Donald Hagen, who has led Kansas University Medical Center since 1995, will retire at the end of the year.

Hagen, 66, will announce his retirement as executive vice chancellor during an event today at the Medical Center.

“When the chancellor recruited me, I decided it would be for about 10 years,” Hagen said. “I’m beginning the 10th year. Honestly, it’s just time at this point for me to retire.”

Barbara Atkinson, executive dean of the School of Medicine, will assume the executive vice chancellor position while remaining dean of the medical school. She’ll lead a campus with about 2,500 faculty and staff and a budget of $317.8 million.

Chancellor Robert Hemenway said he talked with consultants at the Association of Academic Health Centers in deciding to combine the two positions. He said about 30 percent of the nation’s academic medical centers have a similar structure.

“It shows the university is trying to streamline its bureaucracy,” Hemenway said. “We’re making things more efficient and more effective. We’re replacing a truly outstanding person with another truly outstanding person.”

Karen Miller, dean of both the School of Nursing and School of Allied Health, said she didn’t expect many changes under the new structure.

“I don’t foresee there will be problems,” Miller said. “I’ll continue to report to the EVC in that role. We’ll be able to thrive in that structure as well.”

A difficult transition

Donald Hagen, executive vice chancellor at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., speaks in a patient room in the pediatric department of the hospital in this 1999 file photo. Hagen will announce his retirement at an event today at the medical center.

Hagen came to KU after retiring as surgeon general of the U.S. Navy. He also had served as commander of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

He said getting used to a university was difficult after the structured military system.

“It was coming from a quick-response unit to a more traditional situation, which is much more complex,” Hagen said. “Universities require a lot of patience. For someone who is focused on being action-oriented, it was difficult.”

Hagen listed structural changes he helped initiate at the KU Medical Center among his top accomplishments in Kansas City. Those included the formation of KU Physicians Inc., an umbrella organization for university clinical departments formed in 1996, and the separation of the University of Kansas Hospital from the university in 1998. The hospital now is governed by a board and is affiliated with the university.

“These things are designed so people in the organization have as much freedom to be as successful as they can get,” Hagen said.

Hagen came to KU months after the Medical Center’s heart transplants were halted due to administrative problems. He said the center he’ll be leaving at the end of the year is far different from that center.

“Honestly, that period of time is long gone,” he said. “It happened, it’s over and done, and there’s a new crowd here. The world is different here.”

Hemenway said he also felt the Medical Center had grown stronger during Hagen’s tenure.

“He has great courage in his management, and he’s been a wonderful leader for the Medical Center,” he said. “I’m going to miss him a whole lot. He’s a good person to be in a foxhole with.”

Continuing progress

Atkinson, 61, was hired to KU in 2000 as chair of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine. Two years later, she replaced Deborah Powell as medical school dean when Powell took over at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Atkinson said she felt prepared to succeed Hagen.

“I agreed to do it because it’s such an exciting time,” she said. “There’s so much we’re in the middle of, and so much that will be happening over the next five to 10 years.”

She said her goals will include overseeing the construction of the new research building underway on campus, seeking Comprehensive Cancer Center designation for the Kansas Masonic Cancer Institute, which will bring in additional federal funds, and continuing to develop KU’s clinical practices.

Atkinson — like Hemenway and Hagen — said she didn’t want to change the university’s relationship to the University of Kansas Hospital. The hospital has prospered financially in recent years, which officials have attributed to being freed from state restrictions such as mandatory purchasing contracts.

“I think it’s felt this hospital could not have been successful had it been under the university system,” she said. “It was too difficult in this competitive market to be under the rules and regulations that a state system has.”

Hagen’s salary is $298,545 this year. Atkinson’s salary was to be $308,937 this year, but salary after she moves to the executive vice chancellor position hasn’t been set, said Kevin Boatright, interim executive vice chancellor for university relations.