WSU
Ophthalmologist
Makes List of
Metro Detroit Achievers

By Steve Townsend

Despite his many administrative accomplishments, 
Dr. Juzych says patient care is still his driving passion.

WSU associate professor and associate chair of ophthalmology, Mark Juzych, MD, has not started his own dot-com; he has not led a firm to record-setting profits or a stunning IPO; he has not gone out on his own entrepreneurial venture to reap untold personal riches. Despite these facts, were his peers surprised to learn of the 37-year-old’s selection, along with 39 other of the Detroit area’s best and brightest, as the only health care professional in the 2000 edition of  “Forty Under Forty?” Not in the least.

The annual listing, which appears each fall in Crain’s Detroit Business, recognizes young professionals who possess “an impressive blend of initiative, drive, scope of achievement, potential for future leadership and community involvement.” Judges, focusing primarily on professional achievement, selected this year’s list from more than 150 nominees from a wide variety of professional endeavors. The judges at Crain’s are not the only ones who feel that Dr. Juzych fits the bill.

“I’m not at all surprised by his selection,” said Gary Abrams, MD, who, as professor and chair of ophthalmology and director of the Kresge Eye Institute (KEI), has witnessed Dr. Juzych’s burgeoning career since he joined the faculty in 1995. “Leadership rises to the top at all levels. Change their geography, their situation; leaders will still rise to the top. Put Mark in any business and he would succeed.”

Dr. Juzych’s accomplishments, although of a different flavor than those of most of this year’s selections, are no less impressive. Fresh from his success in leading the merger of the ophthalmology residency programs of KEI and Sinai-Grace Hospital, Dr. Juzych has been selected to serve on the medical service organization (MSO) board that is overseeing much of the ongoing consolidation of the School of Medicine’s 19 clinical faculty practice plans.

A 1989 graduate of the Wayne State University School of Medicine, Dr. Juzych completed his residency at KEI and a glaucoma fellowship at the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He returned to WSU and KEI in 1995, where he serves as ophthalmology residency program director and coordinator of the medical student ophthalmology elective as well as associate chair of the department.

Part of Dr. Juzych’s recent success is due, in part, to his conscientious effort to address what he viewed as potential problems with what he termed “the business of medicine.” The way Dr. Juzych saw it, recent developments in the field were forcing physicians to give up some of their decision making authority. As a result, Dr. Juzych went back to school and earned a master’s degree in health service administration in 1998, allowing him to “talk business as well as medicine” to protect the quality of patient care.

Success in the realm of health care is nothing new to the Juzych family. Dr. Juzych’s father is also an ophthalmologist; his mother is a medical librarian; one sister is a dentist on the faculty of the University of Detroit School of Dentistry; another sister, Lydia, is a fellow WSU School of Medicine graduate (’97) who currently serves as chief resident in dermatology at Henry Ford Hospital; and his wife holds a doctorate in public health and directs a statewide effort in producing antibiotic resistance.

Dr. Lydia Juzych is convinced that the success she and her siblings have achieved in their respective careers is no accident. “In addition to the medical background we were all a part of at home, our parents instilled in us to be very responsible, to always have pride in ourselves and in our work and to always try to do our best in anything we do,” she said.

Despite the many awards he has garnered throughout his career, Dr. Mark Juzych still gets his greatest satisfaction from helping save the vision of his patients and from helping teach others to do the same.

“I’ve never really had any specific career goals other than to do what I am doing right now,” Juzych said. “I am one of the fortunate people in this world who honestly enjoys getting up and going to work everyday. Even with all the wonderful things that have happened, seeing patients and helping to train the next generation of ophthalmologists is still the high point of my day.”

Dr. Gary Abrams is confident that, whatever the future may hold for Mark Juzych, it will indeed be bright. “He is a person who integrates data well, communicates ideas well and is able to get people to work together to get a job done,” Dr. Abrams said. “He makes those around him better.”