Amid the challenges facing the health care community, and with an eye on continued growth and institutional reputation building, a veteran UC San Diego administrator has stepped into the role of CEO of the UCSD Medical Center.

In the face of this ambitious agenda, Thomas Jackiewicz says he sees “tremendous opportunities” in the mix.

In his role as CEO, Jackiewicz will oversee the university’s 548-bed academic medical center, which includes a 440-bed hospital in Hillcrest and a 108-bed La Jolla hospital, Moores Cancer Center, Shiley Eye Center and the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center, scheduled for completion in the spring of 2011.

Under his management are roughly 5,300 university employees, including about 700 doctors.

“I look at my role as continuing what we’ve already started,” said Jackiewicz, who started as CEO on Nov. 23. “We have a great plan going, a great direction.”

Jackiewicz, who has spent the last eight years at UCSD, replaces Richard Liekweg, who left the post after six years in August for a job as president of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Jackiewicz most recently served as vice chancellor and chief financial officer of UC San Diego Health Sciences, where he played a key role in developing a 2007 strategic plan that calls for expanding Thornton Hospital in La Jolla to include 200 additional beds. The proposal, he says, could go before the UC Regents in March.

No Learning Curve

“He knows the place very well, which, I think, is a big advantage because there won’t be a learning curve,” said Dr. David Brenner, vice chancellor of the university’s Health Sciences department.

Other expansion plans include the construction of a 99,000-square-foot telemedicine building near the university’s School of Medicine that will serve as the training grounds for students and accomplished surgeons interested in learning about robotic surgery and caring for rural patients remotely. Roughly half the building’s $65 million price tag will be paid for through Proposition 1D, a bond measure approved by voters in 2006 to enhance medical education efforts. The remainder, Jackiewicz says, will come from a combination of debt and philanthropy.

An earlier, ill-fated plan to shut down the patient tower at Hillcrest and relocate those beds to La Jolla isn’t on the agenda, according to Jackiewicz. Critics of the plan argued that the move would jeopardize safety net care in exchange for treating a more affluent patient population.

“We’ve been a strong provider of safety net care in the community for quite a while and we’ll continue to do that,” Jackiewicz said.

Restructuring, Rebuilding, Retrofitting