Dr. Oliver Whipple first encountered Memorial Medical Center at age 14 when he was helicoptered there with serious wreck injuries.
Today, he is medical director of the what is now Memorial University Medical Center’s bariatric program and assistant professor of surgery at the Mercer University School of Medicine on Memorial’s campus. He also is clerkship director for surgical education, working with Mercer medical students who rotate through his program.
Whipple, 39, is also what Dr. Ramon Meguiar, Memorial’s senior vice president and chief medical officer, calls the “grow your own” philosophy of Memorial and its Mercer partner to train physicians in hopes of retaining their skills here.
Whipple, a Vidalia native, spent his first two years at Mercer Medical School in Macon working very hard to land one of the 20 slots then available on the Memorial Campus where he spent his final two years before graduating in May 1999. He then completed a five-year general surgery residency at Memorial.
He landed a one-year fellowship in advanced laparoscopic and bariatric surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, then returned to Memorial in 2005.
Whipple said he was motivated to return for several reasons, the most important of which was the ability to teach.
“I really enjoyed teaching medical students as a resident,” he said, adding he was named best teacher in four of his five years there.
“I wanted to be able to practice in my sub specialty, and my wife really liked Savannah.”
The teaching function is large in attracting top physicians, Meguiar said.
“It helps to recruit physicians to have a residency program,” he said. “Many specialists would not have come to Savannah without the opportunity to teach.”
Target: 50 percent return
In May, Mercer graduated 38 new doctors in the first class of students, 30 who started here four years ago and eight who elected to graduate in Savannah rather than Macon.
“It’s our farm team,” Meguiar said of the potential to keep specialists from the class in the Savannah area.
“Our goal is to have at least 50 percent of our residency graduates to stay or remain in Georgia.”
It continues a long-time partnership between the two institutions.
In August 2008, 30 first-year medical students began classes at the Mercer University School of Medicine, Savannah Campus in what was called a new era of grooming future doctors.
There are now 120 medical students in the Memorial-Mercer program.
“The medical school belongs to Mercer,” Meguiar said. “We host it. It resides on our community.”
Maggie Gill, president/CEO of Memorial Health, parent corporation for Memorial, said, “It will make us even better.”
Gill said the next step, already in progress, will be planning for a new education building on Memorial’s campus to include classrooms, offices, a state of the art medical library, a simulator and training facilities.
Mercer officials are seeking a Savannah architectural firm for the project, Gill said. Determination of size, cost and time frame will follow.
Already on board is Dr. T. Phillip Malan, who is dean of Mercer’s Savannah campus.
He recently was made Memorial’s vice president for academic affairs with strict oversight for the residency program, Gill said.
Teaching makes instructors better physicians, said Malan. “We have 100 physicians engaged in teaching,” including six full time physicians in that role.
In addition the medical school translates into about $20 million locally in employees and research, he said.
Medical education at Memorial not new
It has been part of the mission since shortly after the hospital opened in 1955, Meguiar said. The first residents started in 1957.
The medical provider’s affiliation with Mercer University School of Medicine began with an agreement signed in 1986.
In 1996, the two entities agreed that as many as 20 medical students per class year could complete their training at Memorial with third- and fourth-year students completing their medical rotations in Savannah.
In May 1999,the medical center changed its name to Memorial Health University Medical Center to further reflect its commitment to medical education.
“It should endure long term,” Meguiar said.
Break even for Memorial
Gill said that while the traditional hospital-medical school partnership has the hospital supporting the medical school, here Mercer pays Memorial to offset the cost of education.
The hospital gets federal funding for 97 of its 104 residents with Memorial picking up the remaining 28 out of its operations revenues.
“Overall our medical school program breaks even,” Gill said.
The education component “drives quality,” Mequiar said.
The program takes budding doctors from day one and marries their zeal with Memorial’s commitment to teaching professional safety and quality of care from the start, he said.
“We teach people safety, error prevention and quality of care from the start,” he said. “We work together as a team . . . learning from the ground up.”
Bio Box:
Name: Dr. T. Phillip Malan
Title: Dean of Mercer University School of Medicine, Savannah Campus; Memorial Health Vice President for Academic Affairs
Age: 58
Hometown: Long Beach, Calif.
Education: Bachelor of science in biological sciences; Bachelor of arts in chemistry, University of California, Irvine, 1975; Ph.D in biochemistry, and molecular biology, Harvard University, 1981; MD, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 1985; residency in anesthesiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Professional: Joined University of Arizona, Department of Anesthesiology, 1989, become professor of anesthesiology and pharmacology, 2001; vice dean for academic affairs, University of Arizona College of Medicine, 2006; Dean, Mercer University School of Medicine, Savannah Campus, July 2011; Vice president for Academic Affairs, Memorial Health, 2012.
Personal: Married, Carole Malan; son, Timothy Malan