Rapoport as an associate dean at the medical
school in 1979

At 6:15 a.m., on April 10, 1984, Morton I. Rapoport’s, ’60, home telephone rang. On the other end of the line a woman sobbed, and he could hear gasping in the background.

His mentor and colleague, Dr. T. Albert Farmer, chancellor of the University of Maryland Baltimore, lay on the floor of his home fighting for his life. Still dressed in pajamas, Rapoport, pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt and raced to the chancellor’s home at Hidden Waters just minutes away. He dashed up a flight of steps to the second floor where he found Farmer’s wife sitting on the floor with tears streaming down her cheeks holding her husband’s hand.

Immediately, Rapoport began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions. An emergency medical team arrived, administered a shock to the dying man, and whisked him to a nearby hospital. Despite their efforts, Farmer was dead.

“What am I going to do?” thought Rapoport. Later that morning the Maryland General Assembly was to pass legislation privatizing University Hospital. Rapoport was to serve as CEO for the enterprise, but the architect behind the initiative who would provide his political protection had just died. “I had bought into this idea even though many in the system, including physicians, department heads, assistant deans, and employees bristled at the notion,” he said.

His decision was to move forward.

“The next three to four years were turbulent,” recalls Rapoport, age 74, who is writing a book with former colleague Stephen C. Schimpff, MD, about the hospital’s transformation. By 1987, the job was “very, very stressful. I didn’t have any friends.”

Yet, today, 25 years after Rapoport led the privatization of University of Maryland Medical System, his accomplishments are far reaching and hard to dispute. From 1984 until his retirement in 2003, revenue grew more than seven fold to about $1 billion, admissions more than doubled to roughly 50,000—up from 23,000—and five hospitals were acquired.
Rapoport never envisioned himself at the center of a storm running a hospital in a major city. He was the son of a Baltimore grocer who had emigrated from Russia. When Rapoport was in sixth grade, he met Rosalie Greenberg on the school playground. Rosalie’s parents ran a grocery store, too, and she bore the brunt of anti-Semitic remarks.
“Are you Jewish?” he asked her one day.

“Yes,” Rosalie announced. “And I am proud of it.”

Rapoport offered to carry her books home, and the two stopped by Rosalie’s parent’s grocery store where she gave him a Dixie cup of ice cream. “I thought he was kind of cute,” Rosalie recalls. “He had rosy cheeks and dark hair and dark eyes.”
The two attended different high schools and Rapoport left Baltimore for Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. During his freshman year, Rapoport’s roommate told him about a blind date he had with a young woman in Baltimore. The woman said she knew someone at Franklin & Marshall, Morty Rapoport. The young woman was Rosalie Greenberg. Six weeks later, Rapoport called her, and by 1958 the two were married.

After college, Rapoport attended Maryland and graduated in 1960. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1961 to 1967, specializing in internal medicine and conducting research in infectious diseases. After being discharged as a major, Rapoport returned to the medical school and began working his way up the ranks. He was named assistant professor of medicine and later became professor of medicine and chief of medicine at Baltimore VA Hospital, as well as senior associate dean at the medical school.

In 1980, University Hospital was losing money, its physical plant was in disrepair, and it was technologically far behind other hospitals. Farmer had been recruited from the University of Tennessee to straighten out the problems. He was smart, intense, and a workaholic. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and spoke in a southern drawl.

He and Rapoport hit it off. In 1982, the two talked about the hospital’s future. “We need a guy who can really understand the bottom line,” Farmer said. “Are you a bottom-line man?”

Indeed, Rapoport was a “bottom-line man.” And it was a bold move—perhaps even daring—to proceed without Farmer.
But operating privately, the hospital had its advantages. It could install new and more effective accounting procedures, trim costs by purchasing supplies more smartly, and control personnel. It would also have more focus. “Initially, we weren’t a very good hospital,” Rapoport says. “My success in the early years was wrestling the financial issues to the ground.”

Executing Farmer’s vision became a daily challenge. Powerful groups opposing the new direction lined up outside Rapoport’s office urging him to step aside. “You’re messing up,” they told him.

Some physicians didn’t like being told that they had to live within budgets, Rapoport says. His personality got in the way, too. “I was abrupt,” he says. “I may have been more of a jerk than I should have been.”

Even the most benign acts could wreak havoc. In 1986, Gov. Harry Hughes gave state employees an additional vacation day since Christmas fell on a Thursday. That meant that of the 3,500 medical system employees, 2,500 had the day off because they were still state employees. Without employees, patients wouldn’t receive care. The governor’s well intentioned decision forced Rapoport to cough up roughly $400,000 in double-time pay.

He battled on. In spite of the internal politics, revenue improved, new talent arrived, and the hospital thrived, rivaling cross-town competitor Johns Hopkins Hospital. “I began to see that I could drive the process, and make it more like a business,” Rapoport says.

Today, the University of Maryland Medical System has had its bumps and bruises, but Rapoport is proud of what he sees. He is also content in retirement, traveling and spending time with his wife and 16 grandchildren, as well as serving on several boards.

There are days when he walks through his basement and reads the handwritten notes on a huge card given to him by hospital employees when he retired. They are from nurses, receptionists and people in housekeeping. “Those were the kinds of people I liked to work with. They were committed to making the place better,” he says.

There are days when Rapoport thinks of Farmer, and wonders what he would have thought if he could see the medical system’s transformation.

“He would have been very proud it,” Rapoport says. “It would have been confirmation of his vision. I think he would feel vindicated.”