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UNM’s Health Sciences Center will have to seek more money from the state Legislature next year.
At a meeting held Friday afternoon, the UNM Hospital Board of Directors approved a $9.5 million increase in the HSC’s funding request to the Legislature. The funding request will be for the fiscal year 2015, which starts July 1, 2014.
HSC Chancellor Paul Roth said HSC administrators along with UNM President Robert Frank have reviewed the funding request and identified an increase to be appropriate. Roth said the funding request will help “to allow an increase in compensation for our faculty.”
“Many of our faculty (members) don’t even reach the 25th percentile nationally in terms of compensation,” he said. “We will be developing a long-term strategy on how we want to project our targets for our faculty.”
According to a document distributed at the meeting that breaks down the parts of the funding request, $4 million of the total increase will be used to pay HSC faculty members’ salaries. This constitutes a request for an increase in instructional and general (I&G) funding.
Roth said I&G funding accounts for 20 percent of total funding for faculty salaries. He said UNM currently receives about $80 million in I&G funding from the New Mexico Legislature, although not all of it is used for faculty salaries.
I&G funding for the HSC has been going down in recent years. In fiscal year 2011, it received a funding of $93 million from the state, which is a $4 million decrease from I&G funding it received in fiscal year 2010.
Even if the state Legislature approves the $4 million increase in I&G funds, Roth said the HSC will still have to fundraise another $16 million to put its faculty salary at the 33rd percentile in the nation. This means the HSC aims to have higher faculty salaries than 33 percent of other schools in the country.
Roth said if the HSC were only able to get the additional $4 million from the Legislature, its faculty salaries will be up by only 2 percentile points, “which is substantially below” its goal.
Roth said the request for a $4 million increase in funds is lower than what the Legislature should be expecting.
“We could have requested $20 million,” he said. “But since the total I&G funding represents only one-fifth of the compensation for faculty, it would only be appropriate for the state to go up by this $4 million rather than the whole amount.”
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According to the funding request document, the HSC is also requesting from the Legislature an increase of $1.5 million in funding for its Nurse Practitioner Education program and a $1.1 million increase for funds for the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) Project. The HSC will also request $1 million from the Legislature for the UNM Pain Center and a $500,000 increase in funds for the HSC’s Health Extension Rural Offices.
UNM’s Board of Regents will still have to approve the HSC’s funding request before it goes to the Legislature this January, Roth said.
Roth said the HSC’s student population has increased. He said he hopes that the Legislature would consider that in addressing the HSC’s funding requests next year.
“We’re now at a point where we’ve expanded our medical school class and we are looking for ways to expand our other classes,” he said. “So it is really critical that we get some support from the Legislature on that.”
The regents will discuss whether or not to approve the HSC’s funding requests to the Legislature in a meeting at the Student Union Building today.
