Category Archives: Medical School

Prestige for the community aside, perhaps the biggest advantage of locating a Mercer University School of Medicine satellite campus in Columbus is the five-star physician “recruits” it might attract.

That was one of the most descriptive analogies offered up Friday as Macon, Ga.-based Mercer made it official at the Columbus Public Library news conference that it is partnering with The Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital on a two-year doctor training program after 18 months of discussions and logistical planning.

St. Francis President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Granger pointed out college football is king in the South and that everyone understands how difficult it is to recruit the elite players to universities such as Auburn, Alabama and elsewhere.

“Medical school graduates are much like those five-star recruits. They can go anywhere that they want to go. They have plenty of opportunities to choose where they want to practice,” said Granger, explaining the national shortage in health-care specialties.

Georgia, in fact, ranks 37th in the U.S. in terms of physicians per capital. A quarter of doctors in the state are 55 or older. At the same time, the number of Georgians over age 65 is expected to double in the next two decades.

“It is vital to the long-term success of our community that we bring those physicians here to practice and replace those physicians that we have that are retiring, and to meet the needs of the aging Baby Boomer population in our community,” Granger said.

Mercer and the two Columbus hospitals believe that will be the case as physician students complete their third- and fourth-year clinical rotations locally, then bond with the community and return after receiving their specialty degrees.

“We retain more of our graduates in the state of Georgia than any of the other medical schools in this state and, in fact, rank second of the 160 medical schools nationally in the percentage of graduates retained in the home state of that school,” said Mercer President William Underwood of the university’s School of Medicine, which was founded in 1982. It trains only Georgia residents.

It will be six months before the first 12 students arrive from Mercer, where they have had their first two years of classroom studies. They are expected to split their time between The Medical Center, which is owned by Columbus Regional Healthcare System, and St. Francis Hospital.

The goal is to grow that number to 24 in the second year and eventually ramp it up to 80. At some point, if everything goes smoothly, thoughts will turn toward a four-year bricks-and-mortar campus in Columbus, perhaps something similar to that in Savannah, where Mercer already has a full medical training operation.

That was part of the discussion in August 2010 when a delegation from Columbus approached the university about locating a campus here. The group included First Baptist Church Pastor Jimmy Elder and businessman Tom Black, both members of Mercer’s board of trustees. Also there was Georgia State Rep. Richard Smith and Pete Robinson, Columbus resident and chairman of Atlanta-based lobbying firm Troutman Sanders Strategies.

“I was intrigued in knowing what I know about Columbus and the can-do attitude and spirit here,” Underwood said. “I told them that should this initial step prove successful, and should there be adequate support in the community for taking the next step of opening a full four-year medical school campus, we’d be willing to explore that possibility as well.”

On Friday, Elder said the fruits of those talks with the university president led to the final decision by all involved to move forward. It showed both Columbus and Mercer at their “finest,” he said, also pointing out the local institution will be heavily into medical research.

“Every once in a while you’ll find perfect suitors for something to take place,” Elder said. “With Mercer’s spirit and its ability, with Columbus and the spirit here, and with the spirit from the hospitals, we saw the most beautiful merging of minds, ideas and spirits that you’ve ever seen.”

Black called it a “stellar day” for the city to see Columbus Regional and St. Francis — who at times can be intense competitors in the local health-care sector — putting any rivalry aside for the better good of the community.

“I think it’s going to mean great things for Mercer, for our two hospitals, and the city of Columbus,” Black said. Smith, who recalled having a cup of coffee with Robinson and pondering what next great thing could happen in Columbus, then thinking of a medical school, said Mercer’s presence here will change the quality of life for residents for years to come. He also threw out a motivational phrase: “Without leaps of dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibility. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

Mike Gaymon, president and CEO of the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce, ticked off memorable moments in the city’s history — construction of the Chattahoochee Riverwalk, landing women’s fast-pitch softball during the 1996 Summer Olympics, and launching a technology course to train programmers for credit-card processor TSYS.

“This is a game-changing opportunity for our region,” he said. “We think today’s announcement will be one of those significant events.”

Mercer University School of Medicine Dean Bill Bina said the Columbus campus will have the mission of educating doctors to serve not only here, but in rural and underserved areas of the state.

“Our goal is to improve medical education, enhance residency training experience, and meet the needs of the Columbus community,” he said.

Lance Duke, president and CEO of The Medical Center, noted that his hospital has long been a training ground. It established the first family practice residency program in Georgia in 1972.

“We’ve trained hundreds of physicians over that period of time and over 80 physicians in our region received part of their training at The Medical Center residency program,” he said. “This is for the community good, for the region’s good, and benefits both health systems and both hospitals.”

Dr. John Bucholtz, director of Medical Eduction and the Family Practice Residency Program at The Medical Center, has been heavily involved in the planning process thus far. He said Mercer will likely set up offices at The Bradley Center in Columbus, with staff also having space at each hospital.

However, the march toward a four-year campus will take time, he stressed, with this first step leading to higher enrollment and more faculty. There’s much work to be done, he said, but enthusiasm is high.

“The doctors that I talk to are very excited about this. Everybody wants to get involved with it,” he said.

Mercer School of Medicine has graduated more than 1,000 physicians since its founding 30 years ago. It currently has about 400 medical doctor students enrolled.

Columbus Regional and St. Francis both have grown steadily with Columbus developing into a regional health-care hub. St. Francis is well known for its cardiology treatment and care, while Columbus Regional owns Doctors Hospital and The Medical Center. Its specialties include a regional trauma center, high-risk infant care and cancer treatment.

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UPDATE: Mercer University to partner with St. Francis Hospital, The Medical Center for medical campus

A mix of alcohol and pills caused death of former school president. By ALAN BAVLEY The Kansas City Star

By ALAN BAVLEY The Kansas City Star

Updated: 2012-02-11T05:12:50Z

Star file photo

Karen Pletz

The death of former medical school president and civic leader Karen Pletz has been ruled a suicide, a Florida county medical examiner said Friday.

Pletz, the 64-year-old ex-president of the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, was found dead Nov. 22 in the Fort Lauderdale home of a family member.Pletz died of acute intoxication from a combination of alcohol, the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam (sold under the brand name Xanax), and the narcotic pain relievers oxycodone and meperidine (brand name Demerol), said Darin Trelka, interim chief medical examiner of Broward County.In 14 years as head of the osteopathic medical school, Pletz had taken on many civic leadership roles and had been honored as one of the area’s top businesswomen. But in recent years, criminal and civil allegations tarnished her reputation.Late in 2009, she was abruptly fired from her medical school post amid questions about her handling of the school’s finances. The school filed a civil lawsuit against Pletz in March 2010 alleging that she used more than $2 million of the school’s assets for her personal benefit. She countersued, claiming she had been wrongfully terminated.In April, a federal grand jury in Kansas City returned a 24-count indictment against Pletz, alleging that she had embezzled more than $1.5 million from the medical school, engaged in money laundering and falsified tax returns. A federal judge dismissed the criminal charges in December.

To reach Alan Bavley, call 816-234-4858 or send email to abavley@kcstar.com.

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Karen Pletz’s death was a suicide, coroner says

By RYAN BERLIN
@RBerlin_MSun

The lengthy process for Central Michigan University’s medical school to gain accreditation has taken a step forward.

Wednesday afternoon the university received word that it had been approved by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education for preliminary accreditation.

“I and the rest of the team are very pleased that the accreditation came through. I don’t know if we have been happier at any moment through this process,” CMED Dean Ernest Yoder said.

“In our planning we realized that to get this right we needed to give ourselves more time. Some time ago we made the decision to take our first class in 2013 instead of 2012.”

There is a five-stage process that a medical school must go through in order to become fully accredited.

CMU is currently in the third step of that process. As a candidate school, CMU had to prepare for a visit from LCME officials, which occured in November.

“If you are successful in the survey visit, which we now know we were, you reach preliminary accreditation,” Yoder said.

“Approximately two years after that, we’re estimating the fall of 2014, we’ll have the next visit and if we are successful at that time we will have provisional accreditation. In fall of 2016 we will have another visit from LCME and success then would get us full accreditation.”

Plans are to have a full accreditation, by 2017, when the first class graduates.

CMED’s academic year runs from July 1 through June 30. Continued...

LCME has to make sure that before a full accreditation can be given that there is full development and implimentation of the educational program, according to Yoder.

“(They look for) the ability to asses the students and most importantly, the ability to develop the whole program. That’s what they are guiding through and that’s what they are looking for,” Yoder said.

“(Over the years) we will develop the program, present the program to them and show them that we have the resources to develop the program successfully and that is what they base their assessment on.

“I certainly hope for the university, that being a community engaged medical school in a community engaged university, that this is an opportunity for a lot of collaboration. We will help the university become an even better university than it already is.”

According to Yoder, Oakland University’s medical school, in the metro Detroit area, is in its second year of development and has a preliminary accreditation and is interviewing students for its second class.

Western Michigan University, although it has the donations, is still in the applicant school phase and has yet to apply for preliminary accreditation.

Read more from the original source:
CMU Medical School gains preliminary accreditation

The American University of Barbados, whose official opening is set for today, can pose serious challenges to the University of the West Indies (UWI) medical school at Cave Hill when it comes to foreign students.

That warning, of sorts, came from Professor Nigel Harris, University of the West Indies Vice Chancellor, who admitted that Barbados’ recent decision to give the green light to an offshore medical school in the country caught him by surprise.

He told the DAILY NATION in New York that when the privately funded medical school, the first of its kind in Barbados but one of several in the Eastern Caribbean, gets going it could present Cave Hill with competition for foreign students.

“That surprised me, frankly,” Harris said of the Freundel Stuart administration’s decision to grant an operating licence to the American University. “The model for the faculty of medicine [at Cave Hill] is one that anticipated getting international students who would be paying full bore for their education. Now to have an international one, an offshore school, there would be a challenge. It does challenge the university’s school at Cave Hill.”

Read the full story in today's WEEKEND NATION.

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Medical school may rival UWI

Prestige for the community aside, perhaps the biggest advantage of locating a Mercer University School of Medicine satellite campus in Columbus is the five-star physician “recruits” it might attract.

That was one of the most descriptive analogies offered up Friday as Macon, Ga.-based Mercer made it official at the Columbus Public Library news conference that it is partnering with The Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital on a two-year doctor training program after 18 months of discussions and logistical planning.

St. Francis President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Granger pointed out college football is king in the South and that everyone understands how difficult it is to recruit the elite players to universities such as Auburn, Alabama and elsewhere.

“Medical school graduates are much like those five-star recruits. They can go anywhere that they want to go. They have plenty of opportunities to choose where they want to practice,” said Granger, explaining the national shortage in health care specialties.

Georgia, in fact, ranks 37th in the United States in terms of physicians per capita. A quarter of doctors in the state are 55 or older. At the same time, the number of Georgians over age 65 is expected to double in the next two decades.

“It is vital to the long-term success of our community that we bring those physicians here to practice and replace those physicians that we have that are retiring, and to meet the needs of the aging baby boomer population in our community,” Granger said.

Mercer and the two Columbus hospitals think that will be the case as physician students complete their third- and fourth-year clinical rotations locally, then bond with the community and return after receiving their specialty degrees.

“We retain more of our graduates in the state of Georgia than any of the other medical schools in this state and, in fact, rank second of the 160 medical schools nationally in the percentage of graduates retained in the home state of that school,” said Mercer President William Underwood of the university’s School of Medicine, which was founded in 1982. It trains only Georgia residents.

It will be six months before the first 12 students arrive from Mercer, where they have had their first two years of classroom studies. They are expected to split their time between The Medical Center, which is owned by Columbus Regional Healthcare System, and St. Francis Hospital.

The goal is to grow that number to 24 in the second year and eventually ramp it up to 80. At some point, if everything goes smoothly, thoughts will turn toward a four-year, bricks-and-mortar campus in Columbus, perhaps something similar to that in Savannah, where Mercer already has a full medical training operation.

That was part of the discussion in August 2010 when a delegation from Columbus approached the university about locating a campus here. The group included First Baptist Church Pastor Jimmy Elder and businessman Tom Black, both members of Mercer’s board of trustees. Also there was Georgia State Rep. Richard Smith and Pete Robinson, Columbus resident and chairman of Atlanta-based lobbying firm Troutman Sanders Strategies.

“I was intrigued in knowing what I know about Columbus and the can-do attitude and spirit here,” Underwood said. “I told them that should this initial step prove successful, and should there be adequate support in the community for taking the next step of opening a full four-year medical school campus, we’d be willing to explore that possibility as well.”

‘Stellar day’

On Friday, Elder said the fruits of those talks with the university president led to the final decision by all involved to move forward. It showed both Columbus and Mercer at their “finest,” he said, also pointing out the local institution will be heavily into medical research.

“Every once in a while you’ll find perfect suitors for something to take place,” Elder said. “With Mercer’s spirit and its ability, with Columbus and the spirit here, and with the spirit from the hospitals, we saw the most beautiful merging of minds, ideas and spirits that you’ve ever seen.”

Black called it a “stellar day” for the city to see Columbus Regional and St. Francis -- who at times can be intense competitors in the local health care sector -- putting any rivalry aside for the better good of the community.

“I think it’s going to mean great things for Mercer, for our two hospitals, and the city of Columbus,” Black said.

Smith, who recalled having a cup of coffee with Robinson and pondering what next great thing could happen in Columbus, then thinking of a medical school, said Mercer’s presence here will change the quality of life for residents for years to come. He also threw out a motivational phrase: “Without leaps of dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibility. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

Mike Gaymon, president and CEO of the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce, ticked off memorable moments in the city’s history -- construction of the Chattahoochee Riverwalk, landing women’s fast-pitch softball during the 1996 Summer Olympics, and launching a technology course to train programmers for credit-card processor TSYS.

“This is a game-changing opportunity for our region,” he said. “We think today’s announcement will be one of those significant events.”

Mercer University School of Medicine Dean Bill Bina said the Columbus campus will have the mission of educating doctors to serve not only here, but also in rural and underserved areas of the state.

“Our goal is to improve medical education, enhance residency training experience, and meet the needs of the Columbus community,” he said.

Lance Duke, president and CEO of The Medical Center, noted that his hospital has long been a training ground. It established the first family practice residency program in Georgia in 1972.

“We’ve trained hundreds of physicians over that period of time and over 80 physicians in our region received part of their training at The Medical Center residency program,” he said. “This is for the community good, for the region’s good, and benefits both health systems and both hospitals.”

Dr. John Bucholtz, director of Medical Eduction and the Family Practice Residency Program at The Medical Center, has been heavily involved in the planning process thus far. He said Mercer will likely set up offices at The Bradley Center in Columbus, with staff also having space at each hospital.

However, the march toward a four-year campus will take time, he stressed, with this first step leading to higher enrollment and more faculty. There’s much work to be done, he said, but enthusiasm is high.

“The doctors that I talk to are very excited about this. Everybody wants to get involved with it,” he said.

Mercer School of Medicine has graduated more than 1,000 physicians since its founding 30 years ago. It currently has about 400 medical doctor students enrolled.

Columbus Regional and St. Francis have grown steadily with Columbus developing into a regional health care hub. St. Francis is well known for its cardiology treatment and care, while Columbus Regional owns Doctors Hospital and The Medical Center. Its specialties include a regional trauma center, high-risk infant care and cancer treatment.

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Mercer University to set up medical school in Columbus

18-01-2012 10:50 This is the VOA Special English Education Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http Many rural areas in the United States have no doctor. Some medical schools are trying different ways to treat the problem. One idea is to educate doctors in smaller communities and hope they stay. Dr. William Cathcart-Rake heads a new program at the University of Kansas in the Midwest. He says, "We need more docs. There's somewhere like a quarter of all of our physicians in Kansas are sixty years of age or older. So we need to be replacing physicians, too." He says medical students from rural areas now typically study in Wichita or Kansas City, two of the biggest cities in Kansas. "They say, 'You know, I really have every intention of coming back to rural Kansas,' but they meet a soul mate, they get married, their soul mate happens to be from a big city and we never see them again." The program is based in Kansas' tenth largest city, Salina, home to about fifty thousand people. Salina is about a three-hour drive from Kansas City, past fields of corn, soybeans and cattle. Student Claire Hinrichsen grew up in a town of about six hundred people. One reason she likes the Salina program is because of the size. There are only eight students -- the smallest medical school in the country. Classes are taught by professors in Salina or on a video link from Kansas City or Wichita. Students who complete the four-year program will then do their residency training in a small community in the surrounding ...

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Rural Medical School Competes With City Life - Video