UCSF Says It’s Financially Sound
The University of California at San Francisco appears not only to have been well-positioned financially last year, but for the future as well.
UCSF's four professional schools ranked first among the public beneficiaries of funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2013, and second overall in funding. It received $501.6 million in grants and another $15.5 million in contracts.
The USCF School of Medicine received the most funding of any medical school in the U.S., receiving $439.6 million for research, fellowships and training. The pharmacy school received $29.2 million; dentistry, $13.7 million; and $9.6 million for the nursing school.
“NIH funding is the lifeblood of biomedical research in this nation and enables us, collectively, to tackle the most urgent questions in health and medicine,” said UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, M.D. “It is a testament to the excellence of our faculty to have all four of our professional schools and many of our research departments lead their fields in these competitive grants.”
Along with last year's NIH grants, the UCSF system is well-positioned financially moving forward. It reported $2.1 billion in cash assets currently on the books. It reported systemwide revenue of $4.14 billion in 2013, including $2.16 billion from its clinical enterprises, according to financial data. Another $1 billion comes from UCSF's research and related ventures.
“We are in control. We understand the financial picture and we are in a good position for the future,” said Sam Hawgood, dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, who will replace Desmond-Hellmann on an interim basis next month.
The system does have to contend with the opening of a new hospital in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco next year – a project that is expected to add to overall operating expenses but not contribute to revenue growth for some time. UCSF has responded by laying off 300 employees elsewhere in order to trim expenses moving forward.
“It will be hard,” said Mark Laret, UCSF Medical Center's chief executive officer. “We will add new employees at Mission Bay before we have additional patients. That means we'll have additional expenses before we have the revenue to offset it.”
