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Medscape Medical News
Kaiser Plans to Open Its Own Medical School
Alicia Ault
December 21, 2015
Kaiser Plans to Open Its Own Medical School
Alicia Ault
December 21, 2015
- Kaiser serves 10 million enrollees in eight states and Washington, DC. It owns 38 hospitals and employs 17,000 physicians.
The Kaiser model will likely set the Kaiser medical school apart, said John Prescott, MD, chief academic officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
Dr Prescott said that Kaiser has been a major supporter of medical education over the years and that the organization had more than 70 years of experience in healthcare delivery. Having a medical school "completes the continuum," he told Medscape Medical News.
It will give Kaiser a crop of students who could become Kaiser residents and perhaps Kaiser physicians, he said. A Kaiser school also will provide "some real examples for others to learn from in the future," he said.
The United States currently has 145 accredited medical schools, which graduated more than 18,000 students in 2015, according to AAMC data. Twenty schools have opened since 2002, but there has been a freeze on Medicare funding for new resident slots since 1997, which has put a squeeze on the number of new physicians in circulation, said Dr Prescott.
That is one of the reasons why the AAMC and others are projecting shortages of 45,000 to 90,000 physicians by 2025, he said.
"Physicians of Tomorrow"
A Kaiser school would help train more potential doctors, but the organization's hospitals would face the same challenge in covering residency slots. Kaiser said that it has 600 new physicians currently completing residency programs at its hospitals.
The organization said that it will locate its school somewhere in southern California and open it in 2019. Given the length and breadth of the accreditation process, "2019 is ambitious," said Dr Prescott, but he added that Kaiser "probably has the resources and expertise to make that happen."
Medical education needs to change to reflect the changing needs of the healthcare system and patients, said George Thibault, MD, president of the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation, in a Kaiser press release. "Kaiser Permanente is in a position to make important contributions to these changes by bringing its vast experience with teamwork, coordinated care and technology to medical education," said Dr Thibault.
Kaiser has recruited Christine K. Cassel, MD, to join the team that will design what the organization called the "innovative new approach to training the physicians of tomorrow."
Dr Cassel will leave her position as president and CEO of the Washington, DC–based National Quality Forum to join Kaiser. She previously was the chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine, president of the American College of Physicians, and a dean at Oregon Health and Science University.
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