As Macquarie’s first Dean of Medicine, Professor Michael Morgan AO was instrumental in establishing the Macquarie University Hospital (MUH) and the University’s one-of-a-kind healthcare model.  On his retirement from Macquarie this year, Professor Morgan reflects on the journey of the Hospital from an idea in a chance meeting to a world-class centre for health innovation.

Macquarie University Hospital introduced a new model for hospital care in Australia. What were the drivers behind the Hospital’s model?

Australian hospital care is world class. Looking ahead, though, we face an enormous challenge in keeping up with the explosion of knowledge in medical procedures and technologies.

Typically, the newly qualified specialist in surgery or medicine goes overseas to acquire skills and knowledge, returning to Australia to put into practice the latest medical and surgical developments.  What we were missing in Australia was the ability to be a player in that space, to contribute to global medical innovation in a significant way.

If you look at the great medical schools in the US – Harvard, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and UCSF, for example – they all have in common what we now have at Macquarie University Hospital: the hospital and university are highly interrelated in a way that merges exploratory work with clinical practice and education.

So, this was the driver behind the Hospital. And I believe that, after eight years, that vision has been achieved – in large part because we built it from the ground up with full alignment between research, education and clinical work.

Take us back to the early days. Who were the early players, people who perhaps are no longer here but who laid the foundations and had the vision for MUH?

John Lincoln, one of founders of Macquarie University, said to me that Macquarie would never be a real university without a medical school. The actual proposal for a hospital to be built on campus, however, emerged from a chance meeting between the CEO of Dalcross Hospital, and Ian Briggs of Macquarie University.

Prior to my appointment in 2006 as Dean of the Medical School, I met with Di Yerberry, Vice-Chancellor at the time, and she was very keen – as was Jim Piper, then DVC Research – to progress the idea of a hospital as part of the ongoing conversation on expansion of the University and use of its land assets.

When Stephen Schwartz became VC in 2006, the project was crystallised and brought into existence. There was broad support from the university for a Medical School to be associated with the hospital proposal as this was seen as a way to attract the prestigious NHMRC funding at a time when Australian Government funding for research was declining.

So, it was through this that the project was born and a joint venture with a hospital was put on the table as an innovative model for medical research, education and clinical practice.

In 2009, almost certainly as a consequence of the 2008 recession, decisions had to be made about the continuation of the joint venture with Dalcross Hospital. The aim to achieve the most advanced hospital in Australia, however, was paramount.

The GFC, in effect, precipitated one of the most important decisions by Steven Schwartz and the University Council: to continue with the original vision but for the University to take over the ownership of the project entirely. Thus, Macquarie University Hospital became the first university-owned and run hospital in Australia.

What were your most anxious moments in establishing the Hospital?

There was a lot riding on the 2009 decisions being made in Council. As Dean, I was making the case for our preferred model of university ownership of the Hospital and I knew that if I didn’t do a good job, the hospital component could have been sold to another hospital operator. Had this happened, we would not have achieved the advanced and integrated research, education and clinical model that I so desperately wanted.

Then, of course, doing the first operation in June 2010 was a momentous point. It all went very well and we moved forward from there.

What are you most proud of?

The calibre of clinicians, nurses and medical staff, without a doubt, and our ability to recruit the best surgeons, physicians, anaesthetists, researchers and biomedical minds. What we’ve been able to do is form established teams across many disciplines to create a great depth and breadth of contributors with a commitment to creating new knowledge and facilitating learning within the umbrella of MQ Health. Once you have a significantly sized team, you can make the case for NHMRC funding and really create new knowledge.

Under the leadership of CEO, Carol Bryant, and the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Patrick McNeil, the culture of heal, learn and discover is now entrenched and makes this hospital unique, important and a leader.

Is the Macquarie University Hospital model one that can, or should, be adopted in other states around Australia?

We are very fortunate with the leadership of Patrick McNeil that a very exciting model of medical school has now been established at Macquarie. The reality is that the Macquarie University model, whilst logical, was also very dependent on a unique combination of circumstances at the right time.

I would say that the most likely way that this university hospital system will grow is with Macquarie University itself. The current hospital is small and could be expanded. The services could be increased. And it may be possible to establish Macquarie University Hospitals both in NSW and interstate. Furthermore, Macquarie University Hospital – perhaps under the banner of MQ Health – should become a service for Southeast Asia.

---

This is an abridged version of an interview first published in Macquarie University Hospital’s Frontier Magazine.