MDNews - Minnesota

COVER FEATURE institutions came together to coordinate accessibility of patient electronic medical records at any emergency room in the metro area. If a patient receives care at the university and is later brought to HCMC's emergency room to be treated for trauma, a HCMC physician can pull up the patient's university records to review any medication allergies and basic medical history. "Today's medical students are digital natives," explains Dr. Walsh. "They grew up in a world of computer technology and appreciate the advantages of a sophisticated system that provides experience at 8 | Twin Cities MD NEWS I MDNEWS.COM the forefront of national EMR standards." Training medical students and residents is costly. Currently, state Medical Education Research Costs (MERC) and federal funding through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pay hospitals for residency training. As the Association of American Medical Colleges responds to anticipated demand for more physicians with a push for a 30% expansion of medical student slots by 2016, teaching hospitals are facing sharp declines in state and federal funding of residency programs. "When medical students graduate, they need residencies," says Dr. Belzer. "In 1996, the federal government capped the number of residency training positions they will fund. As we ramp up medical school graduation from United States medical schools, there will be a point where there will not be enough residency positions for all of the American medical school graduates to train in U.S. residencies. Complicating matters closer to home, Minnesota's legislature cut MERC funding from $63 million to $31 million in 2011. "These cuts created a shortage for training programs like ours to meet the increased costs required to train residents and medical students," explains Dr. Belzer. "Although MERC is scheduled to be refunded in 2013, few believe that will happen. We are facing funding threats to medical education reimbursement at the state and federal levels. It's an incredible financial burden on hospitals with a significant education mission. A consortium of Twin Cities teaching hospitals is lobbying to protect MERC and looking for other creative, innovative ways to fund graduate medical education. We hope that Minnesota physicians will support us and ask state legislators to support the restoration of MERC funding. "Throughout our history, HCMC's board of directors has valued medical education as one of our core missions," observes Dr. Belzer. "Even through periods of challenging funding and multiple legislative assaults, HCMC leadership has always supported medical education. "We have a reputation as a hospital for the poor or the injured, but we are also a Level 1 trauma center and one of only two burn centers in the metropolitan area, host a sexual assault resource center, and run the only poison control center in the upper Midwest. We offer the only emergency and acute-care hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the Twin Cities, the only professionally staffed psychiatric emergency department, and train the state's physicians and first responders in emergency preparedness. The residents we train will care for patients at hospitals throughout Minnesota. The most rewarding aspects of our work lie in our mission as educators and our ability to provide meaningful service to an underserved patient population. "Health care is no longer an issue of social justice or public good — it's a political issue. The politics revolve around money: Who's going to pay for the uninsured? We grapple with the complexities of funding a safety-net hospital, but we are dedicated to keeping this very important institution on direction doing what it needs to do. We know how important critically competent and skilled providers like Dr. Jodie Taylor are to our community and to the future of health care." I

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