things have been progressing since that review was written in the summer. I think the mood in the department is not quite as down as it was at that time," said Reitz.

"Within surgery there are some very good divisions with nationally recognized faculty, particularly in vascular, transplant and pediatric surgery. ENT and emergency medicine are also stable, strong divisions," Reitz said.

"We have been very attractive to people who have applied for residencies," he added. Another attraction, said Swain, is the strong biomedical research environment at Stanford.

A strong relationship with community surgeons is another plus for the department. "As far as relations with community surgeons go, right now they are as good as they have ever been at Stanford," Reitz said. "This is because basically we're not competing as much head-to-head as we were 10 and 20 years ago. Faculty surgeons frequently have a different type of practice, with more referrals from a distance and patients requiring more intensive care, such as transplant and vascular work - things the community surgeons aren't doing. So we're not competing as much for the same patients and facilities as we were in the past."

Mitchell said surgery is healthy at the Medical Center, and new contracts and facilities will further enhance growth for the booming clinical services. "We have just gotten the trauma contract from San Mateo County, so that's a positive for the department," she said. "In addition, the Medical Center has a very healthy surgery program in general and we are going to expand our capacity with 13 new operating rooms that are part of an approved project that's going forward. The new building that will house ambulatory surgery is really going to focus on minimally invasive surgery, which is a strength of the department. I think the new facility will support the position of Stanford surgeons as national leaders of minimally invasive surgery."

Swain, Reitz, Mitchell and Bauer all emphasized the importance of hiring a new chair soon, so that surgery can join some of the other clinical programs in future planning with UCSF Stanford Health Care.

"Our surgical colleagues at UCSF have been extremely supportive of our efforts to recruit the strongest chair possible," Bauer said. "In particular, [Dean and Acting Chancellor] Haile Debas, an active surgeon himself, has extended his full support.

"Once we have a strong, unified voice for surgery at Stanford, we'll be in a good position as an independent academic department working together with our colleagues at UCSF to build outstanding surgical services for UCSF Stanford Health Care," Bauer said.

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