We congratulate Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell for being selected by our readers as the Most Influential person in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor. This year, our editorial pick is Dr. Denise Jamieson, the University of Iowa vice president for medical affairs and dean of the UI Carver College of Medicine.
If Dr. Jamieson, a gynecologist, continues on the current trajectory of building, acquisitions and overall growth for UI Health Care, then she might one day have a building or tower named after her similar to one of her predecessors, UIHC visionary John Colloton.
Dr. Jamieson has only been in her current position since 2023, but the strategic moves that she has made to transform UI Health Care into a statewide health care powerhouse, much to the chagrin of other hospital and health care executives, hasn’t happened since Mr. Colloton in the 1970s and 1980s focused on his mission to “bring a broad array of cutting-edge medical services to 3 million Iowans.”
Mr. Colloton would change the system from one that offered 28-bed open wards segregated by patients’ ability to pay to one that offered the same class of care for all patients. By 1993, he had tripled University Hospitals’ staff and saw patient visits hit 500,000, and 92% of those people were privately insured, according to a news report.
Since Dr. Jamieson arrived, she has led the acquisition of Mercy Iowa City out of bankruptcy; the construction of a new $1 billion inpatient tower that will encompass 843,000 gross square feet; the purchase of Mission Cancer + Blood, a 43-year-old community-based cancer-care business with 22 locations in Central and Western Iowa for $280 million; the expansion of its air transport partnership with Air Methods with a new base in the Quad Cities; and the building of the new $525 million UI Health Care North Liberty hospital, which is expected to open in 2025.
“This is our first construction of a new hospital away from the university campus, so there’s a lot of momentum and excitement for the North Liberty campus,” said Dr. Jamieson in a news release. “Each day, we’re making progress and moving a step closer to something truly historic and transformational for UI Health Care.”
We have said that the success of UI Health Care begets the success of the region and vice versa, so we are excited about some of these strategic moves. But we are also mindful and concerned when UI Health Care starts to compete with the private sector.
Dr. Jamieson has made an enormous impact in a relatively short period of time and is certainly worthy of being the most influential person in the Corridor.
