He's a relentless negotiator, but Dr. Edwin W. Monroe is made of kind-hearted stuff.

When hospital and medical school funding were uncertain, Dr. Monroe never let go of his struggle to obtain it, despite the equally determined efforts of other state leaders to refuse it. He cared for the region's long-term welfare - and couldn't have cared less what they thought of him.

An internal medicine physician, Dr. Monroe came to Greenville in 1956, where he became one of the first specialists in town. He remembers the old hospital when it had 110 beds, two or three operating rooms and a small emergency room.

In 1968, he was invited to serve as dean of the new school of Allied Health Professions for East Carolina University, a program he was glad to see in place.
"We had to start producing our own health manpower if we were ever going to be of any help in expanding access to care in eastern North Carolina," he says.

"I thought if I could get things started - even though I didn't have a big background in academic medicine - that I could recruit people who had the right credentials and experience to move things along toward what we see today."

This committed leader became a key member of the team of lobbyists for the School of Medicine. For years, he dogged state leaders to support a four-year medical school at ECU, a dream realized in 1977. He's also known for developing the Eastern Area Health Education Center, part of a state network providing medical education to health professionals. The EAHEC building today bears his name.

Few people know how much his work benefited the hospital. For instance, in 1970, as a national movement to make hospitals private and for-profit came to Pitt County Memorial Hospital, he realized such a move would be disastrous for the area's poor, mostly rural residents. "I talked to the county commissioners, to the county attorney," he remembers. "I tried to bring into the discussion and into their mindset any resource I could to convince them not to fall for it, because that would have done us in.

"It was a very appealing offer, but luckily the county leaders were able to resist it, and they moved ahead with the passing of the bond issue and building the new hospital."

More than 40 years after arriving in the area, Dr. Monroe is still a leader. In 2000, he began a one-year term as chairman of the Board of Trustees for PCMH and University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina. He helped the board with complex tasks such as developing the system's $500 million, six-hospital budget, determining the best course for complicated third-party payer issues and overseeing new buildings, hospital wings and clinics.

Though he admits being a "politician without being elected," Dr. Monroe never intended to have that sort of role. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he returned to Chapel Hill in 1952 for his residency at the newly established, state-supported Memorial Hospital. After that experience, he said he would never have anything to do with a new hospital again.
"I was going to be a nose-to-the-grindstone internal medicine specialist," he says. It was not to be.

Before retiring from ECU in 1990, he held several posts, including associate dean of the medical school, vice chancellor for health affairs, head of continuing medical education and director of EAHEC.

Occasionally, he angered the very people he worked for. University leaders objected when Dr. Monroe petitioned state leaders to fund a radiation oncology service at the hospital when it needed that capability to become a tertiary care center. ECU officials made no plans to include the service at the new Brody Building, so Dr. Monroe enlisted state legislators to fund it.

"I was in the legislative building on a fairly regular basis, maybe once every couple of weeks," he says. "I would bump into university-system administrators in the halls, going up and down back stairs that I didn't think they knew about, and we would bump into each other and exchange cordial greetings. I carefully watched to see which direction they were going in, to see who they were going to talk to."

Improving healthcare for all is still the goal that drives him and he believes University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina is a good vehicle.

"Conceptually, it was a great vision," Dr. Monroe says of the system. "Trying to translate that into reality took a degree of stubbornness. It's always refreshing when others come around to the realization of what we're trying to do."

Among the difficulties of running such a large organization is keeping board members informed. "It used to be unbelievably simple," he said of the old days as a board member. "It's not that way anymore. For each board member, there's an overwhelming sense of trying to get up to speed to the responsibilities. It's a working position."

The issues may change, but his mission has not.

"Deep down inside a doctor has an innate desire to serve and to take care of people," he says. "That's just as true today as 40 or 50 years ago."

Edwin W. Monroe, MD