Troubles continue for gene institute

Peter Traber stunned faculty and administrators when he stepped down this summer as head of the Penn Health System and Medical School just five months after accepting the position. Traber left the financially strapped medical system to take a lucrative job running the research division at one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. A search committee charged with finding a permanent replacement for the combined Health System CEO and Medical School dean position is expected to be announced shortly. Until a permanent replacement is found, Robert Martin, who served both Traber and his predecessor, William Kelley, as chief operating officer, will assume Traber's executive responsibilities. Arthur Asbury, Traber's deputy dean, has become interim dean of the Medical School. Traber took on his leading role at the Health System after University President Judith Rodin fired Kelley, the architect of UPHS, in February following two years of massive budget deficits. The resignation shocked doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and administrators at College Hall, who said Traber's decision caught them completely by surprise. Traber had continually expressed great enthusiasm for taking over the job as the permanent head of the Health System. He was serving as interim Medical School dean because of University regulations requiring a consultative search process for academic appointments, but no one doubted he would eventually get that job as well. In a letter to UPHS's faculty and staff, Traber said he was leaving to "accept an outstanding new opportunity" to serve as the global head of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Medicine at GlaxoSmithKline, the health care company formed upon the merger of SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome. "I'm very disappointed," said Howard Herrmann, the outgoing chairman of the Medical School Faculty Senate's steering committee, in July. "We were all very encouraged by his quick grasp of the needs and problems in the Penn Health System." HUP Senior Medical Director Bernett Johnson agreed. "I think everybody was somewhat shocked. He'd only been in office for about five months, [and] there was a lot of respect for him as an individual, as a leader," Johnson said in July. At the time, several doctors also said that there was speculation that perhaps Traber had other reasons for leaving as well. "People speculated about all sorts of things," said Stanley Goldfarb, who succeeded Traber as chair of the Department of Medicine in June. "But in the end I think he decided that this was really what was best for him. I have to take what's been said at face value." Traber was appointed in the midst of the Health System's financial recovery plan, initiated about a year ago under Kelley. It included cutting costs by imposing huge layoffs -- which cut 20 percent of UPHS's workforce -- conserving resources, eliminating programs and services whenever possible and streamlining the billing and collection processes. In Kelley's final two years in office, the Health System lost nearly $300 million. Figures for Fiscal Year 2000 will not be available until later next month. Penn's internal goal was to have a deficit of around $10 million for the just-ended fiscal year. "The Health System has made great progress in its financial recovery from the deficits experienced in fiscal years 1998 and 1999," Rodin said in a July statement. "In the fiscal year 2000, which ended June 30, the Health System's operating deficit was dramatically reduced." Martin said he "feels very good" about the progress of the Health System over the past year and attributed the smooth transition to the familiarity of himself and Asbury with the institution. "There is a lot more continuity than discontinuity." "Although there have been financial pressures, the actual activity in the school has grown as rapidly as in the past," Asbury said. "In general, things have been pretty stable." Despite the significant changes in leadership and financial difficulties, HUP ranked as the 10th best hospital nationwide in the annual U.S. News & World Report's 11th annual edition of America's Best Hospitals

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