Breathing New Life into Meharry - Meharry Medical College - Statistical Data Included

Black Issues in Higher Education, July 19, 2001 by David Hefner

By 1989, it was clear that Hubbard Hospital was the college's Achilles' heel. And over the next four years, Satcher persuaded the city to go along with the deal as long as Meharry agreed to staff the city hospital with all board-certified physicians. By 1994, Satcher and Meharry's Dr. Henry Foster, (President Bill Clinton's 1995 surgeon general nominee), had recruited all board-certified physicians for the hospital, taking care of Meharry's end of the bargain.

But by that time, Meharry had borrowed $22 million from its endowment and $11 million from banks. Plus, it owed another $15 million to hospital vendors. And academic standards and campus upgrades had begun to give way to fiscal necessity.

"(The accrediting bodies) were very concerned about the product: the students," says Dr. A. Cherrie Epps, who Maupin hired in 1994 as a consultant to evaluate Meharry's academic program. "Students were not demonstrating that their education was sufficient for them to be certified for timely movement. The second thing was that there were fewer students graduating than there were entering the class," says Epps who later became dean of the School of Medicine.

`STABILIZE THE PATIENT'

Dr. John Maupin finished dental school in 1972, completed a general residency at Provident Hospital in Baltimore, and spent a brief period in private practice before entering the U.S. Army Dental Corps in 1974. He was assigned to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, retiring from the Army Dental Corps Active Reserves in 1997 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

By 1980, Maupin had earned an MBA from Loyola College in Baltimore. The next year, he served as assistant commissioner of clinical services and then deputy commissioner of medical services in the Baltimore City Health Department.

Though he would eventually become executive vice president of Morehouse School of Medicine, Maupin's business degree and prior experience working in Baltimore city government may have been better preparation for the challenges he has faced as Meharry's ninth president.

By 1994, following Satcher's departure, Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen and other city leaders were having reservations about moving Nashville's Metro General Hospital to Meharry, according to Maupin and others. With talk in the Clinton administration of universal health care, leaders were wondering whether the city needed to shovel out money for a publicly run hospital. Later that year, Meharry's board of trustees named Maupin acting president and asked him to help get negotiations with the city back on track.

We were going to lose Hubbard Hospital and Meharry," says Willis McCallister, who was a Nashville city councilman at the time. "Many of the city councilmen didn't want to see Metro General Hospital move to the (Black community). And a lot of Black people didn't want it. Hubbard had been our hospital, and people who were not aware of what was going on thought it was going to be a takeover. But Meharry would have ended up closing."

Maupin, who had spent time lobbying city officials in Baltimore, persuaded the Nashville mayor to solidify the merger between Meharry's Hubbard Hospital and Nashville's Metro General Hospital. And on Aug. 16, 1994, Nashville's city council approved the merger in a 24-9 vote.