With 1,500 faculty members, nearly $500 million in National Institutes of Health grants a year, and the region's biggest academic medical center in his purview, Jameson will direct a critically important component of the institution, said University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann.
She called Jameson "an eminent researcher, educator, and clinician with a sterling track record of inspired leadership."
"Arthur Rubenstein has done a spectacular job, and by appointing [Jameson] early, we are assuring we will make a strong transition," Guttman said.
Jameson will need those skills as he seeks to push Penn to thrive in the era of the recently passed health bill, said Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of health economics at Princeton University.
Reinhardt said that Penn was well positioned with its strong clinical and research faculty, but that Jameson's task will be to get the entire enterprise working toward the goal of delivering high-quality care and at a reasonable cost.
"This will be a terrific challenge where the chance of success is extremely high," he said.
Jameson said he was attracted by Penn's stature in academic medicine. But he also said that it was important to meet challenges and opportunities created by the vast changes coming in medicine.
Besides building on Penn's strengths in medical research and education, Jameson said he wanted Penn to help write more guidelines and protocols for care across medicine.
"There needs to be a strong focus on quality, safety, terrific outcomes, and cost-effectiveness," Jameson said. "I would hope that Penn Medicine could be a leader in developing best practices that can be shared with others in medicine."
Both Jameson and Gutmann said that having 10 months to transition between deans would be beneficial.
