Kaiser Permanente will be following in the footsteps of many medical schools across the country as it tries to adapt traditional curriculums to the modern data-driven environment students will encounter upon graduation.
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Challenging the status quo in medicine and education, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente said it plans to establish a medical school in Southern California.
The health system is looking to incorporate its integrated model for healthcare delivery into its training, saying current physician education hasn’t kept pace with complex care-delivery systems.
The facility will be called the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, Kaiser said in a statement from its headquarters in Oakland.
The company will have to invest in basic science education, he said, but “I’m sure they will handle it”. “Enrollment is already up 25 percent since 2002”. Kaiser, however, is “unique in proposing to go it alone, not in a partnership”, Thibault says.
“Opening a medical school and influencing physician education is based on our belief that the new models of care mean we must reimagine how physicians are trained”, said Bernard Tyson, chairman and CEO, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, in a news release.
Ellison said one of their goals is to recruit more minority students. “This is a natural evolution for us”, he said.
Another advantage is the HMO’s deep pockets.
“It’s good that health plans are starting to fund medical education”. “This is a grand experiment, but if anybody can do it, Kaiser can”.
Kaiser’s start-from-scratch approach might allow it to sidestep some of the cost and reimbursement issues facing academic medical centers and medical schools.
It is not the fact that medical schools have not tried boosting diversity; they have taken several recruitment efforts and financial aid packages to support the cause. Whereas, only 4% of medical students were black and 8% were Latino in 2010.
According to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges, Latinos make up about 17% of the US population but only about 9% of medical students.
Still, building a new medical school is “fraught with risk”, said John Deane, president of Advisory Board Consulting and Management.
Medical school administrators said an additional medical school could also lead to more doctors serving similar areas.
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But Edward Salsberg of George Washington University, who has spent a career documenting health workforce trends, says any potential conflict is still a long way off. A time frame for a decision has not been set, Resch-Silvestri said. That’s because the U.S.is producing dramatically more nurse practitioners and physician assistants, who also provide primary care.
