Casteen announces administrative changes

Staff Report

As part of the University's ongoing long-range planning program, U.Va. President John T. Casteen III announced Nov. 19 that responsibilities of two vice presidents will change and a new unit for institutional planning and assessment will be created.

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Leonard W. Sandridge has become executive vice president and chief operating officer. He remains chief financial officer. Sandridge's expanded activities will include financial and managerial oversight of the Health System's clinical enterprises, including the University Hospital. Two senior officers will be added to Sandridge's immediate staff over the next six months to handle financial and administrative duties, Casteen said.

"Leonard has broad responsibility for finances and general management in all units of the University," Casteen said, "but he has not previously been involved in management oversight of the clinical enterprise, which is a major part of the University's activity. Adding analytical staff and other support gives him the capacity to improve both financial and general management."

Existing lines of accountability within the Health System for day-to-day operations are unchanged in this new alignment. Responsibility for academic medicine and research remains with Vice President and Provost Dr. Robert W. Cantrell, who reports to Casteen. Dr. Thomas A. Massaro, chief of staff, will continue to report to Cantrell. William "Nick" E. Carter Jr., senior associate vice president for operations in the Health System, will report to Sandridge, while also continuing to work closely with Cantrell.

"We want to prevent problems that have occurred elsewhere in increasingly complex and expensive teaching hospitals. Ours is financially stable and clinically successful, but the larger economy of academic medicine is changing around us. Leonard's expanded job is to make us as effective and efficient as we can be, and in the process to provide the best possible support for the people who count on us -- for patients and their families, for physicians and staff, for the people of Virginia," Casteen said.

As a step toward freeing Sandridge of duties not related to oversight of financial and administrative support, University Relations, which oversees media relations, publications, community relations, video production and web master functions, will become part of an expanded external relations operation headed by Vice President for Development Robert D. Sweeney, effective Jan. 1.

Laurie Kelsh, executive assistant and chief of staff to Casteen, will organize a new central planning and assessment unit in the president's office. During a transition period, she will turn over chief of staff duties to other staff members. The new unit will coordinate planning throughout the University and will support initiatives that involve more than one unit's budget. Its primary responsibilities will be institutional, as opposed to unit-specific, undertakings.

"This approach lets us develop planning and assessment capacity equal to the new demands we will face in the next five years as we implement ambitious academic improvements within constrained resources," Casteen said. "All of these reassignments are steps toward a more effective system of managing resources and planning change."