Pushing
forward on reform
While we wait for the Senate to
return to Washington
next week and get back to work on health care reform, the AAMC
continues to
make academic medicine’s voice heard on Capitol Hill by focusing
attention on our recommendations for the final legislation. As
2009
came to a close, we sent a letter to
congressional leaders that addressed a number of reform issues and
highlighted the provisions we believe should be included in the
compromise
bill. Our key recommendations: expand the physician
workforce to
avert a decrease in the number of physicians per capita, reform
Medicare’s physician payment methodology, decrease cuts in
Disproportionate
Share Hospital payments imposed on teaching hospitals, and forgo the
creation
of a new independent payment board that would craft and implement new
Medicare policies with limited input from Congress. In addition,
you
may also have seen my op-ed, “How to Fix
the Doctor Shortage,” in the January 4th edition of the Wall Street
Journal
in which I called on Congress to lift the cap on Medicare-supported
residency
training positions as part of health care reform. In the
article, I
also point out that, while the cost to add new physicians is
significant, it
is still less than 1 percent of current Medicare expenditures and a
critical
investment in ensuring all Americans have access to a
physician’s care.
New
panel on interprofessional collaboration
Last year, the AAMC and five other
associations (AACN, AACP, AACOM, ADEA, and ASPH) that represent the
education
associations for nursing, pharmacy, osteopathic medicine, dentistry,
and
public health, formed a collaborative to promote and encourage
constituent
efforts that advance substantive interprofessional learning
experiences to
help prepare future clinicians for team-based care of patients.
The
collaborative has appointed a new joint expert panel, similar to the
AAMC’s Medical School Objectives Project panels, and charged it
with
recommending a set of core competencies that would lay the foundation
for
interprofessional collaborative practice to help guide programs in the
six
professions. The group also will be asked to recommend
educational
strategies for achieving the competencies and related
objectives.
Madeline Schmitt, Ph.D., professor emerita of nursing at the
University of Rochester,
a well-known pioneer in interprofessional education, will chair the
new
panel, which will include two appointees from each of the six
associations.
The panel will build on work already completed by professional groups
in
North America and the United Kingdom.
Fee
waivers continue to aid medical school applicants
Since 2003, the AAMC has made a
concerted
effort through our Fee Assistance Program (FAP) to help economically
disadvantaged students with the costs of applying to medical
school.
The program provides free AMCAS® applications for up to 14
schools,
heavily discounted fees to take the MCAT® exam, and a free copy of
the AAMC’s
new “Official Guide to the MCAT.” To assist more
students,
we simplified the process to apply for a fee waiver and liberalized
the
criteria for approval. Students can receive fee waivers if their
family
income is less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level. We
are
pleased that, in the last six years, the number of completed
applications for
fee waivers has more than doubled, and the number approved has grown
over
fivefold. Last year there was a significant 27 percent increase
over
2008 in both the number of FAP applicants and approvals, undoubtedly
because
of the economic downturn. As a result, nearly 6 percent of AMCAS
applicants for the 2010 entering class used the FAP to
apply.
Seeking
responses to the “Question of the Year”
Once again in the January issue of
Academic
Medicine,
Editor-in-Chief Steven Kanter M.D., is inviting journal readers to
share
their thoughts on his “Question of the Year.” With
the
economic recession and widespread concern in our community about
the
high cost of a medical education, this year Dr. Kanter is interested
in your
responses to “What are the most effective ways to make medical
school
tuition and fees free to students in exchange for public
service?” Answers should be submitted in the form of a
750-word
essay with no more than three references. As many as five
responses
will be published in the journal. The deadline to submit an
essay is
May 1, 2010. To learn how to submit a response and to read Dr.
Kanter’s complete editorial in the January Academic
Medicine, go
to: http://www.aamc.org/academicmedicine/
Follow
the AAMC on Twitter/Facebook
Last month, the association launched
a new
Twitter feed called AAMCtoday,
as well as began regular updates to our Facebook
fan page. These new communication channels will help us inform
the
media, the general public, policymakers, and constituents about AAMC
news,
information, events, and publications. In addition, we will use
these
new online resources to post significant media stories about medical
schools
and teaching hospitals, and opinion pieces by AAMC and constituent
leaders. We hope that you will take a moment to sign up to
follow the
AAMC online.
