This January, Mitchell Posner was appointed the chief clinical officer for the UChicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center (UCCCC).
In his new role, Posner hopes to reshape the University’s surgical oncology practice into a distinct part of the surgical department, rather than merely a part of general surgery, while also making the center a better resource for members of the South Side community. As chief clinical officer, he will oversee clinical operations of the cancer service across UCCCC as well as the new cancer pavilion—Chicago’s first freestanding facility dedicated specifically to cancer care and research—which is expected to open in 2027.
Posner initially declined an offer to become the official head of surgical oncology, a role focused on the surgical treatment of cancer, at UChicago Medicine’s (UCMed) Department of Surgery due to disagreements about “what surgical oncology could be.” However, recent changes to the department’s structure emphasizing the importance of a specialized approach to surgical oncology led him to accept his new leadership position.
“Surgical oncology was basically always embedded in general surgery, and it still is here to a great degree,” Posner said. “Actually creating a defined entity that was focused again on training, superb clinical care, clinical trials, research to, again, improve outcomes [specifically for surgical oncology]—those are the things that came together and that the Department of Surgery recognized as a growing need to create.”
Posner never intended to occupy an administrative role, though his early experiences would guide his later work. According to Posner, his journey with medicine began in Brooklyn when he underwent surgery at age 12. There, he met a doctor who became his lifelong inspiration: “I just thought he was the most amazing individual I’d ever met. He made me feel comfortable; he made me trust him,” Posner said. The experience inspired values he would carry with him throughout his career.
“I just thought, taking somebody and fixing them was just incredible. I never forgot that time, even though I only saw him for five days, [and] from that day on, I wanted to be a surgeon. Not just a doctor, but a surgeon, and then somehow it came true,” he continued.
Following that experience, Posner attended State University of New York, Buffalo for medical school; did his residency at the University of Colorado; and completed a fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He took his first job at the University of Pittsburgh, working in gastrointestinal surgical oncology, which focuses on cancers in the digestive system.
Throughout his education and early career, Posner’s primary motivation was always rooted in patient care.
“I always thought of myself as a clinician caring for patients, that was the motivation—there was no business motivation, there was no motivation to be an ‘administrative’ individual,” Posner said.
However, as Posner’s career progressed, he gradually found himself taking on more administrative responsibilities. “Things evolve over time, and you expand because hopefully you’re doing things correctly and people trust you to take on other tasks,” he said. “I think that you always have to find things that maintain your passion and allow you to continue to have an impact.”
Posner noted that both his fellowship in surgical oncology and his tenure at the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, where he also took on a more administrative role, were key in preparing him for the position at UCCCC.
“The only goal [of a leader] is for others to achieve their goals and to get them to the place where they want to be.… That’s where the joy comes from, and that’s part of the administrative downstream value.” His positive experience at the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute strongly influenced his future decisions, particularly his motivations when coming to the University of Chicago in 1995: “When I came here [to UCMed], it was to lead surgical oncology and take it to its next level, hopefully.”
Although Posner has come to value administrative work, he still believes that maintaining his work in the clinical field—seeing patients himself—is crucial to his continued success. “Even as I transition to a more administrative role, for people to respect what you’re doing, having your hand still in the clinical realm is really important so they respect you, [so] they know you feel what they’re feeling,” Posner said. “[You can’t] just [be] some administrator telling them what to do without the context of a clinical entity.”
Although his current focus is still providing care to patients, Posner hopes to reshape cancer care at UCMed more broadly by allowing patients to see all the necessary doctors in one visit and rebuilding ties with the South Side community.
“We’re focusing on multidisciplinary care where patients will come in and see a surgeon, medical oncologist, [and] a radiation oncologist in one visit,” he said. “Not… one week they see me, and the next week they see somebody else. When people get diagnosed with cancer, it is a defining moment in their life.… It’s frightening to them, and we should make that journey easy.”
Furthermore, Posner also wants to make cancer care feel more accessible to the South Side community, where cancer incidence is significantly higher and mortality rates are nearly double the national average.
“People are… not feeling comfortable coming into a medical center for whatever reason,” Posner said. “That doesn’t mean we haven’t tried; it’s just a multifactorial [issue].”
Posner added that many patients will actively leave the South Side for their cancer care despite UCCCC offering comprehensive services close to home. “I strongly believe they don’t need to; we have everything here for them,” he said. “[That’s why] we’ve really spent a lot of time working with our community leaders… in creating the blueprint for the new cancer pavilion.”
Posner outlined several paths UCCCC could take to rebuild trust and make patients feel more comfortable staying on the South Side for their care. These include increasing screenings in the community, educating residents about the importance of early cancer detection, and addressing misconceptions about clinical trials.
Posner noted that clinical trials can often be perceived as “experimentation,” but in reality, they play a critical role in ensuring that patients receive optimal care.
“All those things create an environment of welcoming and making people feel that they’re in the right place,” he said.
Posner believes that technology can be used to help people understand the benefits of medicine and highlight the quality of care being provided. “Using technology and the display of how something that was thought of in a laboratory, [as] a hypothesis, has translated into the development of a new drug that has improved [patient] outcomes,” he said.
For example, Posner has considered installing displays within the new cancer pavilion, viewing it as a potential step forward for UCCCC. “Having monitors built into the institution that [are] just showing what we do, that we’re not just… providing care, but we’re defining care.”
Building on this vision, Posner expressed enthusiasm about the future of cancer care at UCMed, specifically as the new cancer pavilion is being built.
“I’m very excited about what’s going on here [at UCMed], and I think it’s a very important time for us. Building this new [cancer] pavilion, the investment that’s being made—that will really create a unique opportunity,” Posner said. “The building’s the building, but how care is delivered in that building, how we make it more accessible to our own community around us and deliver on the service that we think is critical—that’s going to be the game changer.”
