So far, so good. We are less than a couple weeks into our union with the UI Health Care Downtown Campus, formerly known as Mercy Iowa City. The celebrations of the first day, including a signage change-over, visits from therapy dogs, and even an appearance by the Iowa Hawkeye mascot Herky, are all worth a look, as is this Welcome video. There are still ongoing questions that will need to be resolved in the coming months, but everything since Day One has gone so relatively smoothly I predict that in less than a year we will wonder how we ever got along without each other. My thanks, as always, to each of you for your respective efforts in easing this transition and for being so welcoming to our newest colleagues. Thanks, as well, to those new colleagues for your faith in us and for your commitment to your patients. Next week, many of our new colleagues will join us for one of our welcome-to-the-department orientation events, in which department leaders give a brief overview of who they are and what they do. By the end of the afternoon, our newest members, both faculty and advanced practice providers, will have learned about all the opportunities for success that exist within the department.

So, what did just happen? How much has our department grown, who joined us, and what can be said about our footprint in the Downtown Campus? Here are some numbers. We have retained 30 new members for the Department of Internal Medicine. Of these, 21 have faculty appointments and nine are APPs. Of those 21 faculty members, 15 joined us at the Instructor designation, with 12 in the Division of General Internal Medicine, either working as hospitalists or in primary care. The others are appointed in the Divisions of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine (1) and of Cardiovascular Medicine (2). The nine APPs are divided up among four divisions: Cardiovascular Medicine (3), Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2), General Internal Medicine (2), and Pulmonary (1). The other six faculty members of that 21 are classified as Visiting Instructors, most because they will work less than half-time.

Our communications team will introduce you to all of our new permanent members in more detail over the next few months, but for now, below are links to the faculty profile pages of our 15 Instructors at the Downtown Campus. Special thanks to Lori Strommer for her creative and speedy work in obtaining these temporary photos for our website, while we wait for the official UI Health Care faculty portraits.

Mohammed Ali, MD	M. Craig Champion, MD	Lesley Green, MD
Michael Hoffman, MD, PhD	Katherine Ignacio, MD	Ramon Ignacio, MD
John Kelley, MD	Spas Kotev, MD	Daniel Leary, MD, PhD
Robert Love, MD	Joe Moonjely, MBBS	Fred Ovrom, MD
Jane Rosen, MD	Max Snow, MD	Jeannett Wu, MD

Maybe the next question one might ask is, well, are 30 new clinicians a lot or a little? Certainly, when it came to hiring them all, negotiating each contract and processing them into our systems, 30 is definitely a lot. Special shout-out to our Human Resources team for their extraordinary efforts in getting everyone on-boarded. But what about the patient demand at the Downtown Campus, are these 30 clinicians sufficient to meet it? On Day One downtown, there were 83 inpatients, 15 operations, one endoscopy procedure, 77 visits to the Emergency Department leading to 15 admissions, and 424 outpatient visits at the constellation of clinics around the county that have been added to the existing system. Addressing all of these care needs was achieved, in large part, because of the work of the clinicians noted above, as well as the other faculty and APPs who have joined other departments across UI Health Care. And, of course, the many, many nurses, clerks, and other staff that make up the nearly 1,000 employees who have just become a part of our organization.

There are also long-time members of our department who have been filling in where needed. Just in pulmonary, Drs. Joel Klein, Mahmoud Abou Alaiwa, Charles Rappaport, Rolando Sanchez, Spiros Fortis, and Nabeel Hamzeh are all taking turns covering needs downtown. Our GI Division Director Dr. David Elliott has even taken some turns on overnight call. There may be other opportunities for Iowa River Landing and Main Campus faculty to moonlight downtown and we will reach out should those needs arise. We are also exceedingly grateful for the two dozen or so locum physicians who have contracted with us to help meet demand. We recognize that although these will be sustainable in the short term, we must continue to pursue creative recruitment strategies. All the things we have stressed in the past about the benefits of living and working in the Iowa City area will still be part of our conversation with potential recruits, except now we can also point to the Downtown Campus as yet another way in which faculty can build the career path they want to pursue. As I said last week, as long as we all continue to keep the goal of delivering excellent and consistent patient care as our first priority, we will attract and retain those who share that goal. With that as our foundation, everything we build from there will last.